The year 1933 marked the beginning of what came to be known as Pitman Field and much later was renamed F.E. Willingham Field. Clyde Pitman was a lawyer in Tecumseh for many years and served as City Manager for Tecumseh. F.E. Willingham was a high school principal, coach, and superintendent of schools for many years in Tecumseh.
This new field was without seats, no restraining barriers between spectators and the playing field. Fans lined up on each side of the field and followed plays by moving up and down the field as plays developed. People who drove to the games could park on either side of the field. This arrangement continues until the 70’s.
Another feature of the location was the east end was lower than the west by about 3 ½ feet. This was partially corrected in the 60’s by moving dirt, hauling some in, and making an improvement in the lay of the land.
One important development in community participation was the idea of a quarterback club. Those responsible consisted of many men and women. They provided some backing for building seats, lighting the field, building rest rooms, a press box, and concession stands.
The addition of lights was accomplished by borrowing money from sports fans and others. This was to equip the field, so THS would compete with other schools in that category. About $4,500 was raised to purchase the necessary lights and poles. A new scoreboard was purchased and installed at the east end of the field. A lot of credit goes to John Burns who coached here from 1947-62 for lighting the football field.
An interesting feature of the location in the early days was a number of trees were growing there. Two large oaks were on the upper north side, a large walnut tree was on the southwest, and a number of black jack oaks in the southeast corner.
A baseball field was marked off in the southwest corner of the area. This field was used by the high school and by a sandlot team managed by Schley Reeves. He and his brother Virgil (Pee Wee) Reeves played many years at the Brock field, Skagg’s City, and Tecumseh field. Later the high school baseball field was moved to the northwest corner until lights were added resulting in a lack of space for baseball.
An important change in the layout of the entire area was the installation of cyclone fencing around the entire area. In earlier times when parking was allowed inside the fenced area, people would park their car in the afternoon on game days. This provided a warm place to watch the fame. There was one drawback, spaces were limited and the view was somewhat obstructed.
A group of people very much interested in football formed a Quarterback Club. They helped in raising money for improvement to the site, worked weekends, and other times to support athletics in Tecumseh. Later when football teams were making longer trips to away games, sandwiches and milk were provided to the whole team. The proved to be very popular with the players by saving time in getting back to Tecumseh and saving their expenditure of money for teams meals after games.
The Quarterback Club worked diligently to bring about those vital improvements to the field. During the early days of the Quarterback Club, many men and women contributed to its success. Since no records were kept, it is impossible to name those people. They developed a sense of pride in Tecumseh athletics.
In the early days of football on Pitman field, some memories were made by a not too pleasant occurrence. The field unlike the Brock field had grass on it; unfortunately the grass was mixed with sand burrs and weeds. Since all practices and games were played on the same site, the field became rather bare and hard toward the end of the season.
As the period of football at Willingham field comes to a close, it marks a time when Tecumseh High School football was played as a small “B” class school in enrollment.
Now enrollment has increased to where Tecumseh is a large 4A school.
