The Tudor Hall dorm you may have seen or heard about on the campus of Louisiana Christian University is named after a man who made a profound impact at three different American colleges.
Simon Woodson Tudor, the founder of Tudor Construction Company in Alexandria, excelled in football, basketball and baseball at Georgetown (Ky.) College in the early 20th century. Notably, at 5-foot-9, 165 pounds, he was a two-time All-Kentucky center there in 1908 and ’09.
He is also considered the father of athletics at LCU (formerly Louisiana College) and Shreveport’s Centenary College as a player, coach and administrator for sports teams at both institutions prior to World War I.
His youngest grandson is 80-year-old Michael Tudor of Pineville, the family historian.
“He was an incredible athlete,” said Michael of his grandfather, the patriarch of a family that produced generations of incredible athletes. His son, Robert, was a star player on LC’s football and basketball squads. His grandson, Robert Jr. (Buddy) was captain of the LSU tennis team in 1956 and ’57. His great-grandsons, Bobby and John, were star basketball players at Rice and LSU in the 1980s.
How incredible was Simon Tudor as an athlete?
Consider this from a July 1, 1911 clipping in the Alexandria Daily Town Talk. In a report about Fishville news regarding Simon Tudor: “Monday night brought one of the South’s greatest athletes. … Since his arrival he has been quite busy teaching the ladies to swim – and a job, too – especially some of the ‘large’ ones we have in camp.”
Besides his athletic prowess, Simon was an excellent debater at LC. He once competed on a two-man debate team – in 1911, mind you – in which the subject was: “Resolved, That it is in the best interests of all governments concerned that Canada be annexed to the United States.” He was on the team that took the negative side.
One of 16 siblings, Simon, the son of a cattle rancher, was born in Madison, Kentucky, and at age 5 he worked there in the tobacco fields. As a young adult he rode a horse to Georgetown College, just north of Lexington, where he was swift of foot and played three sports. His great, great grandfather, John Tudor, was a friend of Daniel Boone, according to Michael.
Like Boone, Simon was a trail blazer, albeit in college athletics in Louisiana. He was recruited out of Kentucky to start the LC athletics program – as a student, player and athletics director — for the 1910-11 academic year. His first LC basketball team won the unofficial state championship.
After two years at LC, Centenary College lured Simon to Shreveport to start Centenary’s sports program, which he did for a brief stint before returning in 1913 to LC. That’s where he graduated and married the captain of the women’s basketball team, Frances Ollie Beall, the daughter of W.C. Beall, the co-founder of Louisiana College.
Michael compares his grandfather a bit to Steve Spurrier, the former Heisman Trophy quarterback for Florida who later became an innovative and legendary football coach for his alma mater. Tudor brought to LC the concept of the “floating center,” which LSU and Tulane picked up and used in the early 1900s.
Michael was 11 years old when his grandfather died of a heart attack at age 69 and he remembers his “Papaw” fondly.
“We had a special bond,” Michael said. “Since I was the youngest grandchild, he doted on me.
“He had the loudest voice,” he said. “Everybody could hear him at football games. He’d get on the refs, but he didn’t cuss. He was a stout Baptist. He didn’t smoke or chew, probably because my Mamaw wouldn’t put up with it. He was a great gardener, always having a huge garden. He had a great sense of humor, too.”
One of Michael’s fondest memories of his grandfather was riding with him to college football games in Baton Rouge and New Orleans as a youth.
“He had this giant Packard,” Michael said of what was a luxury automobile in America in the first half of the 20th century. “He’d pick me up and take me to LSU games and even to a Sugar Bowl game. He’d take me to LSU games when Kentucky played there, and when the Kentucky band struck up ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ he’d always tear up. He was very emotional.”
A long-time member of the LC Board of Trustees and its president for 10 years before his death in 1956, Tudor reacted a different way to the playing of ‘Dixie’ at football games.
“In the 1950s, all the bands in the South played ‘Dixie’ but Papaw never stood up to sing like everyone else,” Michael said. “I once asked him why he didn’t stand and sing, and he said, ‘It’s not my national anthem.’”
Michael always wondered what he meant by that and didn’t learn why until this past year.
“Kentucky was a split state in the Civil War, and all the Tudors were Unionists,” Michael said. “Two of his great uncles died, fighting for the Union.”
He always wanted to get along with everyone, though, Michel said, so in Louisiana he kept a low profile regarding his Yankee connections. He lived a remarkable life, not only with his accomplishments in athletics at three universities but as he began Tudor Construction in 1946 with his son, Robert, who had returned from World War II.
He also made impacts as a Baptist deacon, a Rotarian and a Pineville city councilman. I’ve probably missed other ways he made an impact, but that’s the expansive measure of the man he was.