Thomas Louis Spence (April 17, 1896 – November 27, 1918) was an American college football player. Spence also played on the

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

, and track teams.

Georgia Tech

Football

Spence was a prominent fullback for John Heisman's Georgia Tech Golden Tornado of the Georgia Institute of Technology from

1914 This year saw the beginning of what became known as World War I, after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austrian throne was Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. It als ...

1916 Events Below, the events of the First World War have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 1 – The British Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion, using blood that had been stored and cooled. * J ...

. He was posthumously elected to the Georgia Tech Athletics Hall of Fame in 1976.

1915

1915 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction". * January ...

, near the end of the

LSU Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

game, he returned an

interception In ball-playing competitive team sports, an interception or pick is a move by a player involving a pass of the ball—whether by foot or hand, depending on the rules of the sport—in which the ball is intended for a player of the same team ...

85 yards. He made a 40-yard drop kick field goal against North Carolina.

1916

Spence was a starter for the 1916 team which, as one writer wrote, "seemed to personify Heisman." In Georgia Tech's record-setting 222-0 win over Cumberland College in 1916, Spence scored the second-most behind

Everett Strupper George Everett Strupper Jr. (July 26, 1896 – February 4, 1950), known variously as "Ev" or "Strup" or "Stroop" was an American football player. He played halfback for Georgia Tech from 1915 to 1917. Strupper overcame deafness resulting from ...

when he netted five touchdowns. He was selected All-Southern that season.

Walter Camp Walter Chauncey Camp (April 7, 1859 – March 14, 1925) was an American football player, coach, and sports writer known as the "Father of American Football". Among a long list of inventions, he created the sport's line of scrimmage and the system ...

gave him honorable mention.

World War I

Spence was a casualty of the

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. He is the namesake of

Spence Air Base Spence Air Base was a United States Air Force base that operated from 1941 to 1961. It was later reopened as Spence Airport. History The City of Moultrie gained its first official municipal airport, Clark Field, in the 1930s. In 1940, local l ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Spence, Tommy 1896 births 1918 deaths Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football players American football fullbacks All-Southern college football players American military personnel killed in World War I Baseball outfielders Forwards (basketball) People from Thomasville, Georgia Players of American football from Georgia (U.S. state) American football drop kickers