​A photo of the 1939 Texas A&M national championship team from the 1940 Long Horn yearbook. The team went 11-0. (Texas A&M University Yearbook Online Collection, Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M University)
Edward Sterling III has seen many things in more than a century of life.He served in the Army in World War II. He worked as a pastor at multiple churches, including a long spell at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Tacoma, Wash. He also watched Texas A&M’s last national championship team.”I certainly do,” Sterling replied earlier this week when asked if he remembers that 1939 championship team. “Oh yes. I was there. It was wonderful.”With Texas A&M celebrating its 150th anniversary this weekend, the Houston Chronicle talked with Sterling, 105, over the phone from his Washington residence about his time at school and watching the Aggies, who play Arkansas at 6 p.m. Saturday at Kyle Field.Sterling is the fifth-oldest known living Texas A&M alumnus, according to the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M University, and went to school during one of the the most successful periods in the football team’s history. A member of the Class of 1942, Sterling watched football excellence. The Aggies won a Cotton Bowl, a Sugar Bowl, three straight Southwest Conference championships and the 1939 national title. The 1939 squad finished that year with an 11-0 record and as the No. 1 team in the Associated Press poll.Only two other times in history did Texas A&M win three straight conference titles (1985-1987 and 1991-1993). But during both of those runs, Texas A&M never reached a spot higher than No. 4 in the AP poll.Texas A&M reached No. 2 or better in every season from 1939-1941 under head coach Homer Norton. In fact, the Aggies were undefeated and ranked No. 2 in the country heading into the Texas matchup in both 1940 and 1941 before the Longhorns upset them both times.Sterling was at the 1941 matchup at Kyle Field versus the Longhorns, which took place 10 days before the Attack on Pearl Harbor changed the course of U.S. history.Unsurprisingly, Sterling said the Texas-Texas A&M games were usually the games of the year.Fullback John Kimbrough led the Aggies during their national title run in 1939 and then finished second in voting for the Heisman Trophy in 1940 as Texas A&M went 9-1.Kimbrough, nicknamed Jarrin’ John and the Haskell Hurricane after his hometown, was a powerful runner. In the 1939 team’s 14-13 Sugar Bowl win over Tulane to cap off its perfect season, Kimbrough ran for more than 150 yards and two touchdowns.”We all got a big lift out of it when John carried the ball,” Sterling said.Kimbrough might have been the brightest star on the Aggie teams during those seasons right before the U.S. joined World War II but he wasn’t the only outstanding player that Sterling got to watch.Joe Boyd, one of three captains of the undefeated national championship team, joined Kimbrough as