A Spirited Inheritance

Jeff O’Cain ’69

Edward T. O’Cain never fulfilled his dream of attending Clemson but sacrificed mightily so that his son could. Now, Jeff O’Cain ’69 is memorializing his father’s sacrifice with a treasured donation.

Edward Tarelton O’Cain was 12 years old on October 25, 1934, one of countless dirt-poor kids living in Columbia, South Carolina, in the ebb of the Great Depression and World War I. Edward and a flock of his fellow local ragamuffins braved the cool autumn morning to scamper down their dirt roads and gather like geese on a platform in Union Station to greet one of the Southern Railway’s mighty Ps-4 Pacific steam locomotive engines as it arrived from the Upstate.

The train was a sight to behold, but it was the passengers Edward and his crew had come to see. They’d caught wind that the storied Clemson College Corps of Cadets was aboard, coming to attend the “Big Thursday” game between the University of South Carolina and Clemson College in the new 17,000-seat stadium at the State Fairgrounds. Back then, the entire state shut down for Big Thursday; businesses, government offices and — to Edward and his friends’ great joy —schools.

“Dad was impartial to the whole football thing,” says his son, Jeff O’Cain ’69. “He couldn’t afford to go to the game, but he and all his buddies got down there to see the Corps of Cadets coming en masse on board the steam train.”

Jeff recalls his father telling him how you could hear the steam engine blow its whistle at every road crossing as it approached downtown. “So, it got more and more exciting,” he recalls.

The train chugged and hissed to a stop, pulsing explosions of white steam into the crisp morning air as a few scattered cheers and boos echoed around the station.

What happened next would change lives for two generations of O’Cains.

“The cars were all loaded by ROTC units,” explains Jeff. “They dismounted on command and formed up on the opposite platform, hundreds of them, all dressed up in their gray uniforms, lining up in formation.”

The cadre ordered the cadets to fall in and then shouted the commands: “Attention!” and “Fix bayonets!”

As one, the cadets snapped to the position of attention and fastened their shiny bayonets to their rifles in one brisk movement.

Jeff’s eyes sparkle as he relays his father’s description of the moment. “Have you ever heard a company of soldiers fix bayonets?” he asks. “That’s a sound a 12-year-old Depression-era boy will never forget.”

The control, uniformity and precision of the Clemson cadets impressed young Edward beyond measure, Jeff explains.

“That’s the moment my dad became a Clemson fan,” he says. “From then on, he wanted to be a Tiger.”

Below the waterline

Fast forward to December 6, 1941, Edward’s 19th birthday. Fresh out of high school with hopes to somehow enroll at Clemson, he and 10 of his friends spent the weekend celebrating with beer and poker when, on the second day, a news reporter broke into the music on the radio to announce the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. The jubilant atmosphere immediately turned somber.

The next day, all 11 climbed into an old pickup truck, drove down to the Naval recruiting station and signed up to join the fight.

“There was no question in their minds, no hesitation at all,” says Jeff. “That’s why it’s called the Greatest Generation.”

Jeff says his dad volunteered to work in the engine rooms of ships because it was warm.

“He was a Southern boy and didn’t like the cold,” he laughs.

But it was grueling and dangerous work. If something catastrophic happened, the men in the engine room were the last ones off the ship. Edward served through World War II below the waterline on various warships. Of the 10 friends he signed up with, three went down with their ships.

When Japan finally surrendered in August 1945, he was with a flotilla of Allied ships in Tokyo Bay.

“Dad’s ship was diverted to Yokohama, and they were ordered to put on their whites and go ashore in groups of six,” says Jeff. “He was one of the first Americans to set foot in Occupied Japan.”

The silk tiger

As he was walking the gangplank, Edward thought about how much his life had changed in the few short years since his 19th birthday.

“Dad told me how awkward it felt that, at one point, he was thinking about how to get into Clemson as a poor boy, and the next he’s in the engine room of a warship listening to the war going on above him,” explains Jeff. “He survived four years like that and was thinking about all this as he walked off that ship.”

As Edward stepped onto Japanese soil, something caught his eye in the distance: a tiger.

It was a silk painting, one of the wares sold in a row of ramshackle booths set up by opportunistic vendors. The bright colors and menacing posture of the image made it stand out.

“When I was little, a car headlight would light it up and scare me to death. Dad gave it to me for Christmas about 25 years ago, and I had it painstakingly restored and framed.”

Jeff O’Cain

Edward bought the painting for pennies and brought it home to South Carolina, where it hung in the family home for more than 50 years.

Passing down the dream

Back home in the United States, Edward was thrilled to learn he had earned a college education through his service via the new GI Bill. He was finally going to realize his dream of attending Clemson. Then his wife, Doris, informed him that she was pregnant.

“They couldn’t afford to do both,” says Jeff. “So, he stood down and got a job at the R.L. Bryan Company.”

Edward provided for his new family as an office boy until 1951, when the Navy called him back into active duty for the Korean War. Jeff was 4 years old.

“When he shipped out, I dressed up in my Gene Autry black cowboy outfit with a sailor cap and went out to the Columbia Army Airfield in the dark to say goodbye to him,” Jeff recalls.

Edward went back into the engine rooms of ships for two more years. On his return, he was promoted to salesman at the printing company. The first place he went to add as a client was Clemson.

“He wound up printing all the TAPS (yearbooks), the football programs, all the agriculture literature and alumni publications. He probably drove to Clemson at least once a week,” says Jeff. “So, dad ended up being a Clemson man, just not in the way he imagined. He and Joe Sherman, director of alumni, became close friends, along with Walter Cox, Frank Howard and many others who are now historic figures at Clemson.”

The rest of the story is that Edward passed the dream of being a Clemson Tiger down to his son and saw it fulfilled. Jeff graduated from Columbia High School in 1965 and was immediately accepted to Clemson, a path paved by his father’s hard work.

Like father, like son

Jeff majored in mathematics, focusing his studies on operations research, and was commissioned into the Army upon graduation in 1969. Both his father and grandfather, World War I Navy veteran Edward Jenkins O’Cain, were there in Tillman Hall to give him his first salute.

When the 3rd Armored Division (Forward) made Jeff commander of a company of M60 A1 tanks in Vietnam, he became the sixth generation of O’Cain men to serve their country as citizen soldiers and sailors, stretching back to the Revolutionary War.

Now, Jeff wants to pass his father’s spirit on to the next generation. On the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the silk tiger catching his dad’s eye as he stepped onto what had been an enemy shore just days before, Jeff is gifting it to the University that means so much to his family.

“Edward T. O’Cain embodied the spirit of the Clemson Family as well as anyone I can think of,” says Clemson Vice President of Advancement Brian O’Rourke. “A child of the Depression who went on to become a World War II and Korean War hero, family man and businessman; his values and work ethic enabled him to pass his dream of being a Clemson Tiger down to his son, Jeff, when he couldn’t attend himself. His story is a reminder that membership in the Clemson Family is not just reserved for students who graduate here. It has always extended out to encompass families, friends and stakeholders across the state who impact and are impacted by the University.”

“I want it to serve as a memorial to the Greatest Generation,” Jeff says. “So that my dad and his friends — three of whom went down with their ships — who sacrificed so much for us all, are not forgotten.”

Eighty years ago, a bright glimpse of orange and a flash of teeth brought Edward’s life full circle. The hope is that, if people know the story of the tiger painting and the man behind it, it might inspire young people in the future to become Clemson Tigers and seek a life of service.

Some moments in life can be inevitable and powerful like that — like a steam engine pulling into the station.

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