Bowling started at least as far back as the Middle Ages, but the game we know today became big in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, and Wisconsin got in on the game. Bowlers like Earlene Fuller made and wore custom-made shirts and sets that matched their team, showing fashion and cultural connections to bring them luck at the lanes.
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Bowled Over
– Kacie Lucchini Butcher: Taylor, are you ready?
– Taylor Bailey: Ready for what?
– To go bowling, obviously.
I’ve got my lucky bowling shirt on.
Don’t you wanna come see me light up the lanes?
Trust me, you do not wanna miss it.
– If by “it” you mean seeing you bowl gutter ball after gutter ball, yeah, I don’t wanna miss that.
– No way, I have my lucky bowling shirt, which you don’t, so there’s no way I can lose.
– [scoffing] Lucky for you, [book closing] I never go anywhere without my lucky bowling shirt.
[ascending showy music] – Well, let’s take it to the lanes and let’s see whose shirt is luckier.
We’re here to learn some stuff from you about bowling.
– Hi, Joe, nice to meet you.
– Nice to meet you, and welcome.
– I thought we had cool bowling shirts on, but I think Earlene’s bowling shirts take the cake.
So can you tell us a little more about Earlene and her bowling shirts?
– Earlene Fuller lived in Milwaukee and she was a seamstress, and so it means she knew how to design and make clothes.
– So who was Earlene Fuller, and what do we know about her?
Well, for one thing, she was a great bowler.
She was on an all-star team, bowled a 300 game, and was elected to the Milwaukee Women’s Bowling Association Hall of Fame in 1992.
But her biggest contributions to the sport were thanks to her skills as a designer and a tailor.
Earlene Fuller was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1931.
She moved to Milwaukee when she was 17, and spent the rest of her life there, living through periods of significant change for her city and the country.
Earlene lived through Milwaukee’s civil rights movement, when Black, Latino, and Native residents fought for basic rights.
She also lived through the Vietnam era, which included protests and demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
Against the backdrop of all this cultural transformation, Earlene learned to bowl, and it became her lifelong passion.
She made her mark on the sport starting in the 1970s, when she started making bowling shirts.
– She started just making one for herself, and then her teammates said, “Earlene, that’s really great, can we have some?”
Well, they’re her friends, so made them.
And then Earlene and her team goes to tournaments around Wisconsin and around the country, and others see this, and “Wow, those are really great bowling shirts.
Could you make some of those for us?”
And it became her full-time job, designing and making bowling shirts.
– Yeah, this one has a lotta different fabrics as well.
– This one here is a really special bowling shirt, made around 1995.
And so by this time, she’s been making bowling shirts for about 25 years.
She’s really experienced.
And this particular bowling shirt, that very colorful accents there, those are inspired by traditional African kente cloth.
– Kente cloth is a distinctive fabric whose design goes back to the area that is now Ghana, in Africa.
In the United States, kente cloth has become a symbol of Black pride and Pan-African identity.
– And Earlene wanted to represent that pride for herself and then for her teammates, and so she made a whole batch, 40, for a whole league to wear.
They all wore matching shirts in Milwaukee.
So a really cool story there, like a really cool bowling shirt.
– Kacie: Yeah.
– What do you use a bowling shirt for?
Well, bowling, of course.
– Bowling shirts became a thing during the bowling boom that took place during the 1950s and 1960s in the U.S.
Since then, the bowling shirt has become the uniform for student clubs and corporate teams.
Typically, the bowling shirt will have the name of the bowler or the nickname on the front, and the team name on the back.
– Because it’s made for bowling, which requires a lot of movement, the shirt is really easy to move in.
You don’t want anything getting in the way of your chase for the perfect game.
– I mean, I usually only see the shirts alone, which is why I was surprised when I saw the shirt/pantsuit set.
I mean, this really is so cool.
So what can you tell me about this?
– As a historian, I start putting my investigator cap on.
“What’s going on here?”
And the first thing I look for is, like, a tag or a label.
Here is one: “WIBC, Milwaukee, 1977.”
WIBC stands for Women’s International Bowling Congress.
This was designed and made by Donetta Ulrich, of Stratford, Wisconsin.
And she made this set right about this time, 1976.
But even if there wasn’t a patch, if you know a little bit about clothing history, you might look at this and say from the style, the long, pointy collars, “That’s from the 1970s.”
– Joe is talking about how the style and fashion of clothing can help historians figure out when something is from.
Clothing styles change over time.
People use different materials and try different patterns and arrangements.
All this means that we can often identify the date of something by looking closely at the clothing.
So if we find a picture that doesn’t have a date on it, we can check out what people are wearing for clues.
It’s one strategy historians use when looking into the past.
– So my dad was actually a really avid bowler, and he used to get, like, little rings, like championship rings from, I don’t know, his bowling time.
So, can you tell us a little bit about what kind of trophies or things that they would have had?
– She had a customized pin that would go on a bowling shirt.
And here you see– – Taylor: Oh, wow.
– Joe: From Milwaukee Women’s Bowling Association.
– Kacie: Oh, the crown!
– Taylor: And it has her name on it.
– And a little jewel there.
And it says, “300 and E.
Fuller.”
– The history of bowling probably goes back to at least the Middle Ages, if not earlier.
It’s hard to say exactly when it begins, but let’s just say that people have been rolling balls to knock things down for hundreds and probably thousands of years.
We’ll get into that deep history another day.
– In the United States, indoor bowling alleys first started popping up in the mid-1800s.
A lotta these were set up in taverns, and the sport was associated with working class men, gambling, and drinking.
For these reasons, it was looked down upon, and some states even banned bowling.
But it turns out, you can’t knock a good idea down.
– Announcer: Here is the bright, light atmosphere of refreshing recreation.
– These shirts were so cool.
Do you have more shirts?
– You bet.
So come with me, and I’m gonna show you some more shirts.
So come on in to this special aisle where we have lots of cool uniforms and sports gear.
A lot of breweries sponsored bowling in Milwaukee.
And this is Point Beer, from Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
– Wow, look at the little penguin.
– The penguin.
[laughing] – Now, it’s Bob Smith’s.
– Is this a real Reggie White jersey?
– That’s actual game-used Reggie White.
[Kacie gasping] Yeah.
[Kacie laughing] – I mean, I don’t know who Reggie White is, but that’s pretty cool.
– Reggie White– – What, you don’t know who Reggie White is?
– Hall of Famer from the Packers.
– So, what did you think about all the bowling shirts we saw?
– They were so cool.
I was so impressed by how much style that they had, and the fact that the Historical Society saved them.
It’s such a cool piece of Wisconsin history.
– They were really right up my alley.
I would even say Donetta’s was striking.
– Taylor, was that a bowling joke?
– It was.
– For Earlene Fuller and her fellow bowlers, the sport was an important part of their lives.
And people like Earlene found ways to express themselves and important parts of their culture through bowling.
She’s a good reminder that sports are more than just fun and games.
They’re a part of history.
[pins tumbling] Are there games or sports that are important to you?
What would you want a future historian to know about them?
Write some ideas down and share them with your peers, or head to the bowling alley for inspiration, and don’t forget to bring your lucky bowling shirt.
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