DUNMORE, Pa. -- Just over a century ago, many of the young men on Penn State’s varsity athletic teams were exchanging one uniform for another and leaving behind the idyllic environs of University Park for the blood-stained trenches of Western Europe.
While many returned from the battlefield, some weren’t so lucky. However, their stories live on today, thanks to the Penn State All-Sports Museum’s World War I-themed exhibit, “Field to Front: Nittany Lions at War, 1917-1919.”
On Thursday, Nov. 14, Ken Hickman, director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum, came to Penn State Scranton to deliver two engaging and informative lectures on the exhibit, which is on display in the campus library through Dec. 13.
Both lectures were open to the campus community and the general public, and were sponsored by Penn State University Libraries, the Penn State Scranton Alumni Society and the campus Student Activity Fee.
First exhibited in 2017 at the Beaver Stadium-located All-Sports Museum, “Field to Front” had been on display at Penn State Harrisburg before coming to the Scranton campus in October.
Created to coincide with the centennial of the United States’ involvement in World War I, "Field to Front" centers on the heroic contributions Penn State athletes made to the war effort, from their training in the states to their experiences fighting in France and Italy. The exhibit uses numerous photos, letters and diaries to provide an in-depth understanding of the service of notable Penn State scholar-athletes of the era.
According to Hickman, about 2,200 Penn Staters served in World War I in some capacity. Seventy-four ended up casualties of war, he said.
All told, eight Nittany Lion athletes died during the war, including Levi L. Lamb, a three-sport star athlete who was commissioned a second lieutenant with the Army’s 2nd Division, 9th Infantry.
On July 18, 1918, Lamb awoke in a beautiful “field of wheat” in the French countryside, Hickman said. Later that afternoon, he was killed while leading his men during the Second Battle of the Marne.
“He was the first Penn State athlete to die overseas,” Hickman said.
Years later, Lamb’s name within the Penn State community would be immortalized when the Nittany Lion Club’s annual fund was named in his honor in 1953.