by Ann Bausum
Robert Conroy beamed when Gen. John J. Pershing added a personalized medal to Stubby’s jacket on July 6, 1921. Mrs. Clyde D. Parker, representing the award’s sponsor, and a Pershing staffer attended the ceremony in the general’s private office.
Feature stories documenting the event appeared on page one of the New York Times and ran inside the Washington Post. The Universal Press news syndicate dispatched an account of the proceedings to its affiliated newspapers. Stubby’s scrapbook includes multiple reports of the story—from Denver, from Newport News, from Hartford, and other locations. The wire story played up the rivalry between the big dogs of the nation’s capital: “To prove that being decorated by the leader of America’s victorious forces had left him the same old unpretentious Stubby, he barked a democratic greeting to Laddie Boy as he passed the White House on his return from the ceremony.”
Not surprisingly, some people took exception to all the attention being showered on a mere dog. One correspondent penned a seething letter to the editor of the Stars and Stripes military newspaper. Pointing out all Stubby’s recent honors, the author asks what the dog did during the war to deserve such recognition. “Nothing,” he answers. “Absolutely nothing, but sneak along behind his master and wonder what the hell was going on … But did the dog have any idea at all where he was following his master to? No; and I’ll say if he had he would have whipped his master and the whole company to keep from going … For this Stubby gets all those medals and the name, ‘a real hero.’ But the thousands of real heroes, the red-blooded American boys who left gallons of their blood and maybe an arm or a leg on the battlefields don’t get these honors bestowed on them.” The writer concludes, “If this Boston bull did so much and the boys didn’t do anything, why not send an army of bull pups the next time and see who is entitled to these honors? I think the whole thing is nothing but a disgrace to the U.S. Army …”
Another correspondent pursued a different line of attack. “What a thrill runs over one,” he noted sarcastically, upon learning of Stubby’s YMCA privileges, “in these days of widespread unemployment, when innumerable ex-soldiers are starving in the streets of our big cities.” Incensed by the dog’s VIP treatment, the author caustically suggests that, “when the sad necessity arises, it would be only fit and proper for this historic animal to be buried with full military honors in the National cemetery alongside the Unknown Warrior.”
Conroy, ever the optimist, interpreted such missives as a positive development for his invincible ally. He dutifully pasted the letters into his friend’s scrapbook, then added his own interpretation to the comments. “Criticism of Stubby which proves he is famous,” he wrote in white ink on the black paper, perhaps closing the book with a satisfying “thump.” Nothing could tarnish Conroy’s regard or enthusiasm for his charge. Elsewhere in the album he included a poem written by a fan named Margaret Shanks, seemingly one and the same as the respected war nurse and poet who had been an end-of-life caregiver to Susan B. Anthony. Shanks concluded her brief tribute with the stanza:
Stubby, doggie what a lesson
To us humans, you can teach
Humbly wearing regal honors
Lifts you just beyond our reach.
Taking both praise and put-downs in stride, Conroy kept his own goals in sight, too. In the fall of 1921, both he and Stubby shifted their athletic and academic allegiances to a new school, Georgetown University. Conroy would go on to gain the core of his law education at that institution. Because his studies at Catholic University and George Washington University represented the equivalent of one year of scholarship, Conroy entered Georgetown as a second-year law student. Meanwhile, Stubby became the mascot for the Hilltoppers, forerunners of the present-day Georgetown Hoyas.
As Georgetown’s mascot, Stubby donned a gray uniform that sported a large blue “G.” Then, during halftime, he repeated the pigskin pursuit that had entertained crowds at Catholic University. The Georgetown “Domesday” yearbook for 1923 features a full-page photo of Stubby—“B.S., M.A., Ph.D. Official G.U. Mascot”—that shows the dog in action. In the picture, a young male student, dressed like a sporty cheerleader, has just launched a football along the turf. He grins broadly as Stubby chugs after the ball, full throttle, preparing to butt it with his head. Thus launched, the football could, theoretically, stay in motion as long as the dog was permitted to remain on the field.
And so it went, game after game during Hilltopper halftimes, leaving football fans thoroughly entertained and fired up. It has even been suggested that Stubby’s antics inspired the whole tradition of a halftime show, but such a claim is easier to make than confirm. More certain is that he at least established football traditions at Georgetown. Stubby’s halftime routine became the model for the mascots who followed him, the early ones of which were, likewise, akin to Boston terriers. His immediate successor earned the nickname Hoya, already a popular expression as a school cheer, and several subsequent mascots were named Hoya, too. Eventually all those Hoya mascots and cheers triggered a migration toward referring to the whole team as the Hoyas instead of the Hilltoppers.
Stubby’s tenure as Georgetown’s mascot began in the fall of 1921 and continued off and on for the next several seasons, depending on Conroy’s enrollment and residency. Even then, Georgetown football was a big deal. The dog entertained half-time crowds that regularly numbered in the thousands. Some home games were played on Georgetown Field; other contests took place at Griffith Stadium, the home field for the Washington Senators baseball team.
The Hilltoppers had finished their 1920 season with a 6-4 record that included an 80-to-nothing home-game shellacking of St. John’s of Maryland and a 0-to-30 loss in Boston to Boston College. The next year, aided by Stubby, Georgetown coach Albert Exendine stirred the Blue and Gray to an 8 and 1 record. In 1922, the Hilltoppers brought home six wins, lost three games, and tied one. The team traveled widely, playing such schools as Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, Lehigh University, Princeton, Virginia Tech, and Washington & Lee University.
The Georgetown eleven routinely played military football teams, too, including various regional Army outfits, as well as squads hosted by the Marines at Quantico. Sometimes those military outfits battled one another, too, and on one such occasion, in 1924, Stubby made a guest appearance opposite yet another press-manufactured rival, a Marine Corps mascot named Sergeant Major Jiggs. “Greatest of War Dogs to Attend Big Game,” announced the Washington Post in advance of the contest.
Unlike Stubby, Sergeant Major Jiggs had not experienced wartime combat, having been born after World War I. This bulldog became the Marines’ mascot in a nod to the moniker the corps had earned during the war, Devil Dogs, so named by their duly impressed German adversaries. The Marines loved their wrinkled, plump, admittedly ugly dog and, perhaps as an antidote to the fame of Stubby, pressed for Jiggs to receive official military rank. Such requests were reportedly granted on orders from two different Secretaries of the Navy, the first one making the animal a sergeant and, later on, a successor promoting him to sergeant major.
Thus Jiggs, technically, outranked Stubby, ignoring the fact that Stubby probably hadn’t really been made a sergeant and, if period news reports are taken as a guide, was not even referred to as one during his lifetime. Terminology aside, Jiggs, too, had his own uniform, but, unlike Stubby’s, his included a hat. Jiggs, however, exhibited no apparent skill on the football field, his chief talent seeming to be the fierceness with which he lunged from the end of his leash.
Sergeant Major Jiggs, mascot for the Marines at Quantico, “smoked a pipe at odd moments; and once in a while he took a chew of Picnic Twist,” reported the Washington Post in its 1927 tribute following the eight-year-old bulldog’s death.
As the 1920s unfolded, Conroy somehow managed to juggle law school, Stubby’s football career, and their busy engagement calendar of veterans’ activities. Conroy would have been seen as one of the lucky survivors of the war—all limbs intact, no lingering consequences from being gasse
d, a roof over his head, undertaking higher education, and so on. Not all Great War veterans were so fortunate. After the parades ended, many former soldiers struggled to find work in a shrinking postwar economy. Unemployment climbed from a wartime low of less than 2 percent to, by 1921, a high of 12 percent. The nation witnessed postwar race riots (with many African-American soldiers stunned by how they were shunted back into a system of segregation even though they’d fought on the nation’s behalf for freedom and democracy). Inflation hit. A recession set in. Several fledgling federal agencies sought to meet the needs of veterans, but not until 1930 would they be consolidated into one Veterans Administration, and decades would pass before the government began to grasp the hidden scars of war and the level of support that veterans truly needed.
Veterans joined advocacy organizations, such as the American Legion, and attended local, regional, and national events where they could share their concerns and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow doughboys. Conroy and Stubby became regulars at the national convention of the American Legion, hitting Kansas City in 1921, New Orleans in 1922, St. Paul (one convention representing 1923–24), and Omaha in 1925. Each reunion brought Stubby and Conroy back in contact with old friends and lifted veterans’ spirits. The dog’s appearances in parades inevitably drew further media attention.
Stubby and Conroy kept up with their war buddies at a seemingly infinite number of local gatherings, too—in Washington, D.C., where Conroy helped to coordinate activities for local veterans of the Yankee Division; back home in Connecticut; returning with former doughboys to the Newport News, Virginia, site of their departure for Europe; and so on. The dog drew correspondence from General Edwards, sat on display during a 1922 Christmas dinner of Connecticut veterans, and, days later, broke the no-pets barrier at New York City’s Hotel Majestic, which overlooked Central Park. The New York Times made note of the latter achievement, explaining that, “When Stubby’s blanket, laden with medals and decorations … was exhibited, he was not only admitted to the hotel, but was given the best accommodations available and had a special chef assigned to attend to his gustatory desires.”
Even in 1923, four years after returning home, many veterans continued to struggle with economic hardship. The American Legion began pressuring the government on their behalf for postwar assistance. Conroy felt allied enough with the cause to join the lobbying effort, and that meant that the famed A.E.F. mascot added his “voice” to the campaign, too. “Stubby is en route to Washington to make a Bonus appeal to President Harding on behalf of ex-service men,” noted the text of a captioned photo of the dog. “He may make a bone appeal to the White House chef, afterward,” observed the playful press account. The next year, Congress responded with a form of delayed gratification by authorizing the creation of life insurance policies based on individual service records. These policies held a limited immediate value as instruments for borrowing, and they could be redeemed in full, with interest, 21 years later, in 1945. Even that assistance helped, as did an economy that was finally on the mend.
By the summer of 1923, the 31-year-old Conroy had yet to complete his law school studies. So far, he had undertaken a year of coursework at Catholic University, a summer session at George Washington University, another summer session (this one at Yale University), one full year of studies at Georgetown, and one additional year at Georgetown that included unfinished coursework. Although his name remained on the books for the next school year at Georgetown, 1923–24, he completed no additional work. Instead Conroy took a job. A shortness of funds probably contributed to this change of plans, but so could the influence of an unlikely new acquaintance, a young employee at the Justice Department named John Edgar Hoover.
How well the two men knew each other is unclear, as is how they met, although it seems quite likely that they may have become acquainted through their law school connections. Hoover, for example, had earned his law degree from George Washington University in 1917, and the two may have met through interactions at that institution during Conroy’s studies there.
Perhaps Hoover actively encouraged Conroy to apply for work as a Special Agent at the Bureau of Investigation, where Hoover served as assistant director. Conroy’s war work in military intelligence served as an obvious credential for civilian work at the Justice Department’s investigative wing. Conroy’s application sped through processing when he submitted it on June 14, 1923. The acting attorney general sent Conroy an appointment letter on July 9, even before all the reports were in regarding his references and background. Three days later Conroy signed the notarized oath that made him a special agent for the Bureau of Investigation. (This Justice Department division would subsequently be renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI.)
Stubby and Robert Conroy (front row, third from left) posed on the steps of Gibbons Hall at Catholic University in this group photo, probably taken with fellow students during his first year of law school, 1920–21.
Documents from Conroy’s FBI personnel file indicate that he was originally posted to the Hartford office of the Bureau. During the next 15 months, he served the organization in Mobile, Alabama, and in Minneapolis, as well. Conjecture is required to imagine what transpired during this period. Did Stubby travel with Conroy to these outposts? Or did he stay back in New Britain with family? Did the fellows at the Carry On Club ever watch over him?
Conroy left behind no definitive answers. Nor is it clear what had motivated him to seek such employment in the first place at that particular time. Did he think he would be able to stay in the D.C. area and continue his law studies on the side? Was he surprised to find himself posted to distant cities and moved around from site to site? Is it true, as is stated in a 1934 document in his file, that he requested a transfer to Washington, D.C., so that he could complete his study of the law? Or, as is stated elsewhere, that he requested an eight-month leave of absence to resume his studies? If so, that correspondence is missing from his file, presumably part of the 25 pages culled during a 1977 sweep of the records.
Questions remain unanswered, but one fact is clear: By 1924 Conroy wanted out. On October 11, 16 months after his appointment, he addressed a letter to Mr. J. E. Hoover, acting director, Bureau of Investigation. “Dear Sir,” he began. “I herewith tender my resignation as Special Agent of the Department.” Conroy reported that he had turned in his badge and other government property. Then, he signed his letter: “Very truly yours, J. Robert Conroy.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AT EASE, SERGEANT STUBBY
BY LATE OCTOBER 1924, ANY SEPARATIONS ROBERT CONROY and Stubby had endured during Conroy’s service with the Bureau of Investigation were over. The pair returned to the Carry On Club in Washington, D.C., and Conroy went back to work on Stubby’s résumé. During their extended absence from the nation’s capital, President Harding had died, and that meant a new chief executive lived in the White House. Stubby had already crossed paths with Calvin Coolidge at least twice by then—in 1919 at the victory parade in Boston when Coolidge was the state’s governor, and at the 1921 American Legion convention in Kansas City, which Coolidge had attended as vice president. Now Coolidge was President, and that meant Stubby needed to shake his hand in order to sustain his record of having met every President from his lifetime.
When Conroy requested a meeting between his famous friend and the newest U.S. President, the pair received an invitation to visit Coolidge at the White House. Before long, Stubby, decked out in his military uniform, met his newest commander in chief. Photos taken afterward on the White House lawn appeared in several publications and made their way into the mascot’s scrapbook. Conroy’s public relations campaign was back in business.
How old was Stubby by this time? His vagabond origins make it impossible to know for sure, but he could easily have been eight or nine by 1924, old enough to retire from football. “His fondness for butting the ball around the gridiron with his head was too much for his aging legs,” the Washington Post wrote in the fall of 1925, explaining h
is absence from local stadiums. Conroy’s ties to Georgetown had ended by then, too. He had left school in the spring of 1923 without completing his coursework and had officially withdrawn from the program in February 1924, while employed by the Justice Department.
After leaving the Bureau of Investigation, Conroy took a job on Capitol Hill and resumed his study of the law, switching schools one last time. It would take him two more years to earn his degree, but on June 12, 1926, at the age of 34, he graduated from National University Law School, a program later affiliated with George Washington University. His accomplishment had been almost six years in the making despite the long odds of short finances, changing enrollments, and career diversions. The next year he earned admittance to the bar of the District of Columbia.
Conroy worked on Capitol Hill for most of the rest of the decade, serving as a staffer for Representative Edward Hart Fenn, a Republican from Connecticut. Not only did both men hail from the Nutmeg State, the pair shared an allegiance to the same National Guard unit that had become Conroy’s 102nd Infantry Regiment during the First World War. Both connections may have helped Conroy get the job; they certainly couldn’t have hurt as he assumed the duties of secretary for the congressman. Later on he served as clerk for the House Committee on the Census, which Fenn chaired. Fenn valued Conroy as a hardworking staff member, a man of excellent “character, reputation, and habits.”
