The year-long commemoration of Jack Trice wrapped up at Iowa State Sunday with a closing ceremony on the day Trice died following a football game 100 years ago. Trice’s cousin George Trice spoke at the event, and referenced the letter he wrote prior to the game where he vowed to do more than his part.
“All the things that have been done over this past year to honor Jack Trice, it puts us in a different position. We’ve come a long way and we have a lot of a long way to go but we have to do more than our part,” Trice says. He says the honorary degree award Jack was fitting, as he wanted to get an animal husbandry degree to go beyond sports. “Football was part him. Track was a part of him. But he was here to do more than that. Animal Husbandry going back down south teaching ex-slaves how to share crop and make money to pay for their families by doing what they had been doing for free,” Trice says. “It wasn’t about him. It was a selfless act. It was about him doing more than he could.”
George Trice says he can do things and go places that Jack couldn’t then because he was black. He says some schools had said they wouldn’t play Iowa State because Jack was on that team. That is part of the story that George says needs to continue to be told. “We’ve done a good job of bringing him to light. We have so much more. Jack, had he lived, maybe the season wouldn’t have happened, maybe it would have,” he says. “But we have to carry Jack with us into every football game and to every day, everything that we do for Jack, as Iowa State, we have to do more than our part and bring him with us as we go along.”
George Trice is also a graduate of Iowa State University.