People

John Krebs was born in Hagerstown, Maryland on May 6, 1804, the son of William and Ann Adamson Krebs. The senior Krebs was a merchant and postmaster in the town and John received his early education there before he went to work as a clerk in his father's post office. His father died in 1822 and soon after he became determined to join the Presbyterian Church. After instruction at the local academy, he entered Dickinson College in February 1825. Krebs graduated in the class of 1827 with high honors and commenced pastoral studies under the Rev. George Duffield of Carlisle. He also received an appointment at the Dickinson Preparatory School and taught there between 1827 and 1829. By 1829 he had been licensed to preach in the Carlisle Presbytery, but, in May 1830, he briefly entered Princeton Theological Seminary. As soon as November, 1830, he had been formally ordained and taken up a post as pastor of the Rutgers Street Church in New York City.

Roy Kuebler was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania on October 10, 1911 to Roy R. Kuebler and Tillye Cleaver Traub. He entered Dickinson College with the class of 1933 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. While at the College he was the president of Omicron Delta Kappa, a member of the Microcosm editorial staff, and the treasurer of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

After studying library science at Columbia University, Kuebler began his career at his alma mater as a library assistant from 1933 to 1935. He was then named the assistant treasurer and superintendent of grounds and buildings in 1935 and held that position until 1941. At this point he embarked upon nearly fifteen years of punctuated service in the mathematics department, rising to the rank of associate professor. The longest interruption in his Dickinson career lasted from July 1942 to April 1946 during his war service as a captain in the equipment intelligence section of the Ordnance Corps. He saw duty in Leyte, Okinawa, and Korea, earning the Bronze Star along the way. Another hiatus stemmed from his leave to study at the University of Pennsylvania during 1947-1948 to earn his master's degree in mathematics. In 1950 he returned as acting dean of the College when Professor Russell Thompson's health waned.

J. Banks Kurtz was born in Delaware Township, Juniata County, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1867 as the son of Abraham Hertzler and Molly Bergey Kurtz. He attended local schools and prepared for college at the Airy View Academy in Port Royal and entered Dickinson College with the class of 1893 in the fall of 1889. After two years as an undergraduate, he transferred to the Law School program and graduated with a B.LL degree in 1893. While at the college he was an enthusiastic member of the Union Philosophical Society and joined the Phi Delta Theta and Delta Chi fraternities. He also represented the Law Program on the board of the Dickinsonian.

He was called to the bar in Blair County, Pennsylvania and began practice in Altoona. By 1905 he was district attorney of the county and served as chairman of the committee of public safety and the national defense for Blair County during the First World War. A Republican, he was elected to the United States Congress in November 1922 and served for six consecutive terms until he, like many of his fellow Republicans, was defeated in the 1934 election. He returned to Altoona to practice law and later took up the post of city solicitor. He remained active in party politics and was a delegate to the national conventions of 1936, 1938, and 1948.

Willard Geoffrey Lake was born to Alvin and Amelia Haight Lake in Moravia, New York on November 26, 1863. He prepared for college at the Pennington Seminary in New Jersey and entered Dickinson with the class of 1887 in the fall of 1883. Known as "Ted" to his classmates, the 5' 7" New Yorker became a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He is perhaps far more known for his contribution to Dickinson sports. He was captain of baseball on several very successful teams and was such a driving power behind the organization of a successful football team at the College that he was know for long after as "the father of Dickinson Football." He captained the 1885 and 1886 football teams from the quarterback position during these first two years of organized intercollegiate competition that began with the inaugural game in December, 1885 against Swarthmore in Carlisle. With the help of Professor Fletcher Durell, he did much of the coaching, as well.

Birth: February 25, 1844; Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

Death: June 9, 1912 (age 68); Washington, D.C.

Military Service: USN, 1861-65

Unit: Asiatic Squadron, South Atlantic Squadron

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1862)

Benjamin Lamberton attended Carlisle High School and the Dickinson Preparatory School before spending three years as a member of the Dickinson College class of 1862. He was a member of Belles Lettres Literary Society.

Lamberton decided on a naval career and in 1861 transferred to the Naval Academy, graduating in time to see active service on the U.S.S. America as it pursued the Confederate raiders Florida and Tallahassee in 1864. He served with the rank of lieutenant commander from 1868 to 1885 when he was promoted to commander and assigned to the Lighthouse Board in Charleston as an inspector. In 1898 Lamberton was ordered to command the cruiser Boston of the Asiatic Squadron, but upon arrival in Hong Kong he was appointed as chief of staff to Commodore Dewey. He fought alongside Dewey at the Battle of Manila and later acted as naval representative to the negotiating of the Spanish surrender. He was promoted to captain soon after and took command of the U.S.S. Olympia. In 1903, he became a rear admiral with the command of the South Atlantic Squadron. His final post was as chairman of the Lighthouse Board from which he retired on his sixty-second birthday.

Merkel Landis was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to John B. and Barbara Merkel Landis on January 5, 1875. During his youth he lived at 136 North College Street and attended Carlisle High School and the Dickinson Preparatory School. Officially entering the College as a freshmen in 1892, Merkel began four years of study for a bachelor of philosophy degree under Dickinson's modern language curriculum. He was a member of Sigma Chi, Theta Nu Epsilon, the editor of the Microcosm for three years, an Allison Orator for four years, and the short stop for his class baseball team.

Graduating in 1896 at the age of 21 Landis worked as a clerk in the Carlisle Deposit Bank until 1897. He also attended the Dickinson School of Law and was admitted to the Cumberland County Bar on June 5, 1899. He worked at the Merchants Bank in Carlisle starting in 1901. Later the bank was renamed the Carlisle Trust Company and he retained positions there as treasurer and as president from the fall of 1921 until his retirement in 1937. During his years with the bank he developed the first version of the Christmas Savings Fund in 1910.

William Weidman Landis was born in Coatesville, Pennsylvania on February 15, 1869, and graduated from the local high school. In 1887, Landis entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a freshman. While a student, he was a member of the Glee Club, the baseball team, Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and was elected to the Union Philosophical Society. He was also president of his graduating class. In 1891, Landis graduated with a degree in philosophy and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to become a student assistant at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1895, Landis returned to his alma mater as a professor and remained there for the next forty-six years. He taught mathematics, astronomy, and art history, and was also the baseball coach for a time. He also served as dean of the sophomore class. In 1905, he received an honorary doctorate degree from Franklin and Marshall.

Punctuating his long years at the College was his service on the Italian front during the First World War with the Y.M.C.A. For his efforts, the Italian government awarded Landis the honorary rank of major, the Cross of War and the Cross of the Third Army; he was also knighted for his service to that country.

"Docky" Landis taught at the College until the year of his death in 1942; he was seventy-three years old.

William Carr Lane was born on a farm in Fayette County, Pennsylvania on December 1, 1789. He attended Jefferson College and then went on to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a member of the class of 1812. He left to study medicine in Kentucky, at Louisville.

He served in the War of 1812 as a surgeon's mate and then went to the University of Pennsylvania for further studies in medicine. He served again in the army, as post surgeon at Fort Harrison, under General Zachary Taylor, and then in a similar post at Fort Bellefontaine in Missouri in 1818. He resigned the following year to take up a medical partnership in St. Louis. On April 5, 1823, Lane was elected as the first mayor of the newly incorporated city of 4000 people. He handled the laying out of the city's infrastructure particularly well, and the citizenry re-elected him seven times in two tenures, 1823-1829 and 1837-1840. He served as a Democrat for a session in the state legislature in 1826, although he failed in his bid to represent Missouri in the U.S. Congress.

Benjamin Latrobe was born in Fulneck, England on May 1, 1764. His father, also named Benjamin, was a Moravian and ran a school in Fulneck that attracted pupils from as far away as the American Colonies. The elder Benjamin married one of his pupils, Anna Margaret Antes from Germantown, Pennsylvania. The couple's third child, Benjamin Henry, studied in England and later in Germany, where family legend holds that he served in the Prussian cavalry. He returned to England in 1786 and began his study of architecture under Samuel Pepys Cockerel - then championing the Greek revival - and engineering under John Smeaton. Latrobe began his own practice soon after and made impressive professional headway with his appointment as surveyor of the police office in London. He married Lydia Sellon in 1790 and the couple had two children, Henry and Lydia. His wife's death during childbirth in 1793 caused Latrobe to suffer a breakdown that ultimately led him to emigrate to Virginia.

Marion Dexter Learned was born on July 10, 1857, near Dover, Delaware, the son of Hervey and Mary Learned. Learned's family was of early English and Welsh colonial background. He prepared for college at the Wilmington Conference Academy, and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a member of the class of 1880. While studying languages at the College, he was a member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society.

John H. Lease was born in Newport, Pennsylvania to John and Christina Lease on July 5, 1832. He prepared for college at the Pennington School in New Jersey, then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, just thirty miles from his home. Lease graduated with his class in the early summer of 1858 and took up studies in the Methodist faith.

Lease also taught, in addition to studying religion. In 1862, he was professor and principal of a small college called Union Seminary in New Berlin, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1856, the school later became Central Pennsylvania College and merged with Albright College in 1902. Lease moved on in 1864 to become a professor at the new Pennsylvania Agricultural College in Centre County, later Pennsylvania State University. He worked there briefly before teaching for five years at North Western College in Illinois between 1865 and 1870. Lease then turned his attentions to preaching. In 1872 he joined the St. Louis Conference of the Methodist Church and moved on to the Cincinnati Conference in 1875. Lease served for some years as the pastor of a church in Wilmington, Ohio and another in Bethany. He remained in the state for the remainder of his days. In 1884, Lease received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Bucknell University.

Donald Liggitt was from York, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from William Penn High School. He entered the College in 1941 but enlisted in the Army Air Corps in the autumn of 1942.

He attended officer candidate school in Florida and after service in North Carolina, he served in Europe during the march on Berlin. He returned to the United States in October 1945 and was stationed at Randolph Field in Texas as an assistant judge advocate.

On May 7, 1946, Captain Liggitt was among five men killed in the crash of a bomber in Louisiana.

Mary Line Todd was born on June 15, 1897 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She attended the Peabody Conservatory, where she joined Chi Omega, and later became a teacher in the Carlisle School District. On June 6, 1950, she married Glenn E. Todd, a prominent Carlisle businessman as well as a graduate and trustee of Dickinson College, where she was employed in the College Bookstore. She worked as head of the College Bookstore, which was then located in the basement of the Alumni Gymnasium, from 1948 until 1954. She was also a life member of the General Alumni Association at Dickinson.

The Todds were prominent in the Carlisle community. In addition to her husband's many and varied activities, Mary Todd attended the First United Church of Christ and became a member of the Mary Dickinson Club, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and of the Carlisle Hospital Auxiliary. In 1972, she and her husband donated $100,000 towards a total pledge of $400,000 in order to endow the Glenn E. and Mary L. Todd Chair. On July 4 of the following year, her husband passed away, and less than three months later, on September 23, 1973, Mary Todd died at Carlisle Hospital.

Benjamin Lippincott was born the elder son of Crispin Lippincott and his first wife, Mary Ann Wilkins Lippincott, in Haddonfield, New Jersey on July 22, 1827. He prepared for college at the nearby Methodist-affiliated Pennington School. In 1855, he entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania along with his half-brother Joshua Allan Lippincott. Benjamin was elected as a member of the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class in 1858. He then studied to become a Methodist clergyman.

Soon after graduation, Lippincott served as the principal of the Cumberland Institute in nearby Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He then moved to the West, where in 1860 he became head of the growing Puget Sound Wesleyan Institute in Olympia, Washington. Founded by local Methodists, the school was well-supported and was on the verge of being funded as a university when the Civil War halted proceedings. The territorial legislature instead elected Lippincott the superintendent of public schools for the entire territory. His later career is largely undocumented by available records. It is known that Lippincott returned to New Jersey by the end of his life. He also served on the Dickinson College board of trustees, once again along with his brother, for more than a decade beginning in 1891.

Joshua A. Lippincott was born in Burlington County, New Jersey on January 31, 1835 to Crispin and Elizabeth Garwood Lippincott. He prepared for college at the Pennington Seminary and enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1855, along with his older half-brother, Benjamin Crispin Lippincott. While at the college, Joshua Lippincott was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. He graduated with his class and his brother in the early summer of 1858.

Lippincott immediately took up a post at his old school and remained at Pennington Seminary teaching mathematics and German until 1862. At that time, he became a high school principal and superintendent of schools in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Lippincott then moved on to Trenton, New Jersey in 1865 to become principal of the boy's section of the New Jersey State Model School there. He moved again in 1869 to teach school in Baltimore, Maryland for three years.

Francis (Frank) Sutton Livingston was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 3, 1838. His father was William Townsend Livingston, an American merchant who arrived in the port city in that decade and settled into business as a shipper, wool factor, and merchant on Calle Victoria. Francis Livingston's mother was Elizabeth Louisa Lord Evans, the widow of English merchant John Evans. Livingston entered Dickinson College with the class of 1861. While at the College, he was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. Livingston did not complete his program and left to study law in Albany, New York, his father's home city.

James Loenshal was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania on August 17, 1923 and graduated from Hollidaysburg High School in 1941. He entered the College in the autumn with the class of 1945. He played on the basketball team and was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He was slated to join Skull and Key at the end of his sophomore year but by then he had already withdrawn to enlist in the Army Air Force, in February 1943.

Training as a pilot, Loenshal received his commission in Oklahoma in June 1944 and was posted to Italy and a B-24 squadron soon after. On a mission to bomb the Korneuburg oil refinery near Vienna, on February 7, 1945, the Liberator that Loenshal was co-piloting received a direct hit from enemy anti-aircraft artillery over Austria. Though initial reports from the squadron suggested that parachutes had been seen, official communications later confirmed that the aircraft had been seen to disintegrate in mid-air, changing his status from "missing in action" to "presumed dead." He was twenty-one years old.

Henry Logan was born on June 22, 1889 in Carrol Township, York County, Pennsylvania to John N. and Ella Mae Coover Logan. He attended York High School, graduating in 1906, and then entered Dickinson College. At Dickinson, he became involved in the Theta Chi fraternity. In 1910, he received a B.A. degree from the College, which he followed with a M.A. degree in 1912. After receiving his first degree from Dickinson, he embarked on a teaching career, but abandoned it after just six years to pursue law instead.

John Long was from Manheim, Pennsylvania and, after high school at East Hempfield, he entered Dickinson in September 1937. He graduated four years later with the class of 1941. He was a member of the Mohler Scientific Club, the Glee Club, the German Club, and Sigma Chi fraternity. He was also a manager for the varsity soccer team.

Long entered the Air Corps in July, 1941 and trained as a navigator, earning his wings and his commission on May 2, 1942. He became an instructor for more than two years at Hondo Field in Texas before being assigned to combat duty in the Pacific in late 1944. He served as group navigator for the 38th Bomb Group of the 5th Air Force stationed in the Lingayen Gulf, winning the Air Medal.

On August 9, 1945, in an attack on Kyushu, Japan, John Long's bomber crashed and he was killed in action. This incident took place five days before the Japanese surrender and eight days before Long's twenty-sixth birthday.

Zatae Longsdorff was born on April 16, 1866, the second of six children of William Henry and Lydia R. Haverstick Longsdorff of Centerville, Pennsylvania, a few miles southwest of Carlisle. William Henry, a physician, was a Dickinson graduate of the class of 1856. Zatae’s brother, Harold, graduated from the College in 1879. Zatae continued the family tradition by graduating with the class of 1887, becoming the first female graduate of the College. She obtained a master's degree in cursu from Dickinson in 1890. Sisters Hildegarde (class of 1888), Jessica (class of 1891), and Persis (class of 1894) all attended Dickinson in turn.

After graduation, Zatae pursued medical instruction at Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia, earning her degree in 1890. She served a year as an intern at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, and then relocated to Fort Hall Reservation near Blackfoot, Idaho where she became the resident physician for a short time.

A. Gale Straw and Zatae Longsdorf were married November 12, 1891, shortly after Zatae returned to the East. The couple had four children, and Zatae later resumed her medical practice at Elliot Hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire. A. Gale Straw died in 1926 after a long illness following his surgical service in the First World War.

Harold H. Longsdorff was born in Bellevue, Nebraska on July 28, 1858. He was the eldest child and only son of William H. Longsdorff, Dickinson class of 1856, and Lydia R. Haverstick Longsdorff. When Harold Longsdorff was still a babe in arms, the family moved back to Cumberland County, where his father opened a long-standing medical practice. He prepared for his undergraduate years at the Newville Academy and entered Dickinson College with the class of 1879. While at the College, Longsdorff was a member of Chi Phi fraternity and, like his father, was elected to the Belles Lettres Society. He graduated with his class in the early summer of 1879 and entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore. He earned his medical degree in 1882.

William H. Longsdorff was born in Silver Spring Township, near Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania on March 24, 1834. He was the fourth of seven children born to Adam and Mary Senseman Longsdorff. His father was a farmer and later served as Cumberland County sheriff during which time the family lived at the county seat of Carlisle. The younger Longsdorff entered Dickinson College there with the class of 1856 after education at Dickinson's preparatory school. While there, he was elected to the Belles Lettres Society, but withdrew before he took his degree. Longsdorff instead studied medicine and then dentistry in Philadelphia, graduating from the Jefferson Medical College in 1856 and from the Philadelphia Dental School the following year.

Charles Lore was born in Odessa, Delaware on March 16, 1831 the son of Eldad and Priscilla Henderson Lore. He was prepared at Middletown Academy in Delaware and then entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1848. He was a member of the Union Philosophical Society and graduated with his class in June, 1852.

He went on to study the law and after a time as the clerk of the Delaware House of Representatives in 1857, was called to the bar in his home county of New Castle in 1861. He was the draft commissioner for the county during the Civil War. His political career blossomed after the conflict. By 1869 he was attorney-general of Delaware, serving till 1874 and then served two terms as a Democrat in the United States Congress between 1883 and 1887. In 1893, he was named as the chief justice of the state supreme court and was re-appointed in 1897.

He had married Rebecca Bates of Mount Holly, New Jersey on July 7, 1862. He was a life long Methodist. His health deteriorating, he retired from the bench in 1909. Charles Brown Lore died in Wilmington, Delaware on March 6, 1911, ten days before his eightieth birthday.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 1, 1938, Neal Lovsnes was a bachelor of science graduate of the class of 1960. While at Dickinson he was a four-year member of both the basketball and baseball teams, captaining the latter in his last two seasons. He was also active in the Belles Lettres Literary Society, the D-Club, and the Phi Delta Theta fraternity for four years. A R.O.T.C. cadet, he graduated as a force commander and a cadet lieutenant colonel.

He became a member of the regular army specializing in field artillery. He had married Sue Wiegand of St. Louis. In October, 1968, he began a tour of duty in South Vietnam. On April 15, 1969, while traveling to take up a command with the 101st Airborne Division, his helicopter was brought down by hostile fire in Thua Thien province. Major Neal Lovsnes was thirty years old.

Birth: April 13, 1840; Loudoun County, Virginia

Death: June 27, 1862 (age 22);  Battle of Gaines Mill

Military Service: CSA, 1861-62

Unit: Company D, 8th Virginia Infantry

Alma Mater: Dickinson College, B.A. (Class of 1858 non-graduate)

Leven W. Luckett hailed from Loudoun County, Virginia. He entered Dickinson as a sophomore in the fall of 1855. He stayed only one year, however, and does not appear in the catalogue for 1856. While a student, Luckett was a member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society. Evidence indicates that he subsequently attended the University of Virginia.

Luckett entered the Confederate States Army, most likely in the early summer of 1861. He served as a private in Company D, 8th Virginia Infantry. He was wounded on June 27, 1862 at the Battle of Gaines Mill, Virginia and died two days later.