"…my job would be sheer drudgery. For the words ought to be written first and the music fitted to them. To reverse the technique is to give the lyric writer a tough bit of carpentry."

Magazine
Winter/Spring 2000

Long Shall We Sing Thy Praises
Visitors stepping onto the Wabash campus during Chapel Sing never forget the sound of Old Wabash rumbling like the shouts of warriors through the autumn air. That song was just the beginning of the illustrious careers of journalist Ted Robinson '00 and Carroll Ragan '01, but 100 years since their collaboration, Old Wabash endures as a powerful bond between Wabash men.

by William Starr '37 and John Kerezy '77

Wabash eagerly awaited the 20th century. The College was inaugurating a new energetic president, Dr. William Patterson Kane. Its excellent academics were attracting the best students in Indiana and around the Midwest. And Wabash's sports teams were well-known for excellence, especially in football and basketball.

What Wabash did not have in the 1890s was a school song. The College and various campus groups had offered prizes to encourage students and faculty to write a College song. Some students had won prizes for their compositions, but the songs remained unsung.

In the fall of 1899, students Carroll Ragan '01 and Ted Robinson '00 ate meals together at Cox's boarding house. They were members of different fraternities, but this was before fraternity houses had arrived on campus. Carroll was already an accomplished musician and singer. A native of Neoga, IIlinois, Carroll came from a family of Wabash men. His father, Gillum Ragan, graduated from Wabash in 1860. Uncle Reuben Ragan was an 1848 Wabash graduate and brother Robert Ragan graduated in 1894.

Passionate about music, Carroll learned the clarinet and piano while in high school. He took a leading part in organizing the Wabash Band and Glee Club in his freshman year of 1897-98. A well-known musician on campus, Carroll wrote a wide variety of tunes. His favorite was the two-step, a popular type of dance music at the time.

Carroll noticed that an older student, Ted Robinson, lingered on after lunch most days to listen to his piano playing. The two became acquaintances. When the next prize contest for the college song came along, Carroll said to Ted, "Let's write it."

No doubt Carroll knew of Ted's literary accomplishments. By then Robinson had served a stint as literary editor of The Wabash, the publication of the Literary Society. But neither student could have imagined that their collaboration would become the school's song, and be sung and cherished by Wabash men for 100 years.

The Song

What Carroll Ragan hadn't told Ted Robinson at first was that Carroll already had written the music to the song! More than 40 years later, Ted told reporter Clifford Peterson of the Crawfordsville Journal-Review the story of how Old Wabash was composed.

"The college or the glee club or somebody offered a prize of $50 for a new college song.

And Ragan said to me 'Let's write it.' As is turned out it was a cinch for him, for he already had the music made up. It was a two-step, and as soon as I heard it I knew that it had the elements of popularity. I did not know then what I was to learn at once—that my job would be sheer drudgery. For this is what all writers of lyrics know—that the words ought to be written first and the music fitted to them. To reverse the technique is to give the lyric writer a tough bit of carpentry. I smoothed it up as much as I could, though it was still rough and awkward in spots, but the music was tops and the music was what got the prize for 'OldWabash.'"

Once the task was completed, Ted Robinson and Carroll Ragan submitted the song for the contest. More important, they shared the words and music around the college.

Byron Hughes '00 popularized the song. The Glee Club's pianist, Hughes was skilled with the keyboard and he did much to promote Old Wabash by playing it at every social gathering. The song's first official public singing was at President Kane's inauguration on February 22, 1900. Later that year, at a mass school meeting, E. N. Klass '01 made a motion to have Old Wabash adopted as the College song. The motion passed.

Robinson: the Prolific Writer

Ted Robinson had entered Wabash in the fall of 1895 after graduation from Howe Academy the previous year. He was the son of William Edward and Alice Drake Meade Robinson, born in 1878 in Lima (now Howe), Indiana. One of his ancestors was Pilgrim Pastor John Robinson. Ted was an only child, so his father devoted many of his waking hours to teaching him the love of books and taking him fishing in the rivers and lakes of Northeastern Indiana. As a youth, Ted spent time at the local newspaper office and was befriended by the paper's editor. In his teens Ted contributed articles for the paper.

At Wabash Ted was a good student, especially in English and foreign languages. He was elected to the Literary Society his sophomore year, and he contributed many articles for its publication.

Due to illness, Ted spent much of his senior year in a Chicago hospital. While recuperating he continued to write and publish in the Literary Society. He returned to Wabash in the fall of 1899 for his senior year and graduated with the class of 1900. Disappointed in not being elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he consoled himself by saying, "My friend Billy Hays '00 [later the Postmaster General of the United States] didn't make it either."

After graduation, Ted taught English at Attica High School for a year. He then joined the fourth estate, moving to Indianapolis to become a staff correspondent and editorial writer for the Indianapolis Sentinel and the Indianapolis Journal. In 1905 he accepted an offer to write a regular column for the Cleveland (OH) Leader. Feeling the need for a more lucrative position after marrying Martha Coon of Cleveland in 1909, he moved to the staff of the larger Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1910 and began writing a daily column there called the "Philosophy of Folly." The column consisted of poetry and witticisms, and it gained popularity with readers in Cleveland and across the United States. Ted wrote a poem a day for more than 45 years and had approximately 10,000 poems published in the daily newspaper and elsewhere. He also wrote four books, including a novel. From time to time Ted would run stories or poems submitted by readers in his column, and he established a "Contributors Club" for them. Ted and The Plain Dealer threw an annual dinner for these contributors, which grew to more than 600 members.

In addition to his prolific writing, Ted taught literature and philosophy at Cleveland College of Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University), wrote books and plays, and gave speeches throughout the country. Ted also mentored younger writers. Among his dictums: "Don't write for the waste basket."

"Philosophy of Folly"

Ted was acclaimed as Cleveland's best writer in the first half of the 20th century and was one of America's best-known humorists. He was president of the American Press Humorists in 1914, and served as president of the Cleveland City Club, the Rowfant Club (an organization of writers and scholars), and the Writers Club. Wabash conferred on him an honorary doctor of letters degree in 1927. His doctorate citation lauds him as a "distinguished writer whose humor, culture, and knowledge contributed to the happiness and wholesomeness of life.

In their later years, Ted and Martha Robinson spent summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was there that Ted died in 1946. The last poem appearing in his "Philosophy of Folly" column, the day after his death, ended with this line: "Autumn has come and I must move on."

Ragan: Musician and Idea Man

Carroll Ragan became prolific as a Wabash song writer. He penned both the words and music for Alma Mater, which was intended as a hymn for chapel and at special occasions. It was first used at the 1920 commencement, sung by the Glee Club Quartet of George Littell '21, J. Carlton Gauld '22, Charles LaFollette '20, and Ray Porter '22.

In addition, Ragan wrote the words and lyrics for the Wabash War Song during World War I, the Wabash Centennial Song in 1932, and the Alumni Song.

But Carroll did not graduate from Wabash. He left the college in 1900 to complete baccalaureate studies at the University of Illinois and ended up in New York City, where he eventually became advertising manager for U.S. Mortgage and Trust Company. As a hobby, he penned musical comedies, including a farce called The Widow's Might, and he was a regular contributor to the annual Wall Street Follies. In 1926, he wrote this to his nephew Carroll Black '28: "I hope that you are or will become as fond of Wabash as I am, but that you will not make the mistake of leaving before graduating, as I did."

In the 1930s Carroll joined the Association of Commerce and Industry of New York City (the Chamber of Commerce). He completed his business career working with the New York State Insurance Department. Carroll and his wife, Mildred, had four children, including sons Malcolm '36 and Richard '46. All told, there are 18 descendants of the Ragan (and Black) families who attended Wabash. Carroll received an honorary degree from the College in 1920.

Old Wabash in the Writers' Words

Carroll Ragan and Ted Robinson did not stay in touch. They were in separate classes and fraternities and from different states, and there is no record of correspondence between them or photos of the two together at College gatherings. Yet both did write about their collaboration and experience.

Carroll said: "The music first was written for the College band and that fact should be borne in mind when the wide range, changes of key and time, and other features are considered."

Ted said: "There was a period, after I had been out of the college for a time and had begun to take my writing seriously, that I was not too proud of those lyrics. But I find, as I grow older, and seem to be regarded as a sort of vestal virgin who tended the eternal fire of Wabsh spirit in the past century, I am becoming quite proud of myself."

Is it the same song?

Old Wabash in 2000 is, in essence, the same song as Old Wabash in 1900. The words are the same, but the music underwent revisions in 1915. Floyd Russell '15 modified the tempo and the key of the song. Russell's two major changes were to alter the time from a two-step to its present swing tempo. Old Wabash was originally sung in the key of E-flat, "thus demanding a range of voice possessed only by Carusos and nightingales" recorded The Bachelor of 1915.

Today, Old Wabash, learned by practically every freshman arriving on campus, is sung in the key of C, and, as The Bachelor reported in 1915, "with a dash and swing which typifies the Wabash spirit."

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