By Olson Barthelemy
Whether it is a school’s signature colors (the cardinal and gold of USC), mascot (the University of Georgia’s bulldog) or even its stadiums (UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion), a sense of history is as integral in both legitimizing and structuring a university’s athletic program as is winning.
Another facet of a schools athletic identity is its fight song. While nowhere near as recognizable, nor dating as far back as some of the fight songs of larger universities (Notre Dame’s legendary “Victory March”), the Pride’s fight song, “March on, Hofstra,” is nearly as old as the University itself and along with the Blue & Gold uniforms, and lion and lioness mascots helps form the Pride’s athletic image.
The fight song’s origin is humble enough. Bill Kufe, the University bursar at the time approached Francis J. Sorg (member of the class of 1942), an undergraduate on a music scholarship at the time, telling him the school needed a fight song. Having no knowledge of music, but with definite lyrics in mind, as well as the basis for a tune, Kufe propositioned Sorg to help him compose the song.
According to a letter dated Feb. 16, 1972, sent by Sorg to then school president Dr. Clifford Lord, Sorg and Kufe spent the next few days at a piano in Mason Hall composing what we now know as the school’s fight song.
“Bill was not much of a singer, nor a whistler for that matter,” Sorg said. But since his whistling was better than his singing, that’s what we used. With the words and a piano in front of me, I tried to put on paper what Bill tried to whistle.”
It only took a little bit of time after that to develop what we hear today.
“Over the next few days, working back and forth with Bill, I produced something we could agree upon, which stood up musically from my point and esthetically from his point,” Sorg said in the letter.
What Sorg had produced was a song that, having been declared the official fight song of the university in 1940, would stand the test of time and still be played at sporting events by the Pep Band nearly 70 years after its inception.
Sorg and Kufe could not have imagined the song they composed together in the humble confines of Mason Hall would become part of the face of the University’s athletic history.
“At the time we didn’t take what we were doing all that seriously,” Sorg said in the letter. “I know I didn’t, and we certainly never expected or envisioned the almost immediate response ‘March On, Hofstra’ evoked on the student body. It is one of the proud achievements of my life to have been a part of the creation of our now famous and beloved fight and marching song.”
As proud as Sorg and Kufe may be of their longstanding creation, it would be interesting to discover how they view the relative departure the school has taken, athletically at least, from the roots developed when they attended.
There was mention of the school’s former nickname, “The Flying Dutchmen” within the lyrics. As part of its re-imaging efforts early in 2005 the University officially changed its nickname to the “Pride.” Yet, the fight song still retains mention of “The Flying Dutchmen,” a nickname established in 1937, two years after the University was opened.
“I am sure the song will go on as long as Hofstra University goes on, which should be for a long, long time,” Sorg wrote in the letter.
A school’s athletic identity resides in those traits which have stood the test of time, and the old nickname still remains in the form of Sorg and Kufe’s “March On Hofstra.”