Commissioners accept memento highlighting 1950s 'war on shorts'

Wichita County Commissioners on Monday accepted an unusual memento of the county’s past – a 45 rpm record titled “Shorts Crazy.”

The Western swing song by local entertainer Mack McCray commemorates a summer when the Wichita County Sheriff declared war on women who wore shorts.

In 1951, Sheriff Hammett “Ham” Vance decided too many women were showing too much leg. Citing a city ordinance that limited exposure of the human anatomy, Vance issued an “out of shorts and back into skirts” order.

The Wichita Falls Record News reported the order included “all gals meandering around in public in scanty attire,” but said it was aimed primarily at carhops, a common occupation of young women back in the day. Vance said they were stirring up the “soldiers” from Sheppard Air Force Base.

“We’re just tired of running from here to there to settle trouble. This city is full of men … and those girls are asking for a disturbance,” the sheriff said in a statement that would be wrong in so many ways today.

'Cover up or do their cooling off'

“Either they cover up or do their cooling off in the county jail,” Vance declared.

Magnanimously, he assured, “we are not going bother anyone at their own home.”

Vance was a World War II Marine and former professional baseball player who enjoyed the limelight. He joined his “posse” in busting criminals, served as president of the Law Enforcement Officers of Texas, chaired a Chamber of Commerce committee, was a frequent guest at community events and often acted as referee at boxing and wrestling matches.

Reaction to his ban on shorts was swift, polarized and sparked angst among some residents.

One petticoat or two?

One distraught woman called the Sheriff’s Office in a tizzy because it was too hot to wear two petticoats and people could see right through a summer dress and single petticoat.

“Will he put me in jail if I go downtown wearing only one?” she asked.

Another woman called to ask if she should wear a veil.

A junior high school majorette whose uniform included shorts worried she might get in trouble when she changed buses.

About 175 female students attending a band camp at Midwestern University found a notice on the bulletin board that said by order of the sheriff: “Girls may wear halters only in their dormitory. Extreme shorts and bathing suits are not to be worn on campus.”

Critics found a wealth of humor in it.

The Archer County News invited any Wichita Falls man who “yearns to ogle the beauty of the undraped feminine gam” to come to Archer City.

The Big Pasture News in Oklahoma invited Wichita Falls women to cross the Red River to “wear clothes befitting the weather.”

Attorney Howard Martin offered his services free to any woman “who gets tossed in the clink just because she’s trying to keep cool.” Martin had one string attached to the deal: “They’ve got to be sober and under 40. A woman over 40 ought to wear more clothes.”

Newspaper columnist Glenn Shelton translated the sheriff’s edict as, “you gals must henceforth dress for your grandmother and not the wolf.”

And the hot topic inspired McCray to co-write his song, which proclaimed, “I love ‘em short, I love ‘em tall but I love ‘em in shorts best of all.”

It became a regional hit.

While the notion of banning shorts in public may seem laughably quaint in 2023, Vance had a lot of support in 1951.

A Gallup poll released that summer indicated 69 percent of American men objected to women wearing shorts in public and 83 percent of women felt the same way.

An informal poll of local women by the Record News found many women supported the sheriff.

“He is absolutely right because I do not think it looks good for women to be out running around the streets in shorts,” a high school senior said.

The Lamar Avenue Baptist Church passed a resolution backing the lawman.

The war on shorts was a topic of debate at the Toastmasters Club where Vance was special guest.

Vance's war on shorts applied to men as well

After a couple of men were spotted wearing shorts in a drugstore, Vance proclaimed the shed the shorts rule applied equally to males and vowed, “If I can find them they will see the inside of my jail.”

But his opposition to bare skin had its limits. The newspaper reported Vance was judge at a beauty contest at a softball game that summer where “six luscious lovelies clad in bathing suits paraded the infield diamond.” To be fair and thorough, the judges had the women repeat the parade before naming Lorene Nix “Miss Softball.”

The furor over shorts seems to have abated by the summer of 1953. By one account, Vance arrested the wife of a high-ranking officer at Sheppard Air Force Base, the resulting flak curbing his moralistic enthusiasm. He was defeated in his bid for re-election the following year.

Vance racks up criminal charges in latter years

Vance served as sheriff off and on between 1946 and 1964. In that latter year he was campaigning for re-election when a grand jury indicted him on 12 counts of official misconduct, misappropriation of county funds, forgery, theft, gross carelessness and incompetence. Some of the charges involved an affair with a woman who murdered her husband in Wichita Falls in 1962 (and was charged with killing another man in Arizona 15 years later). A Texas Ranger arrested Vance leaving town on a bus. He served 21 months of a seven-year prison sentence and ran for sheriff again in 1976. He lost.

Mack McCray continued entertaining and owned the popular Guys and Dolls club. His song extolling short pants is one of the few remaining reminders of the War on Shorts in Wichita Falls 72 years ago. One of McCray’s family members donated it to the county. It will be displayed in a case along with other artifacts.

“It relates to a different time in our courthouse’s past,” Commissioner Mark Beauchamp said.

A very different time.

This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Record from 1950s notes history of local war on women's shorts