ARC Trivia - Fun Facts
Interesting Trivia about Richmond Academy
- Richmond and Boys Catholic HS (Aquinas) football teams would play on thanksgiving afternoons – always a capacity crowd.
- Richmond also played many of their home basketball games at Bell Auditorium – often there would be “double-headers”. Richmond vs Savannah High School and Aquinas vs Benedictine on Friday night then they would switch opponents and play on Saturday. The ARC pep band would play at important games.
- In June of 1964 “Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons” played at the graduation dance in the ARC gym. This was at the beginning of their career shortly before the Beatles came to the USA. Their story is told in the long-running Broadway musical “Jersey Boys” and, also in the movie by the same name. Alas, Richmond Academy was not mentioned in either.
- Soccer was almost unheard of in the 50’s and 60’s.
- ARC won about 30 state championships in the 1950’s – and this was in the largest classification in the state at the time.
- ARC has had five Rhodes scholars, a Governor, a Supreme Court justice, Olympic gold medal winner, a Super Bowl head coach, and a baseball World Series winning manager, etc.
- The 1950’s song “Purple People Eater” was produced by an ARC graduate, Neely Plumb. He was also the father of Eve Plumb who stared in the TV show “The Brady Bunch”.
- If you watch the news on PBS, the anchor, Judy Woodruff, is a 1964 ARC graduate. She also moderated one of the Vice-Residential debates in the 1980s.
- Richmond is the only high school from this area to play in a New Year’s Day football bowl game. They represented the state of Georgia in the Peanut Bowl January 1, 1952 playing Agawam High School from Massachusetts.
- Before a field was created for home baseball games, Richmond would have to play some of their home games at the “Langley-Bath-Clearwater field” and the others at Jennings Stadium, the baseball stadium for the minor league teams prior to Lake Olmstead stadium.
- The baseball team not only won 7 consecutive state championships, 1951–1957, but they also won three Southeastern Regional championships, defeating state championship teams from all over the south – Virginia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, etc.
- The “Four Seasons” hit “Rag Doll” was debuted at the 1964 graduation in the ARC gym.
- Prior to the early 1960’s all male students were required to take JROTC, and the athletic teams were often referred to by the nickname “Cadets” along with “Musketeers”.
- Augusta University had its beginning on the campus of Richmond Academy, eventually moving off-campus in the late 1950’s.
- Astronaut Susan Still Kilrain attended ARC in the 1980’s.
- Before ARC football games in the 1950’s (possibly earlier) the ARC cheerleaders would enter the stadium a few minutes before kickoff in some unique manner. Sometimes they rode in on a fire engine or ambulance with sirens blaring, sometimes on the hoods of cars from local car dealerships. Before Thanksgiving Day game in 1956, they borrowed a farmer’s mule and wagon and rode in the wagon. Before the state championship in 1956 they rode on bicycles. They would ride in front of the visitor’s side first (to good natured booing from the crowd) then stop in front of the ARC student section and begin leading them in cheers.
- ARC graduate Dan Miller co-hosted a late-night TV talk show on CBS with Pat Sajak (now the host of “Wheel of Fortune”).
- Before World War II the ARC football team would board the train and travel as far north as West Virginia and Erie, Pennsylvania to play other high schools.
- ARC is the sixth oldest continuously operating high school in the U.S. The first five were established before Georgia was colonized.
Many thanks to Jim Pardue for putting this list together.