Edwin Kaine Schuman, better remembered as "Toots," was a Rolla native; he could remember being a little boy and hearing talk of the first St. Pat's celebration in 1908.
He was given the name Kaine after his maternal grandfather, John P. Kaine, who was the mayor, treasurer, and alderman of Rolla and a longtime member of the school board. His paternal grandfather, Charles Sr., was the construction superintendent for Frisco Railroad, who built the piers for the Gasconade bridge and laid the Frisco rails on Dixon Hill. The name Edwin also comes from another Rolla icon, Edwin Long, business partner of the Schuman family and founder of the Edwin Long Hotel, Which now functions as the Phelps County Bank. Toots's father, Charles Schuman, one of the famous Schuman Brothers, owned much land and business in Rolla, and notably he built the brick structure which would later become the home of Hopper's Pub. All this digression is to impress upon the reader how ingrained in the city of Rolla Toots was from birth.
He had always loved the celebration, and when he was old enough he decided to attend MSM so that he could be a part of it, but decided that engineering was not for him, and so left to study law at UMC, where he became a member of Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Upon receiving his degree in 1918, he returned to Rolla and again decided to enroll in Missouri Mines, pursuing a second degree in civil engineering.
Aside from his devotion to the celebration, Toots was exceptionally involved in student culture during his short time in attendance at MSM. He was part of the Students' Army Training Corps, where he played the trombone in the band, and the Enlisted Engineers' Reserve, he pledged Kappa Sigma and Theta Tau, and he did research for the Rollamo Yearbook Board and the Missouri Miner Newspaper.
In 1919, Toots was duly elected our twelfth St. Patrick, the third argonaut and the third member of Kappa Sigma to do so. That same year, on December 5th and 6th, Toots along with Meryl McCarthy (St. Pat '18) and Jules Colbert (Irish Gentleman '20) represented the Missouri School of Mines at a convention held in Columbia, the object of which was to make the celebration of St. Patrick a national custom in engineering schools, and to unite the schools into a consolidated and national organization. At this convention, Toots gave an account of the history of St. Pat's at MSM which, according to the 1920 yearbook, "surpassed that of other schools that there was no comparison."
Schuman and McCarthy both served on the constitutional committee and wrote the national constitution for what would become the National Guard of St. Patrick. Under this constitution, undergraduate students in engineering were to be dubbed Guards of St. Patrick, seniors were his Knights and Ladies, and any prominent professor in engineering could be named an Honorary Knight of the saint. Colbert served on the pin committee, which selected the emblem of the organization, which was a slide rule superimposed onto a green shamrock, and the word ENGINEER written on the slide rule in gold block letters.
At the second convention of the National Guard of St. Patrick, it was decided that the organization's name would change to the Association of Collegiate Engineers, in order to include all engineering traditions. Eleven schools were represented at the first convention, and by 1924 ACE had grown to have fifteen chapters. More research is required to determine what specifically happened to ACE, but by 1929 it was no longer in existence. What seems to have happened at other schools who were participants in the association, is a restructuring of the local chapter into another engineering society, specific to the school's culture.
It is the belief of this researcher that the original St. Pat's Board, founded 1930, was reconstituted from the MSM chapter of ACE. In any case it is clear that ACE represents the origination of a celebration orchestrated by a board of representatives, rather than a transient, involuntary committee of juniors. All this taken together gives Toots a critical role in the creation of St. Pat's as we know it.
Toots remained in Rolla after receiving his second degree, functioning as alumni advisor to the students and the Board when it was eventually founded. He also acted as the unofficial historian for the St. Pat's Board, and was annually chosen as the honorary marshal for the St. Pat's Parade. Toots even spent six years as a professor in mathematics at UMR. He also did significant work in chemistry with the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Rolla, and he is responsible for patent #4202683, a fertilizer he called "tootsizer."
So absolute was Schuman's continued involvement in St. Pat's, that some time after the board first began wearing our signature jackets in 1962 (forty-three years after Toots was named St. Patrick), a jacket was issued to Toots bearing a traditional shamrock patch embroidered with the letters "MSM," and the number "'19." It is this researcher's opinion that this jacket must be the highest by seniority to have ever existed. More research must be done to determine where this jacket is now.
Contrary to popular belief, our beloved Schuman Park is named not after Toots himself, but after his brother, John Schuman (MSM class of 1916), the previous owner of the land, whose widow, Alma, sold it to the Rolla Municipal Utilities Agency for $31,900 in 1955 upon his passing.
Toots would eventually receive the MSM-UMR Alumni Association Service Award in recognition of extraordinary service to our institution and its students, shortly before he sadly passed away on November 11, 1979, at the age of eighty-three. He is buried in the Rolla cemetery with his wife Zelda, and on their memorial stone it says, "Edwin K (Toots) Schuman."
It is with no spite or ill-meaning that I say so, but from one historian's perspective, it seems as though Toots's passing signaled the beginning of a dark period for St. Pat's. By the time of its disbanding, the Board had lost track of what it stood for. Toots may have been their last link to the origination of St. Pat's in Rolla, and without it they became lost.
Toots Schuman lived through the first seventy-one Best Ever St. Pats, and his dedication to and influence over the celebration made it what it is today. My advice to anyone who has taken the time to read this entire biopic is this: if you ever see a jacket from seventy-nine or before, ask the guy wearing it about Toots, and try to get a firsthand account of the one person who had the greatest impact on St. Pat's in Rolla of any individual to date.
He was given the name Kaine after his maternal grandfather, John P. Kaine, who was the mayor, treasurer, and alderman of Rolla and a longtime member of the school board. His paternal grandfather, Charles Sr., was the construction superintendent for Frisco Railroad, who built the piers for the Gasconade bridge and laid the Frisco rails on Dixon Hill. The name Edwin also comes from another Rolla icon, Edwin Long, business partner of the Schuman family and founder of the Edwin Long Hotel, Which now functions as the Phelps County Bank. Toots's father, Charles Schuman, one of the famous Schuman Brothers, owned much land and business in Rolla, and notably he built the brick structure which would later become the home of Hopper's Pub. All this digression is to impress upon the reader how ingrained in the city of Rolla Toots was from birth.
He had always loved the celebration, and when he was old enough he decided to attend MSM so that he could be a part of it, but decided that engineering was not for him, and so left to study law at UMC, where he became a member of Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Upon receiving his degree in 1918, he returned to Rolla and again decided to enroll in Missouri Mines, pursuing a second degree in civil engineering.
Aside from his devotion to the celebration, Toots was exceptionally involved in student culture during his short time in attendance at MSM. He was part of the Students' Army Training Corps, where he played the trombone in the band, and the Enlisted Engineers' Reserve, he pledged Kappa Sigma and Theta Tau, and he did research for the Rollamo Yearbook Board and the Missouri Miner Newspaper.
In 1919, Toots was duly elected our twelfth St. Patrick, the third argonaut and the third member of Kappa Sigma to do so. That same year, on December 5th and 6th, Toots along with Meryl McCarthy (St. Pat '18) and Jules Colbert (Irish Gentleman '20) represented the Missouri School of Mines at a convention held in Columbia, the object of which was to make the celebration of St. Patrick a national custom in engineering schools, and to unite the schools into a consolidated and national organization. At this convention, Toots gave an account of the history of St. Pat's at MSM which, according to the 1920 yearbook, "surpassed that of other schools that there was no comparison."
Schuman and McCarthy both served on the constitutional committee and wrote the national constitution for what would become the National Guard of St. Patrick. Under this constitution, undergraduate students in engineering were to be dubbed Guards of St. Patrick, seniors were his Knights and Ladies, and any prominent professor in engineering could be named an Honorary Knight of the saint. Colbert served on the pin committee, which selected the emblem of the organization, which was a slide rule superimposed onto a green shamrock, and the word ENGINEER written on the slide rule in gold block letters.
At the second convention of the National Guard of St. Patrick, it was decided that the organization's name would change to the Association of Collegiate Engineers, in order to include all engineering traditions. Eleven schools were represented at the first convention, and by 1924 ACE had grown to have fifteen chapters. More research is required to determine what specifically happened to ACE, but by 1929 it was no longer in existence. What seems to have happened at other schools who were participants in the association, is a restructuring of the local chapter into another engineering society, specific to the school's culture.
It is the belief of this researcher that the original St. Pat's Board, founded 1930, was reconstituted from the MSM chapter of ACE. In any case it is clear that ACE represents the origination of a celebration orchestrated by a board of representatives, rather than a transient, involuntary committee of juniors. All this taken together gives Toots a critical role in the creation of St. Pat's as we know it.
Toots remained in Rolla after receiving his second degree, functioning as alumni advisor to the students and the Board when it was eventually founded. He also acted as the unofficial historian for the St. Pat's Board, and was annually chosen as the honorary marshal for the St. Pat's Parade. Toots even spent six years as a professor in mathematics at UMR. He also did significant work in chemistry with the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Rolla, and he is responsible for patent #4202683, a fertilizer he called "tootsizer."
So absolute was Schuman's continued involvement in St. Pat's, that some time after the board first began wearing our signature jackets in 1962 (forty-three years after Toots was named St. Patrick), a jacket was issued to Toots bearing a traditional shamrock patch embroidered with the letters "MSM," and the number "'19." It is this researcher's opinion that this jacket must be the highest by seniority to have ever existed. More research must be done to determine where this jacket is now.
Contrary to popular belief, our beloved Schuman Park is named not after Toots himself, but after his brother, John Schuman (MSM class of 1916), the previous owner of the land, whose widow, Alma, sold it to the Rolla Municipal Utilities Agency for $31,900 in 1955 upon his passing.
Toots would eventually receive the MSM-UMR Alumni Association Service Award in recognition of extraordinary service to our institution and its students, shortly before he sadly passed away on November 11, 1979, at the age of eighty-three. He is buried in the Rolla cemetery with his wife Zelda, and on their memorial stone it says, "Edwin K (Toots) Schuman."
It is with no spite or ill-meaning that I say so, but from one historian's perspective, it seems as though Toots's passing signaled the beginning of a dark period for St. Pat's. By the time of its disbanding, the Board had lost track of what it stood for. Toots may have been their last link to the origination of St. Pat's in Rolla, and without it they became lost.
Toots Schuman lived through the first seventy-one Best Ever St. Pats, and his dedication to and influence over the celebration made it what it is today. My advice to anyone who has taken the time to read this entire biopic is this: if you ever see a jacket from seventy-nine or before, ask the guy wearing it about Toots, and try to get a firsthand account of the one person who had the greatest impact on St. Pat's in Rolla of any individual to date.
Edwin Kaine Schuman, better remembered as "Toots," was a Rolla native; he could remember being a little boy and hearing talk of the first St. Pat's celebration in 1908.
He was given the name Kaine after his maternal grandfather, John P. Kaine, who was the mayor, treasurer, and alderman of Rolla and a longtime member of the school board. His paternal grandfather, Charles Sr., was the construction superintendent for Frisco Railroad, who built the piers for the Gasconade bridge and laid the Frisco rails on Dixon Hill. The name Edwin also comes from another Rolla icon, Edwin Long, business partner of the Schuman family and founder of the Edwin Long Hotel, Which now functions as the Phelps County Bank. Toots's father, Charles Schuman, one of the famous Schuman Brothers, owned much land and business in Rolla, and notably he built the brick structure which would later become the home of Hopper's Pub. All this digression is to impress upon the reader how ingrained in the city of Rolla Toots was from birth.
He had always loved the celebration, and when he was old enough he decided to attend MSM so that he could be a part of it, but decided that engineering was not for him, and so left to study law at UMC, where he became a member of Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Upon receiving his degree in 1918, he returned to Rolla and again decided to enroll in Missouri Mines, pursuing a second degree in civil engineering.
Aside from his devotion to the celebration, Toots was exceptionally involved in student culture during his short time in attendance at MSM. He was part of the Students' Army Training Corps, where he played the trombone in the band, and the Enlisted Engineers' Reserve, he pledged Kappa Sigma and Theta Tau, and he did research for the Rollamo Yearbook Board and the Missouri Miner Newspaper.
In 1919, Toots was duly elected our twelfth St. Patrick, the third argonaut and the third member of Kappa Sigma to do so. That same year, on December 5th and 6th, Toots along with Meryl McCarthy (St. Pat '18) and Jules Colbert (Irish Gentleman '20) represented the Missouri School of Mines at a convention held in Columbia, the object of which was to make the celebration of St. Patrick a national custom in engineering schools, and to unite the schools into a consolidated and national organization. At this convention, Toots gave an account of the history of St. Pat's at MSM which, according to the 1920 yearbook, "surpassed that of other schools that there was no comparison."
Schuman and McCarthy both served on the constitutional committee and wrote the national constitution for what would become the National Guard of St. Patrick. Under this constitution, undergraduate students in engineering were to be dubbed Guards of St. Patrick, seniors were his Knights and Ladies, and any prominent professor in engineering could be named an Honorary Knight of the saint. Colbert served on the pin committee, which selected the emblem of the organization, which was a slide rule superimposed onto a green shamrock, and the word ENGINEER written on the slide rule in gold block letters.
At the second convention of the National Guard of St. Patrick, it was decided that the organization's name would change to the Association of Collegiate Engineers, in order to include all engineering traditions. Eleven schools were represented at the first convention, and by 1924 ACE had grown to have fifteen chapters. More research is required to determine what specifically happened to ACE, but by 1929 it was no longer in existence. What seems to have happened at other schools who were participants in the association, is a restructuring of the local chapter into another engineering society, specific to the school's culture.
It is the belief of this researcher that the original St. Pat's Board, founded 1930, was reconstituted from the MSM chapter of ACE. In any case it is clear that ACE represents the origination of a celebration orchestrated by a board of representatives, rather than a transient, involuntary committee of juniors. All this taken together gives Toots a critical role in the creation of St. Pat's as we know it.
Toots remained in Rolla after receiving his second degree, functioning as alumni advisor to the students and the Board when it was eventually founded. He also acted as the unofficial historian for the St. Pat's Board, and was annually chosen as the honorary marshal for the St. Pat's Parade. Toots even spent six years as a professor in mathematics at UMR. He also did significant work in chemistry with the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Rolla, and he is responsible for patent #4202683, a fertilizer he called "tootsizer."
So absolute was Schuman's continued involvement in St. Pat's, that some time after the board first began wearing our signature jackets in 1962 (forty-three years after Toots was named St. Patrick), a jacket was issued to Toots bearing a traditional shamrock patch embroidered with the letters "MSM," and the number "'19." It is this researcher's opinion that this jacket must be the highest by seniority to have ever existed. More research must be done to determine where this jacket is now.
Contrary to popular belief, our beloved Schuman Park is named not after Toots himself, but after his brother, John Schuman (MSM class of 1916), the previous owner of the land, whose widow, Alma, sold it to the Rolla Municipal Utilities Agency for $31,900 in 1955 upon his passing.
Toots would eventually receive the MSM-UMR Alumni Association Service Award in recognition of extraordinary service to our institution and its students, shortly before he sadly passed away on November 11, 1979, at the age of eighty-three. He is buried in the Rolla cemetery with his wife Zelda, and on their memorial stone it says, "Edwin K (Toots) Schuman."
It is with no spite or ill-meaning that I say so, but from one historian's perspective, it seems as though Toots's passing signaled the beginning of a dark period for St. Pat's. By the time of its disbanding, the Board had lost track of what it stood for. Toots may have been their last link to the origination of St. Pat's in Rolla, and without it they became lost.
Toots Schuman lived through the first seventy-one Best Ever St. Pats, and his dedication to and influence over the celebration made it what it is today. My advice to anyone who has taken the time to read this entire biopic is this: if you ever see a jacket from seventy-nine or before, ask the guy wearing it about Toots, and try to get a firsthand account of the one person who had the greatest impact on St. Pat's in Rolla of any individual to date.
He was given the name Kaine after his maternal grandfather, John P. Kaine, who was the mayor, treasurer, and alderman of Rolla and a longtime member of the school board. His paternal grandfather, Charles Sr., was the construction superintendent for Frisco Railroad, who built the piers for the Gasconade bridge and laid the Frisco rails on Dixon Hill. The name Edwin also comes from another Rolla icon, Edwin Long, business partner of the Schuman family and founder of the Edwin Long Hotel, Which now functions as the Phelps County Bank. Toots's father, Charles Schuman, one of the famous Schuman Brothers, owned much land and business in Rolla, and notably he built the brick structure which would later become the home of Hopper's Pub. All this digression is to impress upon the reader how ingrained in the city of Rolla Toots was from birth.
He had always loved the celebration, and when he was old enough he decided to attend MSM so that he could be a part of it, but decided that engineering was not for him, and so left to study law at UMC, where he became a member of Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Upon receiving his degree in 1918, he returned to Rolla and again decided to enroll in Missouri Mines, pursuing a second degree in civil engineering.
Aside from his devotion to the celebration, Toots was exceptionally involved in student culture during his short time in attendance at MSM. He was part of the Students' Army Training Corps, where he played the trombone in the band, and the Enlisted Engineers' Reserve, he pledged Kappa Sigma and Theta Tau, and he did research for the Rollamo Yearbook Board and the Missouri Miner Newspaper.
In 1919, Toots was duly elected our twelfth St. Patrick, the third argonaut and the third member of Kappa Sigma to do so. That same year, on December 5th and 6th, Toots along with Meryl McCarthy (St. Pat '18) and Jules Colbert (Irish Gentleman '20) represented the Missouri School of Mines at a convention held in Columbia, the object of which was to make the celebration of St. Patrick a national custom in engineering schools, and to unite the schools into a consolidated and national organization. At this convention, Toots gave an account of the history of St. Pat's at MSM which, according to the 1920 yearbook, "surpassed that of other schools that there was no comparison."
Schuman and McCarthy both served on the constitutional committee and wrote the national constitution for what would become the National Guard of St. Patrick. Under this constitution, undergraduate students in engineering were to be dubbed Guards of St. Patrick, seniors were his Knights and Ladies, and any prominent professor in engineering could be named an Honorary Knight of the saint. Colbert served on the pin committee, which selected the emblem of the organization, which was a slide rule superimposed onto a green shamrock, and the word ENGINEER written on the slide rule in gold block letters.
At the second convention of the National Guard of St. Patrick, it was decided that the organization's name would change to the Association of Collegiate Engineers, in order to include all engineering traditions. Eleven schools were represented at the first convention, and by 1924 ACE had grown to have fifteen chapters. More research is required to determine what specifically happened to ACE, but by 1929 it was no longer in existence. What seems to have happened at other schools who were participants in the association, is a restructuring of the local chapter into another engineering society, specific to the school's culture.
It is the belief of this researcher that the original St. Pat's Board, founded 1930, was reconstituted from the MSM chapter of ACE. In any case it is clear that ACE represents the origination of a celebration orchestrated by a board of representatives, rather than a transient, involuntary committee of juniors. All this taken together gives Toots a critical role in the creation of St. Pat's as we know it.
Toots remained in Rolla after receiving his second degree, functioning as alumni advisor to the students and the Board when it was eventually founded. He also acted as the unofficial historian for the St. Pat's Board, and was annually chosen as the honorary marshal for the St. Pat's Parade. Toots even spent six years as a professor in mathematics at UMR. He also did significant work in chemistry with the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Rolla, and he is responsible for patent #4202683, a fertilizer he called "tootsizer."
So absolute was Schuman's continued involvement in St. Pat's, that some time after the board first began wearing our signature jackets in 1962 (forty-three years after Toots was named St. Patrick), a jacket was issued to Toots bearing a traditional shamrock patch embroidered with the letters "MSM," and the number "'19." It is this researcher's opinion that this jacket must be the highest by seniority to have ever existed. More research must be done to determine where this jacket is now.
Contrary to popular belief, our beloved Schuman Park is named not after Toots himself, but after his brother, John Schuman (MSM class of 1916), the previous owner of the land, whose widow, Alma, sold it to the Rolla Municipal Utilities Agency for $31,900 in 1955 upon his passing.
Toots would eventually receive the MSM-UMR Alumni Association Service Award in recognition of extraordinary service to our institution and its students, shortly before he sadly passed away on November 11, 1979, at the age of eighty-three. He is buried in the Rolla cemetery with his wife Zelda, and on their memorial stone it says, "Edwin K (Toots) Schuman."
It is with no spite or ill-meaning that I say so, but from one historian's perspective, it seems as though Toots's passing signaled the beginning of a dark period for St. Pat's. By the time of its disbanding, the Board had lost track of what it stood for. Toots may have been their last link to the origination of St. Pat's in Rolla, and without it they became lost.
Toots Schuman lived through the first seventy-one Best Ever St. Pats, and his dedication to and influence over the celebration made it what it is today. My advice to anyone who has taken the time to read this entire biopic is this: if you ever see a jacket from seventy-nine or before, ask the guy wearing it about Toots, and try to get a firsthand account of the one person who had the greatest impact on St. Pat's in Rolla of any individual to date.
Gravesite Details
H/O Zelda W Schuman, AKA Toots
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
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