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As part of the 100th anniversary of our motto, "Bear Down," the University of Arizona is looking back at several of the most remarkable moments and accomplishments in the university’s illustrious history, with an eye toward the "Bear Down" moments of the future.

"Bear Down" is more than a motto at the University of Arizona. It is our legacy and a call to excellence.

John Salmon earned the nickname "Button" as a child for being undersized. Salmon embraced the moniker and made it his own – a sign of his self-confidence, reliability and determination. Growing up in Bisbee and playing football against miners and baseball against barnstorming professionals made him tougher than his diminutive frame let on.

Those same traits helped him at the University of Arizona, where he became an accomplished and curious student, an excellent athlete and a key member of several campus honor societies and other organizations. Always the last to admit defeat on the field or the last to leave the library, Salmon was known to frequently insist that teammates and classmates "bear down" to achieve success.

Tragedy strikes

Heading into his senior year, Salmon was the newly installed student body president and quarterback of a team with hopes of winning a conference championship. After the Wildcat varsity team defeated the then-separate freshman squad in its annual scrimmage, Salmon and several friends made a weekend visit to Phoenix. During their return trip on Oct. 3, an automobile crash north of Tucson left Salmon critically injured and paralyzed below the chest. He passed away two weeks later, on Oct. 18, at age 22.

The news devastated the university community. Three people reportedly spoke at a hastily organized assembly held the next day in the university auditorium now known as Centennial Hall: Arizona Wildcat newspaper editor Curtis Benjamin, who would replace Salmon as student body president before embarking upon a 38-year publishing career with the McGraw-Hill Book Company; English professor J.W. Tucker, who praised Salmon for his outstanding honesty; and J.F. "Pop" McKale, Salmon's coach in football and baseball, who visited the injured athlete's hospital bedside many times.

'Fight – keep faith – bear down.'

"I asked him what word I should take to the boys out on the field and he replied, 'Tell them to bear down,'" McKale told the campus community. "And I believe that the message he would have left you if he could, would have been this: 'Fight – keep faith – bear down.'"

Salmon's words not only resonated in the locker rooms, but in classrooms, labs, dorms – and into the hearts of the U of A campus and Salmon's fellow Wildcats. Moved by the message, the U of A student government made "Bear Down" the university's official motto. The "Bear Down" spirit spread further in 1929, when student groups were granted permission to paint the slogan on the roof of the university gymnasium, which would come to be known as Bear Down Gym. An airplane view of that phrase inspired soon-to-be band director Jack K. Lee to write the fight song, "Bear Down, Arizona."

Ever since, Button's spirit has inspired Arizona Wildcats to dream big, to seek grand challenges and to believe that when people say it can't be done, we can't be stopped – because we "Bear Down."

Explore more Bear Down 100 moments at Arizona.edu/BearDown.