Mary Gayle Weber Brindley

She was a small town girl from Cuero attending the biggest school in Texas. It was 1959 and the UT population was 21,000, ten times larger than her hometown, but Mary Gayle was right at home. “Looking back, I can truly say, it felt like a community. I hope it still does.”

Within a few days of arriving in Austin, Mary Gayle found herself in a cheerleader tryout. “Anyone could try out, but I have to admit, the finals tended to be somewhat political because the selection committee was mainly comprised of campus leaders and athletes.” A hometown friend knew some members and Mary Gayle got in.

The night of finals, which was also the first pep rally of the year, they marched in a torchlight parade from Kinsolving Dorm to Gregory Gym. “I managed to sprain my ankle stepping from the curb to the street. None other but star football player Babe Dreymala (All SWC and All American) scooped me up and carried me all the way to Gregory Gym.” After the try-out she spent the night at the infirmary, and learned she made the squad while flat on her back.

Mary Gayle name checks that first squad as if she had just talked with them last week. “Melanie and I would do front walkovers and back walkovers and round offs and cart wheels” she says proudly. But it was Avis Tieber she admired. “Avis was a true gymnast. Everything she did was amazing.” I have to concur because I had discovered cheer photos of Avis randomly collected in an old box file at the Briscoe History Center. Her jumps defied gravity and required a dexterity one would see in Cirque du Soleil.

Mary Gayle is counting off the highlights: Most memorable game was the 1960 Cotton Bowl, where Texas lost to Syracuse 23-14. “It was a bitter fight” she recalls. The Orange went on to a National Championship that year. “Colonel Byrd bought us airline tickets for the Arkansas game. We didn’t travel out of state in those days. The Athletic Director told us to put our megaphones on our heads because they throw whiskey bottles during the game, which did happen.” Again I concur, remembering how an empty bottle whistled past my partner and I during a game in Fayetteville.

After two years on the squad, Mary Gayle decides to run for Head Cheerleader in the spring of 1961, and became only the second woman in history to win the position. “There really wasn’t anybody else to do it” she admits. HC was a campus wide election in those days, right along with Student Body President and Newspaper Editor. She went around to all the Fraternities and Sororities and gave speeches, usually standing on a table so everyone could see her. She beat out Ben Nowotny, nephew of the famous Arno Nowotny, who had been head yell leader in 1922 (and helped found The Texas Cowboys). The only campaign relic to survive until now is a rubber stamp which has her last name inside a megaphone.

“We talked a lot about the uniform that summer.” There was a sweet lady who hand stitched all of their uniforms, but the style wasn’t right. “We wanted a more distinctive western look and bright colors… and they definitely had to have fringe!” Longhorn Band uniforms had fringe, so you could say Mary Gayle borrowed the idea. “My aunt was a commercial artist and I got her to draw a detailed sketch which we sent to the band uniform company in San Antonio. The fringe turned out to be the special effect that no one else had. “It definitely distinguished us from all other universities in the country.” I concur yet again. I had the exact same feeling about our fringe in the ’80’s.

During that ’61 season, Mary Gayle would meet every Monday morning with Coach Royal in his nondescript little office in Gregory Gym, just the two of them, to talk about the upcoming game and what they were planning that week. Coach Royal was concerned with Texas Spirit to the point that he created the Royal Spirit Committee on which Mary Gayle was a member.

Then she announces “Coach Royal brought the Wabash Cannonball to Texas.” She pauses. “I can’t imagine a game without it.” I am surprised and delighted with this news. Coach Royal is known for many things football, and now we can add one of our best songs to the list. “The cheerleaders still do a Wabash routine very similar to ours, with that little hop-hop turn…At least it looks that way from where I sit.”

Mary Gayle regrets not repeating Head Cheerleader her senior year, admitting that she needed to focus on her school work, earning an Arts and Science degree in History, with a minor in English. She taught school 3 years while her husband studied medicine at UTMB in Galveston.

After a divorce she became marketing director for Sugar Creek National Bank because she knew the bank president and had asked his advice on how to establish credit, which required a job. The President saw her spark and ability to communicate, and hired her. She spent the next 37 years marketing banks. “Marketing turned out to be like cheerleading” she observes.

“One of my dad’s favorite sayings was, it isn’t always what you know but who you know. That certainly proved true for me those three years as cheerleader… meeting all those people…many of them downright legendary…and getting all that public experience truly paved the way for me to have a career I dearly loved. I am eternally grateful, incredibly lucky and perpetually proud to have been a University of Texas Cheerleader.” I concur, emphatically.

You can see Mary Gayle’s legendary first fringe uniform, along with her megaphone, at the brand new UT History of Cheer display in The Stark Center Museum, which officially opened September 12 https://starkcenter.org/ located in the North End of DKR Texas Memorial Stadium.