On a fall morning in 1903, the Purdue football team boarded a train for Indianapolis. Sounds of goodbyes and best wishes from family and friends sent the young men on their way. They were supposed to play IU in the biggest football game of the year.\nThe archrivals scheduled an afternoon game at Washington Park to decide the state championship. Neither team boasted a great record, but previous games were irrelevant, nothing more than warm-ups for the big showdown. Tickets went fast and both universities reserved their student sections -- Purdue students would occupy the leftfield bleachers, while Hoosier fans would cheer from the north grandstand. Both squads made train arrangements with early departures, allowing plenty of time to prepare for the 2 p.m. kickoff.\nThe game garnered attention from all over the state and many found themselves divided on a predicted outcome. Newspapers considered the contest to be the most important and evenly-matched game in recent years. Coaches were confident, students memorized their school cheers and players couldn't wait to play.\nOne hundred years ago, everyone seemed ready for the biggest game of the year.\nBut there would be no touchdowns. Voices would sob instead of cheer. Players would die instead of play. The biggest game of the year would never take place.
One month to prepare\nOctober's schedule gave the Hoosiers three games to prepare for the Purdue game. Despite a five-point loss to Wabash College during the season opener, IU football coach James Horne told a reporter he felt good about the team's early progress.\nThe first game in October against the University of Chicago marked the Hoosiers' first game of the season in the Big Nine conference. The previous year, IU had failed to score against a Chicago team that tallied 39 points. Horne made no denial that Chicago still overpowered IU, and expectations of his team's performance were minimal to say the least.\n"If we are defeated by more than 39-0, I shall be disappointed," Horne told the IDS. "If we hold them to a lower score, I shall feel that we are making progress."\nIU lost the game 34-0. In Horne's opinion, progress was made.\nThe Hoosiers' progress carried into the following Saturday's game when they rolled over Earlham College 39-0. Despite a landslide victory, IU's lack of size and speed had some worried about the team's chances against Purdue.\nR.J. Siegmund officiated the game and said Earlham's lack of talent made IU look better than it actually was. But he added that he thought IU had the necessary framework to defeat Purdue.\n"IU has some good material and if the fellows work with the right spirit and train conscientiously, I expect them to whip Purdue," Siegmund told the IDS.\nThe Tuesday following the win over Earlham, anticipation for the Purdue match rose when Horne announced secret practices would be the new order of business. At the end of the week the team would travel to Ann Arbor to face Michigan in the team's last game before the state championship. Like the game against Chicago, Horne predicted another loss, but he said the Michigan game was not a major concern for IU.\n"The game with Michigan is not expected to in any way show the strength of Indiana," Horne said. "We shall work from now on with the contest with Purdue in mind."\nHorne's lack of concern resulted in a 51-0 shutout in the Wolverine's favor.\nAs the Purdue game approached, the team continued its progress and developed some much-needed speed and size, but the student body had shown little interest up to this point. When rumors about Purdue students practicing and perfecting their school fight songs drifted to Bloomington, Horne began to worry about his team's morale.\nHorne said the players felt abandoned by the lack of support and begged students to organize a rooters practice, but no students took the initiative. In an editorial, the IDS shared Horne's disappointment, saying, "Such lethargy in a university of IU's size is deplorable."\nRecognizing that something had to be done, members of the local YMCA finally stepped in and organized a rooters club and invited anyone with a strong voice to join. Seventy students joined at the first meeting, and more would soon follow.\nThe rooters called themselves the "Howling Hundred." Divided into six groups, each person carried a megaphone, allowing a constant succession of cheers so there would never be a quiet moment during the game. The football team finally had the spark it needed.\nFrom Wednesday until Friday, practices were no longer open to the public; it was time to focus. Coaches wouldn't talk about the game to reporters, but their constant smiles spoke for themselves. In Indianapolis the odds on the game were even, but many expected IU to take the lead at the last minute. The day before the game, a large headline on the front page of the IDS read, "Indiana Wins Tomorrow."\nThe Hoosiers boarded their train with a 1-3 record and an army of howling students. They pulled in to Indianapolis at 11:30 a.m.\nPurdue had lost its last two games to drop to 4-2, but the team was healthy for IU. The Boilermakers brought so many fans with them two trains were needed.\nTheir trains never arrived in Indianapolis.
The wreck\nThe Purdue trains traveled the tracks at 40 miles per hour. The football team rode in the first coach of the 14-car passenger train with more than 1,500 Boilermaker fans following behind them. They were less than 50 miles from the Big Four railroad station in Indianapolis when the engineer rounded a curve and saw a coal train backing up on the main rail line, loading its freight.\nA telegram operator never relayed the message to the engineer regarding the freight train's presence. The engineer put the train in reverse and slammed on the emergency brake, but it wasn't enough. The engineer jumped from the moving train. There was nothing else he could do.\nThe impact of the coal train into the steel cars destroyed the first four coaches of the Purdue train.\nThe team car broke in half, and the impact tossed bodies and splinters of wreckage to the sides of the tracks. The second Purdue train would have added to the death count, but one of the surviving brakemen ran down the track to stop the train before it reached the wreck site. \n Prudence Yager, a Purdue alumna from West Lafayette, sat in the third coach of the train and was one of the first survivors who rushed to the front of the train where the dead and injured rested on each side of the track.\n"The first thing I saw when I got off the train was the bodies of three of the football players who were killed instantly," she told the Bloomington Courier. "It was an awful sight. One could not imagine a more terrible sight. I couldn't comprehend what had happened. We were all laughing and thinking of the great fun we would have in Indianapolis and were getting ready to leave the train, for we knew we were in the city. All at once the car began to bump and slacken speed. Then the crash came."\nSurvivors immediately began the rescue work before medical assistance arrived. Men separated the victims from the wreckage and tore away the bodies trapped under the shattered cars. At the end of the day, their clothes, stained with blood, stood as a reminder of the disaster.\nBut as the men used their physical strength to assist in the rescue, the women displayed a gentle and soothing touch.\n"The young women performed heroic work," the Indianapolis Star reported. "Though the bodies were in several instances horribly mangled, one completely and one partially beheaded, they took upon their laps the heads of the dying and injured and soothed their sufferings as best they could."\nPurdue head coach Oliver Cutts traveled in the team car that sustained the heaviest impact. He was one of the few passengers who managed to escape any serious injury.\n"I watched the car split in two, not realizing for an instant what was happening," Cutts told the Courier. "The next thing I knew I was lying in the cinders behind the track. I didn't realize I was unconscious for several minutes because when I regained my senses many people were moving about. My hair was full of cinders and while in a halt, dazed condition I brushed it out. I suddenly realized that many of my men had been killed and I wanted to do what little I could to help them.\n"The scene on all sides was ghastly and I could not help wondering how I had escaped death or serious injury. I believe I must have been hurled through the roof, clear of the car and the cinders in my hair indicated that I evidently alighted on my head on the embankment. My clothes were not torn in the least and the only injury I received was a bruised ankle and a heel. I did what I could to help the other players out of the wreckage, but I soon felt as if I should faint. I went away with some of the injured. It seemed the men sitting on the west side of the coach fared the worst, as most of them were killed."\nThe first day left 16 dead and dozens injured. One more person would die from injuries in the ensuing days. All of the fatalities -- 12 players, an assistant coach, a trainer and three fans -- were limited to passengers in the Purdue team car.
Missing faces\nIn the morning before the crash, Purdue fans and students boarded the train with high spirits and rested voices ready to yell. They left with gold and black Purdue ribbons pinned on their coats. Later that night, those who survived returned to a silent train station with tear-swollen eyes and only black ribbons.\nSome were still unsure of the names of those who were either dead or injured. Friends and relatives waited and hoped to greet the same faces they said goodbye to earlier in the day. But for some, the faces of those young men who were supposed to play in the biggest game of the year never returned.\nPurdue would later build the Memorial Gymnasium on its campus in honor of the victims.\nSeventeen steps -- one step for each victim -- lead up to the gymnasium and a plaque outside reads, "The appalling event is still considered the worst tragedy in the University's history."\n-- Contact senior writer Colin Kearns at cmkearns@indiana.edu.
