Mount Nittany Newsletter
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A newsletter for all those who love Mount Nittany and dwell at heart in her gentle shade.
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One-Room Schools Bring History Alive
I have written about efforts to “mine” the rich preserves of knowledge buried in the past to release their power in the present. Previous installments of this series have focused mainly on conceptual conveyances of this potential—books, stories, and documents.
But what about our need for a more visceral, immersive experience, our tendency to learn by doing? “Show, don’t tell.” It’s a lesson we are taught beginning in grade school and yet it still bears repeating by campaign consultants and corporate marketing gurus. For those seeking to better understand the story of our place, two local one-room school houses offer a more hands-on approach for encountering heritage, a chance to directly show residents a piece of their history.
The Boogersburg School is a one-room schoolhouse located in Patton Township that went into service in 1877. Today, it serves as a sort of living museum piece, maintained by the Centre County Historical Society (CCHC). Having been restored and furnished in a manner consistent with its original purpose, the quaint little building now offers a connection to a prior age that, while quite alien to us today, finally vanished more recently that you might imagine. Amazingly, the schoolhouse was in use by the school district up until 1952. It doesn’t seem all that long ago, in relative terms, and although the building’s use evolved over time, it’s still remarkable to consider that a structure dating to the Rutherford B. Hayes administration made it to the early nuclear age.
When the doors were finally closed for good, the schoolhouse stood empty for many years before being used as an artist’s studio for a time. It was then purchased by a couple, Bob Struble and Susan Crary, who undertook the historical restoration work and gifted the property to the CCHC for caretaking. Boogersburg has become a traditional field trip location for area school classes, and the heart of the experience comes through the volunteer “school marms,” who teach about the school to visiting students, even dressing in period clothing. They explain the history of the building, what it was like to attend school there, and even touch on the names and stories of former students.
Dozens of volunteers each year, many of them retired local teachers, give of their time and talent to create a special experience that helps preserve local memory. Many others pitch in to help maintain the physical plant and grounds. Every August, the schoolhouse also hosts a back-to-school day when children and their families can experience a taste of life in a forgotten era, sitting in authentic wooden desks, using “soapstone, slate, and chalkboards,” and receiving lessons in subjects like spelling and “mental math.”
Further down the Mount Nittany Expressway, another former one-room school has been reborn in the present thanks to the efforts of community leaders. The Rock Hill School in Linden Hall opened in 1893, the third and final one-room schoolhouse built to educate the children of Harris Township. Rock Hill didn’t survive as long as its Patton Township counterpart, ceasing to operate as a school in 1937. Although it hosted elections and meetings into the 1980s, the school eventually became used for storage until recent interest offered a new possibility. It was resolved that the building should not be forgotten, but rather restored to its original state and made open to the public.
With the goal of “restor(ing) and preserv(ing) the historic Rock Hill School while revitalizing it to become an active learning center for present and future generations,” a small non-profit corporation was formed to manage the property and accept tax deductible donations to fund the restoration and upkeep. The drive to restore Rock Hill originated from within the community and was funded largely through private contributions; according to its website, the effort has generated more than $207,000 in donations to date. In addition to hosting educational experiences for State College School District and Penn State students, Rock Hill functions as a sort of community center, hosting local meetings, line dancing, an annual Halloween party, and serving as a bike path rest stop. Its supporters remain enthusiastic and active in exploring new uses for the space and raising awareness about it.
Both buildings have direct connections to the founding era of Penn State. Moses Thompson, who, along with his partner James Irvin, owned the Centre Furnace, was a key figure in selecting the site for the original Farmers High School. Thompson also built the Boogersburg School and donated property for the 1850 schoolhouse that preceded the Rock Hill School. Additionally, Rock Hill counts among its former faculty William G. Waring, one of Penn State’s Founders, Strong and Great. As the College’s first superintendent of the grounds, Waring, who was also a horticulture professor, was crucial in establishing the early campus; he even planted the legendary Old Willow.
Perhaps the key point to extract from both stories is the integral role played by the people of the Nittany Valley in breathing life into these institutions. Without the imagination and generosity of the Strubles and the generational effort of countless other to support the CCHC, the Boogersburg School would not have had its second act. It takes the energy and passion of the volunteer “teachers” there to produce a memorable experience for visitors. Likewise, the determination and hard work of local enthusiasts intent on keeping the Rock Hill School alive have brought forth a new and valuable community resource.
Of course, these aren’t the only interesting historical structures found within Centre County. The Historical Society also famously maintains the Centre Furnace Mansion, which is rife with significance to the founding of Penn State and unfolding of the regional story. Boalsburg’s Blacksmith Shop recently completed a successful fundraising campaign to pay for needed repairs (with help from the Boalsburg Village Conservancy, another small, volunteer venture similar to the Rock Hill School group). The Curtin Village in Howard recreates a 19th century workers’ village and preserves the family home of former PA governor Andrew Curtin. There are others still.
They all offer a chance to connect with tangible, physical reminders of what came before. Specifically, for an area that so prizes education and whose growth has been so caught up in it, the Boogersburg and Rock Hill schools offer a window into a style of learning, and of daily living, that have all but vanished. Thanks to the vision of donors and the ongoing support of dedicated community volunteers, these two facilities continue to maintain a fascinating link to our forebears that provides us with compelling knowledge and vital perspective.
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Sixth Annual Mount Nittany Night
The 6th Annul Mt. Nittany Night is Friday, June 24, 2016 from 6:00 – 8:00 P.M. at the Mountain View Country Club. $40 per person for hors d’oeuvres and wine to celebrate the Mountain. All proceeds benefit the Mount Nittany Conservancy.
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A Brief History of Penn State Astronomy
For years, they stood unused and largely unremarked upon: Two single-story brick structures capped with white domes adjacent to the Eisenhower Auditorium.
In the years before they were torn down during one of the latest campus facelifts, people would occasionally ask about them. These buildings obviously served some function related to observing the night sky, and though they remained shuttered and locked, surely somebody somewhere knew what it was. Not necessarily; at least not until one clear evening a little more than 10 years ago.
That night, Dr. Chris Palma, a Penn State alumnus who is now a senior lecturer in astronomy, was leading one of his regular stargazing sessions on the roof of Davey Lab when someone in the group inquired as to what, exactly, was in those domes. Palma gave his standard answer: “I don’t know.” But unlike every time before, that wasn’t the end of it.
Another attendee believed his wife’s grandfather, a former faculty member, had been involved in their construction. He didn’t know details, but he had one vital piece of information. “My wife’s maiden name is Yeagley,” he told them.
That name became the crucial clue that launched a search for long-forgotten details about the origins of Penn State’s astronomy department. Motivated by a curiosity about what had come before and furnished with a way to begin his investigation, Palma turned to the digital archives of The Daily Collegian. He was joined by his colleague Dr. Richard Wade, a now-emeritus professor of astronomy with a penchant for historical research, particularly genealogy (through which he discovered a family connection to Penn State president Joseph Shortlidge).
In searching the Collegian’s archives, they discovered Dr. Henry L. Yeagley, an associate professor of physics from 1928 to 1958 who can fairly described as the father of astronomy at Penn State. Although astronomy did not separate from physics to become its own department until the 1970s (another revelation resulting from Wade’s archival research), Yeagley brought his love for the field to campus decades earlier, teaching telescope making and holding public stargazing sessions.
Yeagley, Palma says, was “pretty much working by himself on some of these things in the 1930s and 1940s… maybe it was only one person, but it really traces back 40 more years than people think of.”
It was through that happenstance encounter on the roof of Davey Lab (during public stargazing, appropriately enough) that Yeagley’s name reentered the departmental discourse, but insight into his legacy and the department’s roots didn’t stop there.
A 1950 Daily Collegian article about a fire in the Osmond Building reported on damage to Yeagley’s and “the adjoining planetarium.” To that point, the common belief was that Penn State’s first planetarium was constructed in the 1980s.
“We were trying to look up information on these domes, and we were like, ‘woah,’” Palma remembers. A bit more digging and a Google search for 1940s-era Spitz-brand planetariums yielded an even more monumental realization by Palma – “I’ve seen that thing in a closet.” Thanks to their research, the projector – a novel relic from an earlier era – was rescued from storage and restored.
Richard Wade expanded their search to the University archives, and in four boxes of materials filed under Yeagley’s name, he discovered ambitious, but largely unfulfilled plans to expand the study of astronomy and engage the local community.
“What we uncovered was… there was a planetarium here in the 1940s,” says Palma. “The Class Gift of 1936 was a telescope, and the gift of the Class of 1938 was those observatory domes to house those telescopes in. We discovered this history of Penn State doing outreach in astronomy and planetarium shows and inviting people in to stargaze through telescopes dates back 40 more years than anyone working here now really remembered. It was all about making the University and the department open to the public.”
So why all this effort? Why did two professors in the hard sciences spend so much time digging deep into the past? Part of it boils down to the glory of Old State.
“I’m an alum. I love this place,” Palma says. “On some level, it’s just that I’m interested in Penn State history.”
But there’s more.
“I don’t want the class gifts to be forgotten. They’re on a list, but the physical things are gone. Students donated money to the University for this, and because of ‘progress,’ they got torn down. My biggest regret in this whole thing is that those class gifts couldn’t have been preserved in some way.”
With this historical perspective comes practical modern application. Palma serves on the committee that will plan fundraising efforts for a public planetarium at the H.O. Smith Arboretum. The effort will benefit from his relatively-newfound knowledge of nearly a century spent exploring the idea of public outreach with far more talk than action.
“I found notes that an exactly identical committee went through this exact same exercise in the Eighties and essentially made the same recommendations to Penn State that we made a few years ago, and then when we dug even deeper, we found out that here was this guy trying to make the exact same arguments and trying to sort of build capacity for the exact same kinds programs 40 years before that. There’s been at least three documented generations of Penn Staters trying to make the same thing happen for the community and the University.”
As Penn State looks to expand the Arboretum with the addition of a planetarium, we can now orient this latest development within the context of a long history of reaching out to the community and exposing the people of State College and the students of Penn State to the wonders of the cosmos. That’s really what all this is about – creating context, dispelling mystery. Just as our probing the depths of outer space offers perspective on our place in the universe as a species, a deeper understanding of where we have been and what is around us in our community grants a greater sense of place and purpose as a people.
“The hope is that we’re going to build a planetarium at the Arboretum some time in the next five years,” explains Palma. “I think we need to have the history of planetariums at Penn State. That projector has got to go in a case somewhere.”
For the late Henry L. Yeagley and others, the planned state-of-the-art public planetarium represents a dream long deferred, but one day, visitors will pass by his old projector and feel the connection between past and present manifest. It’s all thanks to the detective work of a two Penn State faculty members who realized that uncovering the lessons of the past could enrich appreciation of their work as it exists here, in the Nittany Valley, distinct from similar scholarship occurring anywhere else.
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The First History of Penn State
Over its 161 years, Penn State has twice sanctioned books chronicling the University’s history, once in the 1940s and again with an updated version in the 1980s.
While history professor and Penn State historian Wayland Dunaway’s 1946 “History of The Pennsylvania State College” was the first official account of Old State’s history to be published, it was not the first to be written. More than a decade prior to the creation of Dunaway’s text, Erwin W. Runkle, Penn State’s librarian from 1904 to 1924 and Dunaway’s predecessor as the school’s first official historian (you may recognize the name from Runkle Hall), compiled a complete record of the institution from founding to the present day.
Penn State commissioned Runkle to assemble an authoritative account of its first century. Upon its completion, his book, “The Pennsylvania State College 1853-1932: Interpretation and Record,” became the first comprehensive history ever written about the school. Unfortunately for Runkle, the Board of Trustees rejected his effort, and it was never approved for publication. Penn State eventually turned to Dunaway to produce a replacement. In 1985, Michael Bezilla’s “Penn State: An Illustrated History” built upon and updated the efforts from Dunaway’s initial foray.
Penn State retained the copy of Runkle’s full manuscript despite its rejection. In order to protect the original document, a few complete duplicates were created over the years by photocopying the type-written onion paper sheets. One of these was bound and kept on file in the Special Collections Library. For 80 years after its completion, Dr. Runkle’s take on the Penn State story remained unpublished and largely unrecognized.
The exact circumstances underlying the board’s dissatisfaction with Runkle’s work product are somewhat unclear, although one can surmise that the author’s frequent injection of his own, occasionally blunt, observations may have been a contributing factor. For example, on the tumultuous one-year presidency of Joseph Shortlidge:
“Candor compels the reflection, however, that viewed in the large, no more blame attaches to President Shortlidge than to the Board itself… Add to this, the unwise transplanting of a Secondary School atmosphere and scheme of regulations, a rather stern, uncompromising and apparently haughty demeanor in personal relations with the student body, a curious attitude of suspicion toward the major part of the Faculty, you have the factors that led to loss of influence, to lack of co-operation, and finally to open rebellion.”
“Open rebellion.” It stands to reason, I suppose, that University leadership—in any era—would be uncomfortable with such an unvarnished view of affairs expressed through official channels. But it was exactly this personal touch that compelled our attention.
In 2013, we received permission from the University Libraries to create and release an heirloom version of Runkle’s book in print and digital formats, marking the first-ever publication of the original history of Penn State. The project presented challenges.
The photocopies were too blurry for optical character recognition (OCR) software, which necessitated a painstaking process of transcribing hundreds of pages by hand. Total fidelity to the source material—from the formatting of tables and lists right down to decisions about correcting individual typos and errors—was not only of paramount importance to us, but a condition of our publication agreement with the Libraries. Many people assisted with this process, including most of our founding board members, but our editor, Andy Nagypal, earned special thanks and recognition for his exhaustive attention to detail.
As with all Nittany Valley Press books, we sought to produce a final product whose aesthetic reflected the quality of its content. Jonathan Hartland’s cover design beautifully captures the essence of its subject. As a finishing touch, we turned to former Trustee George Henning, proud owner of a renowned collection of Penn State artifacts and memorabilia, to write an original foreword placing the work in context for a contemporary audience.
Certainly, Runkle’s version of the Penn State story is not for everyone. The text is undeniably dense. As an Ivy League-trained historian, his penchant for quoting primary source documents and delving deep into picayune detail frequently bog down the pace, and his early 20th century style can seem remote and inaccessible to modern readers. However dry and impenetrable his academician’s prose at various points, Runkle also imbued his work with a genuine spirit of affection for this place. He goes beyond merely documenting fact to share first-hand recollections and opinions. Today, Runkle’s writing is the closest we can come to hearing a voice speak to us from our past, commenting on facets of life in the Nittany Valley both foreign and familiar. He concludes the book’s introduction by noting:
“There is a Penn State Spirit… Always in the general stream of college life, Penn State has nevertheless had a ‘way of her own’.”
Long before the University required an entire office dedicated to managing an unmistakable “brand” based on tradition and loyalty, folks like Erwin Runkle still felt moved by the special spirit of Penn State. While his lessons about our school’s growth and development are important, perhaps his most vital contribution is this simple reminder of the constant and immutable nature of the Nittany Valley magnetism.
Last month, I wrote about the impulse that motivates efforts to resurface history. Our work to finally publish Runkle’s book after 80 years on the shelf exemplifies it in action.
I initially encountered “The Pennsylvania State College 1853-1932: Interpretation and Record” amidst the emotionally raw days of Fall 2012. I found rare comfort in Runkle’s meticulously constructed account of Penn State’s turbulent first 50 years, which included a true existential crisis over Pennsylvania’s allocation of Land Grant Act funding. Knowing that Penn State had survived and thrived, despite teetering more than once on the brink of total dissolution, gave me confidence that the University could survive what no longer felt, at least not indisputably, like the worst period in its history. Speaking to me from the past, Runkle’s gifts were context and perspective.
For a select group of Penn Staters with certain tastes and interests (namely, a high tolerance for heavy reading), Runkle’s book will provide a similarly edifying experience. Many others will buy it simply to display on their bookshelves, and that’s fine too—I don’t blame them; the cover art is gorgeous. The key point is that now an opportunity exists to engage with this obscure relic of the community’s past. Projects like this are born from a passion to create these new opportunities, a constant pursuit of untapped sources of potential for making the Nittany Valley a better, richer place.
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Patrick Scholl, Emeritus Board Member
We have the saddest of news to share today. One of Mt. Nittany’s staunchest friends, Patrick Scholl, passed away on March 13, 2016.
Patrick along with his wife Jan were great supporters of the Mountain. Patrick was a longtime Board Member, and served as Treasurer of the Conservancy from November 2001 to November 2008.
Patrick, your final resting spot may be far away, but you will forever be remembered by those that knew and loved you. As mentioned in your obituary below, we hope that people do take in a Spikes game in your honor. They can then look out at Mt. Nittany and be grateful for your tireless work to protect it.
- Imparting wisdom at Nov 20, 2010 meeting.
Patrick Scholl
1952-2016Patrick J. Scholl, 63, of State College, Pennsylvania died March 13, 2016 at home. He was born to Edwin and Patricia Scholl of Rockwell, Iowa. He is survived by his mother, his wife Jan, and brother, Daniel, mayor of Humboldt, Iowa. His sister, Rose Ann, and father are deceased. Patrick was the Director of Business and Finance for the Penn State University Alumni Association for 28 years and was well known in the State College community. He held a similar position in the College of Agriculture at the University of Wyoming and was the manager of research contracts and grants at Iowa State University.
He received a B.S. degree in accounting from ISU, an MBA from Drake University, and was a doctoral candidate at Penn State. He was certified as a CPA for 30 years.
An active parishioner of Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church in State College, Patrick served as lector, Eucharistic minister, and assisted with pre-cana instruction. He was also on the Penn State Credit Union board for several terms and the coordinating committee for the annual Juvenile Diabetes Research walk-a-thon.
He traveled to various parts of the world with alumni, including: Costa Rica, Ireland, Russia and the Scandinavian countries. He sailed through the Panama Canal. Patrick received a 50 year medal from the Joslin Diabetes Center and the Alumni Association’s Mentor and Lewis and Karen Gold awards.
Patrick was a baseball fan with season tickets to Spikes games. He visited major league stadiums and annually aired a “Who’s on First” radio segment with local announcer, Steve Jones. On road trips to Iowa he stopped to see the “Field of Dreams, near Dyersville. A memorial Mass for Patrick will be held Saturday, April 9 at 10:30 AM at the Our Lady of Victory Church, 820 Westerly Parkway, followed by a reception in the social hall. Interment will be in Iowa at the convenience of the family.
The family requests no calls, deliveries or visitations at home at this time. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the church’s Gabriel Project, the Penn State Alumni Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, or by purchasing a Spikes baseball ticket to enjoy a summer game.
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Looking Back to Move Forward
Why should we care about the past?
The potential answers to this question are many and varied, but certainly, in looking back to understand what came before, we can see something of ourselves reflected back at us, extracting value from the experience. It is not without peril. Genuine self-examination risks exposure to the truth about our flaws. Likewise, we must resist the allure of romance; if infatuation with a fictional ideal commands our full attention, we miss the view of all that is around us and ahead.
And yet a part of us cannot help but yearn to know. As human beings, we are natural storytellers, creatures of narrative. We seek knowledge of our past to better orient ourselves within our own stories—personal and communal. These journeys of exploration can yield many benefits, but ultimately, we undertake them because to do so is fundamental to our nature.
Tom Shakely has written about “why place matters” and the importance of Mount Nittany and conserving both “human and environmental ecologies.” As challenging as it is fulfilling, this sort of work evolves.
In college towns like ours, the relationship between past and present is closer to the surface in everyday life than most other places.
Today, the clarion of Old Main’s bell tower, an immediately recognizable sound seared into the memory of generations, no longer requires an actual bell. Powerful speakers, however, do blast a digital recreation of the real bell, long since permanently silenced, whose tolling across campus once marked each day’s passage. Here, the technology of the present resurrects the sounds of the past. The stately central administration building itself, among the most recognizable and “collegiate” of our symbols, sits just a couple blocks from the Millennium Science Complex, which looks more like the stuff of modern sci-fi than an image from the bucolic campus ideal.
Similarly, the Hotel State College, home of the Corner Room, retains all the charm of the simpler age in which it was built. As a symbol, it exemplifies the town as surely as Old Main does the college. The local skyline behind it, unchanged for decades, is now dominated by the construction of two new high-rise complexes, especially significant in their breaking a long-held resistance against the encroachment of “tall buildings.” This distinctive landmark will soon be literally overshadowed by towering monuments to emerging trends and changing attitudes.
But many established communities mingle old architecture with new. What distinguishes the Nittany Valley—and most similar college towns, I imagine—is its unique population, an ever-churning mixture of locals and alumni, with their long-held affection for the area, and students, who are only just falling in love with it. In a place whose very existence derives from thousands of young people undergoing one of our society’s most cherished rites of passage, there is a natural fascination with how those who preceded us experienced those same rituals in these same locations. The past lingers here, fraught with potential.
In his book “Is Penn State A Real University?”—the first publication released under the Mount Nittany Conservancy’s Nittany Valley Press publishing imprint—Dr. Ben Novak, a former Penn State trustee, muses:
The past, because it was lived, cannot really be destroyed. It can only be covered over, like a lush jungle that gets condensed into a pool of oil or a vein of coal, just waiting to be drilled or mined to have its energy released. But you have to dig for it, and you have to know how to use it. When we don’t know what is in the past, we cannot use it, and we cannot release its power.
Recently, when Kevin Horne addressed the Board of Trustees about shared governance at Penn State, he noted, “Memory of our past can improve the present and change the future.”
So there is power buried in the past, a positive energy that, once unleashed, can be harnessed to animate and inspire our best thinkers and doers. It can teach lessons, but also engender a sense of shared identity and foster stronger, more cohesive community relationships. Those who seek to preserve memory for future generations do so with the goal of improving lives; no small task.
The challenge is twofold. To start off, the work of historical preservation and reclamation is difficult and requires hours of effort, attention to detail, and not a small degree of luck to be successful. And yet, despite the obstacles, this first stage in the process is still the less daunting. Because once all of the information has been collected, the knowledge harvested, then the real work, the most valuable aspect of what we do, comes in bringing it to people in a way that affects their lives in a meaningful way. This is the challenge of making what no longer exists, and is therefore unknown and often unfamiliar, accessible and relevant.
We all long for a sense of our own story, and we draw strength from understanding the ways in which others share a common background. We care about the past because of its power to enrich our spirit.
The magic of the Nittany Valley, that is, the spirit of this culture we aim to conserve, is potent and inspires important work by many groups that often share compatible motivation and goals—the Centre County Historical Society, Lion Ambassadors, and the Mount Nittany Conservancy, just to name a few.
We constantly need to work together to retell the stories of our past so that the knowledge and experiences of those who came before us can make a tangible impact on the present.
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Our Founders Were Real
Evan Pugh was Penn State’s first president.
It’s great if you happen to know of Evan Pugh. In fact, it’s likely that knowing about him already puts you in the minority among students and alumni. But just knowing this bit of raw information isn’t worth much in and of itself. It’s available to anyone curious enough to wonder and with access to Wikipedia. Why care?
As Penn Staters, we’ll be celebrating Founder’s Day on February 22. It’s a special time on the calendar set aside to honor and remember the men and women who built Dear Old State. Today, we often act as if Penn State’s prestige flows from its numbers—the number of students enrolled globally, the number of living alumni, the number of academic colleges and majors, etc. Evan Pugh’s Penn State wasn’t defined by staggering numbers, but rather by people, as Erwin Runkle’s first official history of the University records:
“Despite the [Civil] war, the school grew in numbers; 142 were enrolled in 1863, and 146 in 1864. Thirty-eight to forty counties of the State were represented. Two graduate students appeared in 1862, and in the following year, the number reached eleven.”
Our founder wasn’t the overseer of a vast corporate institute, but of a startup—so to speak—focused on a few dozen individuals. As president, Evan Pugh’s job was to know the particularities of student life—their family situation, their political loyalties during a time of conflict, their educational pursuits, their ambitions and skills. How many administrators, even in Penn State’s Office of Student Affairs, have similarly intimate human knowledge about our current students?
Today, what feels like a small army of faculty and staff are required to manage the modern Penn State. At its beginning, however, the school required an individual of extraordinary vision and singular purpose to chart its destiny.
And Evan Pugh himself was a remarkable man. Born on February 28, 1828 in Chester County, Pennsylvania, his father was a farmer-blacksmith. But his father died when he was only 12 years old, and he was raised by his grandfather. In time, young Evan hungered for knowledge and wisdom rather than money, which led him to eschew the inheritance of his father’s farm. Instead, he went off to study at some of the finest universities in England, France, and Germany. His research earned him membership in the Royal Society of Science and the American Philosophical Society. His achievements burnished his reputation as a man of character that led to his invitation to the founding presidency of a young, experimental “Farmer’s High School” that in time would become the Penn State of history.
Indeed, Evan Pugh’s vision and devotion to the early Penn State was remarkable in its own time, but perhaps is even more remarkable in our own. Perhaps best exemplified by the carousel of football coaches since 2011, we seem to be exiting an era when one arrived in the Nittany Valley to make Penn State their life, not simply their job. Pugh, a man whose ability and professional qualifications meant he could choose his own career path, gave himself fully over to the fledgling cause of Penn State, internalizing the dream of higher education for the commoner in the “splendid isolation” of this place. He writes to Professor Wilson, Penn State’s Vice President, on September 18, 1863:
“I am resolved to stay with our College, while God gives me strength to perform my duties there, whatever may be the pecuniary inducements or prospects of honor elsewhere. It is my duty and my destiny to do so, and I shall seek honors in the path of duty and of destiny…”
But Evan Pugh didn’t build Penn State’s early foundations alone. He was joined by Rebecca Valentine, the Bellefonte native who captured his imagination from the time he first arrived to live in Mount Nittany’s shadow. Runkle doesn’t record nearly enough about the woman who is easily the most fascinating among our founders:
Evan Pugh met Rebecca Valentine on a trip to Bellefonte in 1861, while on a visit to an iron master to compare methods of smelting iron. Their love grew over the course of a three-year engagement that began almost immediately after they met, and they were married on February 4, 1864. As a native of Central Pennsylvania, Rebecca was distinct in speaking for the Nittany Valley’s soul and character to a man who grew up outside of Philadelphia and earned his doctorate in Germany. But as significant as Evan’s devotion to Penn State was in its first, formative years, and as much love as Evan and Rebecca shared during their courtship, their marriage was short-lived. Evan took ill and passed away at 36, only months after they wed. Runkle records:
“Mrs. Pugh, a woman of culture, refinement, and of rare sweetness and purity of soul, kept faithful tryst of the poignant romance so ruthlessly shattered until her own death on July 7, 1921—fifty-seven years of widowed, worshipful, romantic devotion.” At the time of founder Evan Pugh’s death, J.B. Lakes of Rothamstead Station, England, wrote to Rebecca: “I felt certain that if he lived he would be the founder of a great college.”
Though they could not have known it at the time, Evan Pugh was, in fact, the founder of a great college, among the greatest and most resilient ever known. However briefly the bold, bright beacon of his influence flashed across the firmament of our Valley, such was its potency that traces linger even today. This Founder’s Day, every Penn Stater who comes to know the story of Evan and Rebecca Pugh should celebrate this man and woman in a special way.
In 2015, Penn State published this short video on the enduring love shared by Evan and Rebecca: