The Buckeye who lost a crown to a 1,200-pound cow

It’s a story—and Ohio State legend—Rosalind “Rosie” Morrison Strapp ’27 learned to accept and eventually embrace. After all, not many others have lost a homecoming title to a 1,200-pound cow. “She loved telling the story and said it was her claim to fame,” says her granddaughter, Amy Blackford. “She’d say nobody remembers who the homecoming queen was from 20 or 30 years ago, but they sure remembered her.”

This October marks the 100th anniversary of the Ohio State homecoming queen story that made national news. “Holstein Cow Named Queen of Homecoming” was the headline in the Oakland Tribune; “Moo, Moo, Ohio State Picks Queen,” wrote The Evening Telegram of Superior, Wisconsin.

While the exact details of how a Holstein named Maudine Ormsby came to earn this honor remain somewhat blurry, it’s clear the 1926 vote was riddled with cheating. The Columbus Dispatch at the time called it the “most stupendous farce ever staged at Ohio State University.” The homecoming election committee printed 3,000 paper ballots, yet more than 12,000 votes were cast. According to The Lantern, it “was impossible to determine all the legal votes from the illegal ones, and as information was available that the backers of candidates had used underhand methods to elect their favorite, the election committee chose its own queen.”

The queen they selected was Maudine Ormsby, a beloved bovine who had set several milk-production records. Rosie had the most votes in the tainted count. “Her friends stuffed the ballot box for her to make sure she won,” Blackford says. “She was disappointed because she always said she would have won without their help.”

So, who was this uncrowned homecoming queen intertwined with the legend of Maudine? Rosie Morrison grew up near Fremont, Ohio. The outgoing, fun-loving Rosie was a child actress and toured in Shakespearean productions. Her father was a mail carrier and for years made his rounds in a horse and buggy. “He finally got a mail truck and tried to teach Rosie how to drive,” Blackford says. “A bee flew into the truck. She panicked and ended up in a ditch. Her father got in a lot of trouble and Rosie never drove again.”

At Ohio State, Rosie met William “Bud” Strapp. They dated and eventually “my grandfather said you can act or marry me,” Blackford says. “It was a different time, and she gave up acting for Bud.”

Rosie worked as a buyer for Montaldo’s, a chain of high-end women’s clothing shops. And then she taught at North High School just north of the Ohio State campus. “She was a career woman at a time when that wasn’t a thing,” Blackford says. “She always dressed well and wore a mink stole around her shoulders. She loved parties and dancing and always had a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other.”

Bud and Rosie had one child, Jane ’57. For a time, tragedy became an all-too common part of Rosie’s life. Jane’s husband, John “Jay” Blackford, died in 1965. Bud died a year later. Jane passed away in 1975 after a long battle with breast cancer. Jane had four young children—Joseph, Michael, Amy and Tim—and Rosie became their legal guardian. She struggled at times in her role as fill-in mom, “but she did everything she could to give us a fantastic, joyful childhood,” Amy Blackford says.

Rosie and Jane were extremely close, and Rosie struggled after her daughter’s death. “My mother and grandmother loved to read and talk about what they read,” Amy Blackford says. “They loved Steinbeck, anything by Steinbeck, and they passed on that love of reading to me.”

Tim Blackford was Rosie’s chauffer once he got his license. “I’d take her to get her hair done every week and for groceries, and Sunday dinner was always a big thing,” he says. “We could each invite one friend, and my friends used to always argue over who would come because she was so much fun and such a good cook.”

Rosie passed her love of cooking onto her grandchildren. “All four of us are the primary cooks in our families,” Tim Blackford says, adding he often whips up two of her favorite dishes: beef stroganoff and chicken and dumplings.

On anniversaries of the 1926 homecoming, Rosie would be interviewed—and loved the attention and her place in Buckeye history. She told friends she wanted “But for Maudine, here lies the queen” written on her tombstone.

After Rosie died in 1986 at the age of 80, her four grandchildren wanted to put her preferred epitaph on her gravestone. But the Catholic cemetery where she was buried allowed just names and dates, Tim Blackford says. “A few years later, my brother Mike had a plaque made up with those words and glued it onto her tombstone.” Their grandmother would have been proud.