Homer Veatch (1892-1988) was hired in 1926 as a Speech professor at Washington State College, and was head coach of the college debate team for his entire tenure. He had a record of 1678 wins and 1094 losses as coach, a 60.5% win percentage. In 1949 the WSC debate team won the national championship. Veatch retired in 1957 at age 65 due to mandatory retirement rules, but moved to Vanderbilt to continue teaching.
The main body of the collection is a scrapbook dating from 1957 containing primarily congratulatory notes and letters pertaining to Homer Veatch’s retirement. Additionally, it contains some membership cards and many photographs, primarily of his Debate students, from Mr. Veatch’s WSC tenure.
Materials are arranged alphabetically. The scrapbook, with loose items from it placed afterwards, forms the back half of the collection. The first several folders contain photographs, including an accordion-fold twelve image album, and membership cards, certificates of service to WSC, and correspondence about the naming of a room after Veatch.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item Description] Homer Veatch Scrapbook, 1933-1978
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
The scrapbook and associated items were donated to the Washington State University Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections on May 3, 2019 by his great-granddaughter Ariane Westin-McCaw and retained as MS2019-09. They were processed in May, 2019 by University Archivist Mark O’English. Additional photographs were received and incorporated in September of 2019.
A few items were separated out, and loose materials from the scrapbook were placed in a separate folder. Otherwise, materials were retained as they were received.
Some campus photographs with no direct relation to Veatch have been placed in PC 4, the WSU Historic Photographs Subject File. One small book, Campus Cartoons (1949), has been separately cataloged.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.