"We Are Penn State."
The inspirational story of Wally Triplett, Steve Suhey, and the 1948 Penn State Nittany Lions. A nice reminder of why we're so proud of those four words.
8 months ago
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I wish they had promoted that a little more
Prato’s quote made it sound like it was an open event, and not many people showed up. Had I heard about it, I would have made the trek from West halls to the stadium to see him and hear him speak.
by dawsonPSU10 on Feb 15, 2009 8:39 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
That is a great story! Makes you "Penn State" proud.
Those were really tough times for African American athletes. We’re far from being a perfect society but thank God we have come a long way from those days. I remember PITT having a similar situation at the ‘56 Sugar Bowl. They had one black player, Bobby Grier. The governor of Georgia actually demanded that GA Tech not play the game against PITT if Grier played. Of course, PITT was not going to play w/o Grier. The game went on (PITT lost 7-0). The PITT team had to stay at Tulane University because none of the New Orleans’ hotels would allow Grier to stay their. He was allowed at some functions but had to miss others.
For the longest time it was thought African Americans didn’t have the “brains” or leadership to play Quarterback or for that matter “Point Guard” in basketball. We see now some of the smartest minds in FB or BB are African Americans. Guys like Tony Dungy, Mike Tomlin, Magic Johnson and Lenny Wilkins leave you in awe of not just their FB/BB knowledge but also their leadership ability and philosophical outlook.
by PaJoe on Feb 15, 2009 11:10 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
that's a great story
it is a real shame that it isn’t promoted more. You’d think it would be a real boost to our image (as good as it already is).
by PSiriUs on Feb 16, 2009 9:02 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
Agreed... great story and proud to know where the WE ARE...
came from. Thank you to Triplett, Suhey, and all of the other greats on that team that took a stand and wrote a great chapter for a great program.
Thanks for the awesome find, RUTS!
I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member
by TheMightyErik on Feb 16, 2009 9:34 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
If you read the comments after the story...
one commentor seems to have sorces that point to PSU borrowing the WE ARE cheer from Southern Cal.
I went into this story thinking we took it from Marshall, read it thinking that Steve Suhey coined it, then read the comments and was disappointed to see we copied USC. (Head shaking).
pinkertonpark.com - you owe yerself a laugh.
by rahpsu92 on Feb 17, 2009 12:50 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I don't see any comments after the story
but would like to see these “sources”.
by The JuggerNitt on Feb 17, 2009 3:54 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I haven't read the comments
But I’m almost positive one of the sources is “Crazy crack addict ranting to himself in alleyway”
by dawsonPSU10 on Feb 17, 2009 6:46 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I somehow followed a link to the story
and it actually had comments that time (dunno why I can’t see them when I click the above link). Anyway, not sure what I believe, but the person said that they read a story like 10 years ago in one of the PSU magazines where the cheerleaders supposedly claimed they learned the cheer from USC cheerleaders.
I do doubt that this Triplett/Suhey story is the origination of the cheer, though, since it wasn’t until decades later that PSU started chanting it.
by The JuggerNitt on Feb 17, 2009 11:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Here's the comment...
“UncleLar wrote on 02/16/2009 05:54:20 PM:
Lauren – it’s a nice story but you are just adding to an Urban Legend that just isn’t true. The cheer was created in the mid 70s and I can assure you that the cheerleaders who started it didn’t have any clue about Steve Suhey’s little speech 25 years earlier (and, in fact, Suhey was reported to have said "We’re Penn State”, not “We are Penn State”). Someone has simply noted the similarity of the two phrases and built a legend out of it.
Town and Gown magazine did a story on the cheer in an article in the late 90s. They interviewed the cheerleaders who created the cheer and they confirmed that they got the words from Southern Cal, who does a “We are… SC” cheer.
If you’d like to confirm the REAL origin of the cheer, call Bob Krimmel, the former PSU assistant AD and current AD at St Francis in Loretto. He was one of the original cheerleaders that started the cheer."
pinkertonpark.com - you owe yerself a laugh.
by rahpsu92 on Feb 18, 2009 12:02 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
They did this on The Penn State Football Story in October
Here is the link: http://www.gopsf.com/video/watch/118/Wally%20Triplett
Born and raised in the shadow of Mount Nittany
by Elihu on Feb 16, 2009 9:59 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
Such a great story
As a black alumna of PSU, when I first started back in 2001, everything about PSU was negative (its such a racist town, a black person got killed up there, the sit-ins/threatening letters). However, through my time there, even though it was far from perfect (I lost count of how many times ppl in cars yelled n****r at me while walking down the street with my friends on Fri/Sat nights), PSU became my home just like it was Wally Triplett’s home. We Are TRULY Penn State!
by kmblue on Feb 16, 2009 10:12 AM EST reply actions 1 recs
It breaks my heart to hear that stuff, but it doesn't surprise me
My dad and his generation have lamented that sometime around the 90’s Penn State showed a dramatic shift in it’s student population. They said “it looks like the 50’s” there now, all the kids are clean cut and worried about social status and what store they bought their pants in, and well… however you want to describe it….
When my dad and his brothers went to school there they marched for civil rights, organized bus trips to DC for anti-war demonstrations, they even laid in the street on Atherton for days and shut the whole town down over these issues. They were all white kids from rural PA, but the mentality was totally different.
Anymore, many of the students are still from rural PA, but they have this closed-mindedness and ignorance that just is just so frustrating. It’s hard to believe that town and this state have actually regressed in 30 years time…
Anyway — I’m still proud of Penn State and all it stands for, and the generations of people that made us proud even if this latest one is regressing… I really hope it’s all cyclical and when my kids go there it’s a different place then when I left it.
"We hugged as grown men do. It was a great moment. Then, it was business as usual." -- LJ Sr.
by millzners on Feb 16, 2009 12:56 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Well
I almost transferred my freshman year because of the culture shock (I’m from inner city Philly) and just not fitting in but I stuck through it. I made friends, some of them unexpected (my 2 closest friends from PSU are what you’d call stereotypical sorority girls except I’m not in a sorority) and got involved on campus. I tell the kids at the school where I work now the truth about college (an inner city high school) and how there is racism/sexism/choose your ism but it is what you make it. You take the lemons and make lemonade.
by kmblue on Feb 16, 2009 7:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
One time I took this optional race relations seminar at PSU — something they offered and gave you some extra credit for…
Anyway, we sat there with a group of about 12 kids and another grad student who was leading the thing. We basically just had an open discussion — and one of the questions was pretty funny…
They asked: looking at your hometown/highschool how does this campus compare with regards to race and diversity.
about 8 of the kids were like “I come from a small town so this is very normal, it’s just like home”
The rest of us were like “this has to be the most homogeneous, whitest place on Earth! There is 0 diversity!” One kid made a joke about when it first snowed while he was up there and he said “Just when I thought SC couldn’t get any whiter!”
As you can guess these kids and myself were all from Philly or Hbg…
"We hugged as grown men do. It was a great moment. Then, it was business as usual." -- LJ Sr.
by millzners on Feb 17, 2009 8:53 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
LOL
Even though now you got a ridiculous amount of minorities from NYC area, D.C./MD (thanks LJSr for making PSU not only cool for the athletes but for everyone else in the area) and Yinzburgh. It was a bit of culture shock around some of the other black kids as well.
I think that seminar ended up evolving into SOC 119 with Sam Richards. Good but crazy class.
by kmblue on Feb 17, 2009 6:38 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
they didn't require it when I was a student there
but didn’t they introduce some sort of required “diversity” class for students entering around 2000 or so?
by The JuggerNitt on Feb 17, 2009 11:03 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I don't remember
I had to take SOC 119 because it was a major requirement though.
by kmblue on Feb 18, 2009 7:15 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I graduated ’03 and had to take the diversity credit….I think they added it as part of the demands of the HUB sit in but I could be wrong
by psupride on Feb 22, 2009 9:12 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I'm pretty sure you are right
that it was a result of the HUB sit-in
by The JuggerNitt on Feb 23, 2009 3:02 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
PSU is a beacon in a relatively regressing landscape
I wish I could say that politics has poisoned center PA (if not the country), even though I’ve met an enormous amount of nice, decent people there. But it’s also a devolving black hole of a bad economy, dwindling factories, ubiquitous beer culture (some of you may think there’s nothing wrong with this, but I think it’s damaging to the social psyche), eroding and abandoned buildings, and public schools that make inner-city schools look like the La Sorbonne.
Again, I’m not saying all of center PA has it bad.
by Mr. Rosewater on Feb 16, 2009 2:48 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I've driven through
Phillipsburg, DuBois, Clearfield, Kane, etc. And it makes North Philly look pretty good. I was telling my mom, a fellow teacher, that despite Philly’s issues, the fact that we are in a major city makes a difference when it comes to getting help and aid. Kids in Lewistown/Howard, if you can’t afford a parochial school if there is one nearby, you may be isht out of luck with the caliber of your schools.
by kmblue on Feb 16, 2009 7:58 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Suhey...
It’s also pretty cool that the Grandson of one of the players mentioned in the article is Joe Suhey, a current player
by JoePaPa on Feb 16, 2009 6:49 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Unfortunately
This story can be classified under “revisionist history”.
by PennStateBasketball on Feb 18, 2009 7:11 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
Do tell!
Seriously, I’m interested.
--
Mr. Bob Dobalina
by Run Up The Score on Feb 18, 2009 9:01 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I kind of agree
I doubt that was how the “WE ARE” chant started. I don’t deny that Suhey said the words, but I don’t see how that translated into the WE ARE chant. I doubt the entire campus became united in ending segregation that day and decided to bear the civil rights cross forever more.
Frankly, I don’t care where the WE ARE chant came from. Maybe USC started it, but I don’t recall hearing any “WE ARE TROJANS” chants during the Rose Bowl. The WE ARE chant is Penn State’s now, and that’s fine with me. I can’t turn on a Patriot League basketball game anymore without hearing Zombie Nation blared during a timeout. Schools steal things off of each other all the time. But the WE ARE chant is now mostly identified with Penn State in my opinion.
Mike
Black Shoe Diaries
by BSD on Feb 18, 2009 9:49 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
We've latched onto it
And as time progresses, it will only become more ‘ours’ because other schools and fans will begin to associate the chant with us… In the 80’s and 90’s it was probably being used all over the place.
But when you see the We Are chant used everywhere, even in PSU Hershey Med advertisements, you know that it’s no longer a football chant but a part of our tradition as an institution. To ND or Marshall fans its kind of just a football chant, to us though it’s more. I think in another 10 years time the We Are chant will be about as universally associated with Penn State as the gator chomp is to Florida, or the Tamahawk chop is to FSU.
"We hugged as grown men do. It was a great moment. Then, it was business as usual." -- LJ Sr.
by millzners on Feb 18, 2009 10:35 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
USC definitely did the "WE ARE S C" chant during the Rose Bowl
Not as often as PSU does the “WE ARE PENN STATE” chant, but they still did it.
by The JuggerNitt on Feb 18, 2009 12:26 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
yeh/ we are sc chants sucked. they did it at the end when they were finishing us off. they only did it because of us.
We are not normal...WE are Legends...We are PENN STATE!
by hawaiipennstatefan on Feb 25, 2009 2:02 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
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