"Serving the best food in the world to the best people in it. Where you get in line to get fed."

The first thing Henry Clay Potts usually did when catering one of his famous barbecue events was dig a trench. A gathering of 800 people would need, in his estimation, 400 pounds of raw meat, requiring a trench 10-feet long, 3½-feet deep and 3-feet wide. The pit would be filled with enough blackjack oak to provide about 18 inches of coals after burning for three hours. Potts would cut and de-bone the meat, roll it into 10-pound chunks, wrap it in cheesecloth or butcher paper and then re-wrap it in moistened burlap to prevent burning. After placing the meat over the coals, it was covered with sheet iron or boards. Any cracks around the edges were filled with wet sand and the trench was rapidly covered and sealed to avoid the loss of moisture.

Eight hours later the barbecued meat was ready for serving. Sauce for a group this large required a concoction of one firkin (nine gallons) of ketchup, two gallons of Worcestershire sauce, one gallon of mustard and one gallon of store-bought barbecue sauce. This special mixture and salt were added during serving. Generally the meat and sauce would be placed on a whole wheat bun and served with baked beans, potato chips, lemonade or tea, ice cream and a cookie. Preparation and cooking time took almost 12 hours, but Potts' service line could move a group of 800 people through in 30 minutes or less.

Henry Clay Potts didn't just prepare these pit barbecues once or twice a year, but rather hundreds of times each year for nearly 40 years. Some estimated he may have served almost 2 million people. During the year 1952, for example, Potts and his crew served more than 100,000 people at 332 activities, including 175 short courses on the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College. The largest attendance for a single barbecue event was when Potts and his crew fed a crowd of 17,000 in Miami, Okla., attending the tri-state miners' convention of 1934. In 1936 the Ancient and Benevolent Order of the Red, Red Rose (an OAMC faculty and administrative social group) awarded Potts the degree "Doctor of Pots." And at his retirement in 1961 the same group designated him as "Grand High Provider."

Potts was born Feb. 10, 1894, in Dublin, Texas. As a young boy, the family moved to a farm south of Ardmore and then to Jackson County and later Tillman County in southwest Oklahoma Territory. He graduated from Hedrick High School in 1916. He enrolled at OAMC in the fall of 1916 and a year later enlisted in the Army, serving in a trench mortar battery in France until the end of World War I. During the war he began a lifelong friendship with another Oklahoman serving in the 90th Division, Robert S. Kerr. In 1919 Potts returned to his family's farm for one year before traveling back to Stillwater and completing his degree in agronomy in 1922. He was immediately hired by the agronomy department and placed in charge of the eight experiment station farms across Oklahoma.

Three hundred men attending the initial Livestock Feeders Day on campus in 1927 were the first to enjoy a Potts barbecue. Although there were no facilities at that time designed to serve large groups, he later recalled, "We threw some beef into the pit, cooked up the beans and we were in business." Every April for the next 40 years those attending the college's Livestock Feeders Day were treated to a Clay Potts barbecue. He also provided a barbecue to welcome new president Henry G. Bennett to campus. The new administration accidentally terminated Potts in June 1928 when his name was omitted from a list submitted to the Board of Agriculture of employees to be retained. His department head and administration in the School of Agriculture immediately provided recommendations for Potts, and Bennett personally requested his reinstatement. Potts was named director of short courses at the college beginning in 1929.

While resident student enrollment at the college was still only several thousand, two or three times that number of Oklahoma citizens regularly visited the campus to attend the day- or week-long short courses. Potts worked with the teaching faculty to coordinate courses ranging from insect identification to music. Almost 9,000 participated during Potts' first year. The numbers swelled to almost 24,000 in 1935 and 35,000 in the early 1940s. And Potts prepared one group meal for almost every short course class.

In 1942 Potts was placed in charge of the campus food units in addition to continuing as director of the college short courses. Five temporary mess halls were set up to feed the thousands of military personal being trained on campus. The first of three breakfast shifts was served at 4:30 a.m. There were also three lunch and dinner shifts, with the last dinner meal to be completed by 8 p.m. When GI's returned to campus after World War II, Potts kept meal prices low, about $1 per day.

While feeding hundreds of thousands at the Stillwater campus, Potts also took his barbecue catering on the road. He served 4,500 at a spring festival in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and fed crowds in Kansas, Texas, Missouri and Arkansas. In August 1950 Potts flew to Washington, D.C., to prepare a beef barbecue and corn-on-the-cob dinner for his good friend Sen. Kerr, who had conferred upon Potts the honorary title of colonel in 1948. Potts brought the beef and corn with him on the flight. Special guests in the barbecue line included President Truman and his cabinet, congressmen and their spouses.

Potts also established another tradition at OSU. In an effort to provide funds for the athletic department during the lean years of the Depression, Potts suggested a pre-season football gathering in which sports enthusiasts, alumni, students and staff were charged only 50 cents for all they could eat. The inauguration of each new football season for several decades began with one of his barbecues. Years later when a new football stadium press box was constructed, its lunch room was built to his specifications. In 1947 Potts started serving his specialty lunches -- as well as his practical jokes and insults for those who had not spoken well of the team -- to the sports reporters who climbed the 60 steps to the press box on Saturdays. He once placed a worn boot heel in a bun on a plate of barbecue for University of Kansas reporter Rip Replogle. While relaxing in the press box after cleaning up at the end of an exciting OSU home football game victory over the University of Oklahoma on Dec. 3, 1966, Potts collapsed into unconsciousness and died. He left a legacy of service, friendship and food preparation that few can match.

David C. Peters
OSU Special Collections and University Archives