Marshall Clegg
As the oldest member of the Texas Cheer Alumni, Marshall is my first choice for the first Meet Your Alumni story. Not just because he is our oldest member, but also because he has been to every reunion event since we started reunions. I know this because I am the other person who has been to every reunion event. We are in many group photos over the decades. I truly appreciate Marshall always showing up, in gear, ready to cheer.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
A native son of San Antonio, Marshall came to UT in 1949 to study business administration. He grew up in an office supply/office furniture/printing company owned by his father, uncle, and grandfather. He says San Antonio was a small town in those days. In 1952 Marshall decided to try out for cheerleader. Already a member of Texas Cowboys, Phi Eta Sigma, and Phi Gamma Delta, Marshall was well known on campus.
The UT population was 14,000, but there were only six on the squad that year. I ask the obvious question: why did you try out? “I could jump,” he says with a smile. Here is a man after my own heart. Apparently his jumping ability was effective. When the Austin American-Statesman did a story on the cheer squad that year, they featured a jumping Marshall Clegg in front of the Tower.
In ’52 the cheer squad was chosen by student election and judges. A story from The Daily Texan reports that “for a week prior to the election 50 students had attended a yell school organized by the head yell leader.” Tryout finals were held at a Wednesday night pep rally in Gregory Gym for the dozen finalists. Students sat in the bleachers and on the floor. There might have been 3,000 in attendance. There was also a group of 25 judges involved, but it’s a bit of a blur for Marshall these days. We can’t confirm how it all worked. We shall forgive the details. He turns 92 in July.
“We got up on the stage and did a cheer and some jumps,” Marshall recalls. What cheer did you do to win I ask? “The Whisper Cheer,” he says smiling. This is the one cheer from the 50’s that I actually know. What were the other cheers? I ask hopefully. “There was the stadium yell…” but Marshall stops there. Unfortunately, the other yells are lost to memory. I am surprised the stadium yell existed back then.
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This was long before partner stunts were invented, so sideline activities were limited. Marshall shares a photo of two guys doing an arm in arm. There was the occasional simple pyramid, but you can’t do much with half a dozen people. I am excited to report that several members of the squad would tumble across the field after Texas touchdowns. That is my favorite Texas Cheer tradition.
Marshall became head cheerleader in 1953, and the co-ed squad expanded to seven members. “The football team was not very good in those days” he admits, so there is only one thrilling game to report from that season. “Baylor was ranked #3 in the nation when
we played them in Austin, and we won 21-20.” I am completely shocked that Baylor had such a strong team back then. The highlight of the year, however, was not on the field, but appearing in Time magazine in a college football article featuring Texas cheerleaders at the Cotton Bowl versus Oklahoma.
Football was the only sport available for cheering, so their duties were limited to pep rallies and games. There was always a pre-game parade down Guadalupe on Fridays, with a rally to follow at Gregory Gym or Hill Hall, which was the athletes dorm. Marshall remembers doing rallies from the roof of Dirty Martin’s burger place (why didn’t I think of that?).
The week of the Baylor game there were rallies every night, with torchlight parades and the burning of red candles! The night before the game the parade went down to Congress Avenue and stopped at 7th Street, where many Austinites participated. These events always included the Longhorn Band, Texas Cowboys, Silver Spurs, Orange Jackets, and APO.
Limited to hand held megaphones on the sideline, communicating with fans was difficult. “We had four or five cheers,” Marshall reports. I think about it, and things have not changed that much. Outside of the band, there are only a few cheers available today, most prominently the stadium yell. The Whisper Cheer is no longer among them, to my dismay.
I ask how they traveled to games in those days, and it sounds very familiar to the 1980’s. They drove their own cars and met up at the stadium. “We flew with the football team when we played TCU,” Marshall recalls. But that was because quarterback T. Jones was dating cheerleader Marge Hargrove and T. got them on the team plane.
This is the same Marge Hargrove who introduced Marshall to his future wife Trish, because they were in the same sorority. Marshall and Trish married in May of 1954, right before he graduated and went into the army on a two year stint during the Korean War. Marshall had joined ROTC the year before, along with almost every male student, to avoid the draft and allow him to finish school.
At that time the army would draft you regardless of enrollment in college. Upon graduation, he and Trish were assigned to Fort Eustis, Virginia, where they joined T. Jones and Marge, who went the year before. The quarterback and the head cheerleader team up in the army. It’s kind of poetic, and maybe the only time that’s ever happened. “I got lucky and the war ended before they could send me to the front” Marshall admits.
After the army, Marshall moved back to San Antonio and bought the office furniture part of the family business and eventually built the operation to 135 employees. He and Trish raised two girls, both graduates of UT. Marshall sold out to the biggest office furniture company in America in 2000 and retired.
Marshall’s granddaughter Melissa carried on the family tradition as an Auburn University cheerleader in 2017-18. We talk about how amazingly talented the kids are today. He is proud of Melissa and admits “She is much better than me.” I point out that cheerleaders don’t do jumps any more. It’s like a cultural gap between the centuries, where jumping was a cool thing in the 20th, but doesn’t exist in the 21st. “It’s too bad,” Marshall agrees. “It was my best move.”
Unfortunately, Marshall has lost his jump, but he has never let go of the cheerleader spirit that burns in all of us. He was the lone member to suit up for the alumni basketball event in February, ready to cheer again, seven decades later. May we all be so lucky.
In memoriam
On March 28, 2025, Marshall Clegg, the oldest and an original member of Texas Cheer and Pom Alumni, passed away at the age of 93 in his San Antonio home. He was a descendant of one of the 16 families from the Canary Islands that established San Antonio in 1731, and was the great-great-great-grandson of the last messenger dispatched from the Alamo before it’s demise in 1835, carrying a letter for Sam Houston.
Marshall was head cheerleader his senior year, a position he earned in a university wide election, complete with campaign buttons and a parade car bearing his name on the door. His was the time before partner stunts, when the Whisper Yell was a crowd favorite, and impromptu pep rallies took place on the roof of Dirty Martin’s Kumbak Burger joint. He attended every cheer reunion in his original uniform, made the decade before orange was burnt. He was the first person to be featured in our Alumni Spotlight in May 2023.
Marshall is survived by his college sweetheart Trish, two children, two grandchildren (one of whom was an Auburn cheerleader), and one great-grandchild. His family reports that he truly loved Texas Cheer, and will donate his uniform to The Fringe.