Old Lafayette: How World War I shaped Purdue
Purdue University made news in a variety of ways between 1909 and the Roaring 20s.
Pharmacy professor B.M. Hoak, 45, met with an odd accidental death.
At a state high school track and field meet at Stuart Field on May 26, 1909, Hoak was judging an event in which competitors hurled a 12-pound hammer for distance. A hammer slung by state record holder Guy Cromwell of Van Buren High School struck Hoak in the chest. Cromwell mistakenly thought Hoak was ready and watching his throw.
Hoak had to be helped to an automobile and taken home. There, he seemed to recover, only to suffer a relapse. In Home Hospital, he died of peritonitis four days after the accident.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1863, Hoak had graduated from Purdue in pharmacy in 183 and stayed as an instructor. He taught chemistry at West Lafayette High School., wrote a pharmacy textbook and sat on the town board.
Hosting state high school track competitions was only one way Purdue attracted crowds to the West Lafayette campus. A far bigger Stuart Field event took place in 1911.
The Lafayette Journal and the Purdue Alumni Association sponsored an air show featuring primitive biplanes on June 13,. The field, used for football and track, offered enough bleacher seats to accommodate the expected crowd, yet enough open field room for planes to land or take off.
Something else from Purdue gained regional fame among people in general. During 1913, Edward J. Wotawa, class of 1912, who wrote the music, and James Morrison, who composed the words, copyrighted their "Purdue War Song" — a piece of music which soon gave way to the more familiar title "Hail Purdue."
The Great War
Events after 1914 pushed the United States toward World War I in Europe. The nation stressed military preparedness and military training on campuses.
This revived Purdue's stalled plans to replace the 50-by-100-foot wood frame armory, a fixture on the original 1874 campus.
On April 26, 1918, Purdue dedicated a modern brick-and-steel Armory, the center for Student Army Training Corps and other military operations.
Meanwhile, Purdue's School of Agriculture helped stimulate wartime food production and conservation. Purdue also provided staff volunteers who served on bureaus and commissions. The war, which ended in November 1918, drew more than 4,000 Purdue alumni, faculty and students into military service. It claimed 67 Purdue-related lives, 17 in combat.
With Eliza Fowler Hall, the Memorial Gym and Armory in place, Purdue President Winthrop E. Stone directed Purdue efforts in the spring of 1920 toward construction of a student union.
With Purdue's World War I dead fresh in mind, Stone and others decided that it should be a Memorial Union honoring those who gave their lives.
To learn more about local World War I veterans, attend the Cemetery Walk on Sunday, October 21, at 2 p.m. at the Grand View Cemetery.
About the Old Lafayette series:
Each week, the Journal & Courier is reprinting some of the best of Bob Kriebel's Old Lafayette columns. Today begins a series exploring World War I's impact on the Lafayette area. This is taken from a column published Feb. 9, 1997.