Campus Life

Brig. Gen. Wilbur Wolf to speak at Penn State Mont Alto Veterans Day Celebration

Brig. Gen. Wilbur Wolf III speaks during the 2014 Veterans Day Celebration at Penn State Mont Alto. On Nov. 11, 2019, he will again serve as the featured speaker. Credit: Debra Collins / Penn StateCreative Commons

MONT ALTO, Pa.— Retired Brig. Gen. Wilbur Wolf III will serve as keynote speaker during the Penn State Mont Alto Veterans Day Celebration at noon on Nov. 11, 2019. Wolf served in uniform for more than 32 years, including 10 years active duty in the U.S. Army and 22 years in the National Guard. 

The event will be held on the campus at the Veterans Memorial on the front side of Conklin Hall. It is handicap accessible, and the public is welcome to attend free of charge. The outdoor ceremony will be held rain or shine. Public parking is available across from the University’s Multipurpose Activities Center (MAC) near the campus entrance.

The program will include performances by the Penn State Mont Alto Chorale as well as the Big Spring High School Cantabile. Also speaking will be Penn State Mont Alto Chancellor Francis K. Achampong and Student Veterans of America (SVA) member Tanner B. Wetzel, U.S. Army veteran.

During the ceremony, Big Spring High School Cantabile will perform two songs—Frank Wildhorn’s “Tell My Father,” arranged by Andrea Ramsey, and “In Flanders Fields,” poetry by Lt. Col. John McCrae and arranged by John Jacobson and Roger Emerson.

Wolf retired from the position of Pennsylvania National Guard director of joint staff in 2016. Throughout his career, he served in a variety of command and staff assignments in the National Guard and on active duty as an infantry, military intelligence, and aviation officer. Some significant posts include deputy commanding general for maneuver of the 28th Infantry Division, commander of the 55th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, and commander of the 628th Military Intelligence Battalion. His assignments, deployments, and temporary duty locations included more than 25 states and 15 countries.

Wolf currently volunteers for several advisory boards. Some include the Philadelphia University Disaster Medicine and Management Graduate Program Board of Advisors; Penn State World Campus Homeland Security Graduate Program Board of Advisors, and Valhalla Veteran’s Services Board of Advisors.

He holds master’s degrees from the U.S. Army War College and the University of Southern California. He earned his bachelor’s degree from West Virginia University.

His father, the late Wilbur E. Wolf Jr., was a graduate of the Penn State University School of Forestry, now Penn State Mont Alto. He was also a veteran of the U.S. Army from which he resigned at the rank of captain in 1964. He unexpectedly died in January 2019, while serving as the Big Spring School District board president – a position he held for several years.

Last spring, student Adam DeGregorio, a member of the Big Spring High School TEMPUS Club, coordinated an effort to raise money for a plaque to be placed in his honor at the Mont Alto campus. Consequently, a contingent of the Big Spring School District will be present for the celebration, including Big Spring Superintendent Richard Fry and Big Spring High School Principal Bill August as well as several Big Spring board members and students.

The Veterans Day celebration is sponsored by the SVA, an engaged and active club at the Mont Alto campus. Members of the SVA raised money to construct the Penn State Mont Alto Veterans Memorial that was dedicated on Sept. 11, 2012. In addition, the club was one of 11 university clubs selected from among 100 applicants to receive a $10,000 VetCenter Initiative grant from the SVA and The Home Depot Foundation partnership to refurbish a new veterans’ center in April 2014. It was opened on Sept. 10, 2014.

For more information contact Debra Collins, director of public relations and marketing, at 717-749-6112 or dlc43@psu.edu.

Brig. Gen. Wilbur Wolf walks across campus with his parents, Margaret and Wilbur Wolf Jr., following the Veterans Day Celebration in 2014. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated November 12, 2019