Helmet History

Joe Claxton ACS Publications Director

Ada August 21, 2008 12:29 pm

— Duncan probably won’t bring it to the three-way scrimmage with Pauls Valley and Ada Friday at 7 p.m., but the Demons own a bit of Ada football history — The Helmet.
Legend has it that little kids lined up in lines ‘as long as Six Flags’ at Ada football games to get a ride of a few yards in ‘The Helmet’. It was essentially a huge ‘football helmet’ mounted on a golf cart.
Local football lore has it that while watching a St. Louis Cardinals football game in the 1970’s, the late Bill O’Brien, Sr. and his son, Billy O’Brien, Jr., had the impression that they could build a huge helmet like the one St. Louis sported.
O’Brien, Jr. went to Kmart, bought a mini helmet for their model. They took measurements and fit them on a golf cart that they purchased in Oklahoma City.
O’Brien, Sr., a welder, built a “structured jig” filled in with small rods and covered with chicken wire.
A local manufacturing company that made fiber glass storm shelters covered the rest with fiberglass.
Ronnie Brendle, AHS counselor and son-in-law of the elder O’Brien, said the O’Briens finished it in one month, including car putty to fill in and a face mask out of PVC pipe.
When a second helmet was made, the first helmet was retired and donated to the Social Service’s daycare sandlot. What happened to it from there seems to have been lost in Ada history.
The second helmet was donated to Ada High by Dr. Jack Wallace. This helmet fit the top of his old golf cart.
Dr. Wallace, who drove the helmet around at football games, wanted head lights and tail lights, and he also wanted a cigarette lighter for a PA system
In the mid 80’s Dr. Wallace passed on the tradition of the A-helmet to the booster club. It was very hard to find volunteers to transport the A-helmet to all the away games and make sure everything went smoothly. So the A-helmet came to a screeching halt when the golf cart had problems and died.
The A-helmet cart sat in Art Dean’s garage for about two years before Bill Buxton of Duncan, a former Cougar, arranged to obtain it for the Demons.
The one question that stood out was ‘If a person scrapes the Duncan red paint off the helmet, will there be Ada maroon underneath?’
“No, we sand blasted it.,” long-time driver/supporter Bill Black said in 2000 in a story in the Cougar Call, the AHS student newspaper.
A revival of sorts occurred at the Ada-OC Northeast game at Norris Field Oct. 21, 2004 when a new A-helmet cart made its debut. It still roams the sidelines at home games.
Designed by AHS student Tanner Young, the new helmet cart was financed in the main by Citizens Bank, commissioned by then president Riley Young. It was built by Noble Custom Golf Cart Co. in Noble.
Wallace, who had spent several years in Nebraska, was back residing in Ada and was on hand for the unveiling.
Editor’s Note: Contributions to this report by 2000 Cougar Call staff writer Nickisha Petsemoie.

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