Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This June 1976 Classic article tells the history of Diadeloso, known once as All-University Day and May Day. Though the tradition has changed over time–you won’t hear about a donkey race on campus this year–its goal of providing respite and fun to students has stayed the same.
Baylor students put on their summer cut-off jeans and threw aside their books April 1 to observe Diadeloso, “The Day of the Bear,” for the 44th year.
This year’s observance was declared an official Bicentennial event by the Waco Bicentennial Commission and he Baylor Bicentennial Committee.
Traditionally, a day free of classes and full of fun and games, food and spring campus elections, the day has marked the beginning of spring for Baylor students.
Diadeloso was not always “The Day of the Bear” and it was not always staged in April. The occasion has been known as All-University Day and May Day.
Jim Crow, a former Baylor coach, founded the observance in 1932. He proposed the idea to the university administration because he thought students needed one day of fun a year–one day to relieve the grind of studying and to release some of the tensions of class rivalries, according to an edition of The Lariat, campus newspaper, of that year.
The faculty, apparently feeling the need of rest from classes as much as the students did, approved the plan.
Baylor’s first play day was at Silver Lake near McGregor and was sponsored by the physical education department.
By the year 1935 things really began to swing. Students could participate in track events such as the 400-yard hurdles, 40-yard dash, broad jump, walking and bicycling races, plus the usual sports such as softball, tennis and volleyball.
A May Queen, now known as the Diadeloso Queen, was chosen in chapel the week before the event. Margery Beth Adams had the honor of being Baylor’s first May Queen.
The real highlight of the day was the donkey race. The race was won by the late Dr. Lorena Stretch, professor and chairman of the School of Education, who went on to win subsequent races of the next four years.
The late Pat Neff, who was Baylor president at the time of the 1937 All-University Day celebration, suffered an outstanding disappointment by finishing fourth in the day’s mumbledypeg contest.
In 1940 the donkey race was replaced by a calf riding contest open only to students. Coeds could try their luck in this event, but most of them “fell down” on their luck and elsewhere, reports another edition of The Lariat.
Two of the most interesting May Days occurred in 1948 and 1949.
In 1948, the year Citation copped the Triple Crown, Miss Stretch won the Donkey Derby. Mounted on Shytation she drove to a whipping finish over A. C. Wimpee’s Coldtowne.
The May Queen election of 1949 was one of the most controversial in this history of the event. It ended with two queens and two coronations. In 1971, Delilah Bear, the Baylor Bear mascot, won the honor of Diadeloso Queen, and made the news across the nation.
A later edition of The Lariat reports that May Day was not always the large scale production that it is today. In 1952, it was in Minglewood Bowl and there were no tents. In recent years the action has taken place on Westmoreland Field next to the Lloyd O. Russell Intramural Sports Gymnasium.
May Day was changed to Diadeloso in the spring of 1966, when the Baylor Student Congress voted to have the festivities in April.
In 1973, Baylor students, in addition to all the regular Diadeloso activities, joined together in competition for what was billed as the “World’s Longest Tug-o-War.” A rope the length of two football fields was tugged and pulled by 769 students. No winner was named with the rope broke under the strain.
Last year, Diadeloso was wet an wild as rains washed out most of the activities. Campus elections were conducted and students made their own kind of fun in the mud.
The Baylor Chamber of Commerce, a men’s service organization, has coordinated and sponsored “The Day of the Bear” for the last 35 years. Each year it has been a unique celebration, not in concept, but in manner in which it is done. That is, a campuswide festive celebration.
