www.mybaycity.com May 27, 2015
Columns Article 8381

AGGIE HERO: Bay City's Francis I. Lankey Wrote Fight Song, Died in War

Yell Leader Wrote Words to Tune That Continues to Energize Spartan Sports

May 27, 2015
By: Dave Rogers


In 1913, following wins against powerhouses Michigan and Wisconsin, student and "Yellmaster" Francis Irving Lankey was inspired to compose a fight song for the football team.
 

Long before the waves of crowds that sweep massive gridiron stadiums.

And eons, it seems, before student cheering sections were large enough to spell out the name of the school, there was the handful of male "yell leaders" striving to energize small crowds of perhaps a few hundred chilly fans at football games.

In those days more than a century ago, the "Fighting Aggies" slogged away at rivals on Old College field in East Lansing.

The yell leaders found it pretty tough to get fans energized... that is until college fight songs came to be among the most popular music in the land, familiar to many besides rah-rah college kids.

As intra-school rivalries in football developed around the turn of the 20th century, schools found that they needed something beyond the available musical repertory for their partisans to sing and rally around.

Out of this came a surge of original & distinctive school fight songs, most notably the University of Michigan's and Notre Dame's.

The Fighting Aggies (later to be rechristened The Spartans) settled upon a song written by Bay City engineering student Francis Irving Lankey, class of 1916. Mr. Lankey had the designation of Yellmaster, equivalent to today's head cheerleader.

In 1913, following wins against powerhouses Michigan and Wisconsin, student and "Yellmaster" Francis Irving Lankey was inspired to compose a fight song for the football team.

The song was not published until 1919 when Lankey, who had become an instructor for the Army Air Corps after graduation, was killed in an air demonstration. At the 1919 Homecoming pep rally, the football team sold 770 copies of the song for 50 cents in less than 30 minutes. From that moment on, the fight song was adopted and has been used ever since.

Lankey, an avid pianist, composed the music and Sayles wrote most of the words.

Lankey enlisted in the Army during World War I and was killed in an airplane training accident.

Lankey's girl friend, Claudice Mary Kober, had the song copyrighted and MAC adopted it as the official MAC fight song.

After beating Michigan, the MAC marching band played on for hours in Ann Arbor. Since MAC did not have a fight song, what do you suppose they played? The answer: Hail to the Victors.

The words today are pretty much as they were when he wrote them in 1914 or 1915 with the exception of the changes growing out of the school's change in status from a College to a University (from M.A.C. to M.S.U.).

The song's melody is said to be a taken from the Christian hymn "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus" and Lankey was assisted by his roommate Arthur Sayles to come up with the original lyrics.

The Aggies understandably took pride in the school's focus on farming and that's reflected in the Lankey version. But perhaps most interesting, the original lyrics were directed squarely at their friends just down the road in Ann Arbor:

On the banks of the Red Cedar,

There's a school that's known to all;

Its specialty is farming,

And those farmers play football;

Aggie teams are never beaten,

All through the game they'll fight;

Fight for the only colors:

Green and White.

Smash right through that line of blue,

Watch the points keep growing.

Aggie teams are bound to win,

They're fighting with a vim!

Rah! Rah! Rah!

Michigan is weakening,

We're going to win this game.

Fight! Fight! Rah! Team, Fight!

Victory for M.A.C.!

Most popular songs peak quickly and die out just as fast.

But the MSU fight song seems destined to live, well, let's just say -- forever.

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