Legacy

Carl Maddox served as athletic director for LSU from 1968 until 1978. He even helped lead the Tigers to the 1958 national football championship as assistant coach, according to Mississippi State University obituaries.

Dr. Charles E. Coates, a chemistry professor, was LSU’s first football coach. Coates lost the only game he ever coached (34-0 to Tulane) in 1893, according to LSU.edu. He and his quarterback, Ruffin G. Pleasant were responsible for changing LSU’s school colors to purple and gold. They bought “purple and gold ribbon from Reymond’s Store in New Orleans to make rosettes and badges for their jerseys,” according to an LSUNews article by Nancy Little.

Troy H. Middleton was the youngest colonel in the American Expeditionary Forces during WWI in France. He served as LSU’s president until his retirement in 1962, according to “Troy H. Middleton” by Frank James Price.

James Francis Broussard received his undergraduate degree at LSU where he was editor of The Daily Reveille and the first student president of the Campus Athletic Association. He joined the staff of LSU immediately upon graduating, teaching romance languages to the first female undergraduates. It “was joked that he would fall in love with one of his female students, and The Reveille printed humorous poems mentioning this possibility. They were proven correct when he married Nora Mary Dougherty of the class of 1910,” according to history professor Paul E. Hoffman.

Germaine C. Laville received her baccalaureate degree in education from LSU in 1942. Eager to represent her family in the war effort during WWII, Laville enlisted in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. She died in one of the military’s Synthetic Training Buildings when a volatile floor cleaner hit exposed wires, causing the building to erupt in flames. She was last seen inside the building helping others escape, according to Linda Cates Lucy’s book “We are the Marines!: World War I to Present.”

Lillian Louise Garig “was one of the first women to attend LSU and the second woman hired onto University staff,” according to history professor Paul E. Hoffman. Her picture in the 1910 Gumbo is “accompanied by the text, ‘Louise says she is going to teach during her whole life, and be an old maid — in other words, never, never, never to marry. She is very exacting with the sterner sex.’”