Centre County Government

9. Cultural Icons

John Montgomery Ward, Centre County's most famous athlete BP (before Paterno). Courtesy Centre County Library and Historical Museum

Three County townships were named after outstanding local lawyers: Walker, after Judge Jonathan Walker, for whom Philip Benner built a manse in Bellefonte; Huston, after Judge Charles Huston, the land dispute lawyer, who wrote the book on warrant claims at the end of his life; and Burnside, after Judges Thomas and son James Burnside. Ferguson, Boggs, Haines, Miles, Potter and Gregg were named for the greatest landowners; Benner, Curtin, and Patton for ironmasters, the biggest employers. The rest took names of non-countians, ideals, or local features. None of poets or novelists. It's their turn now.

In 1996 Bruce Trinkley celebrated 46 lyric poems and 18 Froth songs written locally. His powerful settings for many orchestras and choruses, entitled Mountain Laurels, honored State College's centennial. Joe Grucci, Jack McManis, Deborah Austin, John Haag, John Balaban, Theodore Roethke and Jason Charnesky are among the poets we sang then. By teaching, by direct encouragement, by Pivot, by personal example, these poets inspired radiating circles of students, neighbors, and friends. County poets too far from the Centre Region to make that list include Pennsylvania Germans Calvin Ziegler and Henry Meyer, Martha Furnace poet Harriet Meek and Centre Hall poet Harvey Flink. Novels written in Centre County include works by Fred Pattee, Edward Valentine, Herbert Stover, John Barth, Joseph Heller, Tom Rogers, and Chuck Fergus for starters.

Bellefonte-born George Gray Barnard, who made the Civil War and Curtin monuments at the courthouse, statuary groups for the capitol front in Harrisburg, and a famous head of Lincoln, was among the most famous American sculptors of the 19^th century. Rob Fisher, whose assemblages of suspended steel adorn vestibules of many skyscrapers, is keeping that flame alive into the 21^st. Even more famous American cultural heroes had their roots here—John Montgomery Ward, curve-baller, infielder, manager extraordinaire, and the Mills Brothers whose voices set the tone of the 1940s. A number of padded shoulders have gone on to professional fame after a stint in Blue and White raising echoes from the roaring voices of the third largest city in Pennsylvania on crispy-Paterno fall afternoons.

Peanut and ice cream stand at Hecla Park, ca. 1915. Weekend excursions filled "train parks" in summer.

County entertainments evolved over time. 1830 Fourth of July speeches at open-air militia banquets evolved into musical evenings by the Fencibles in the 1850s. Centre County's Barnum, John D. Sourbeck, brought circuses to Bellefonte and violinist Ole Bull in 1881. Meanwhile, village singing conventions filled homes with singers during Christmas week rehearsals, and stuffed the church for the New Year's concert. Band wagons carried town bands to play, smoke cigars, and eat peanuts at local festivals. Crack ball teams got their towns so excited that baseball had to be outlawed at Grange Fair.

Even croquet drew spectators on a summer Sunday afternoon in Pine Grove Mills a hundred years ago.

Through the 1900s school sports, beginning with basketball, sprang to life as districts began to build and staff high schools. High school bands marched in firemen's parades, and lent pomp to graduations. National groups played to countywide audiences at big-band dances at Hecla and Hunter's Parks, country music entertainments at Grange Fair, and Artist Series concerts at Schwab and Eisenhower. Movie palaces flourished, aged, foundered to videos, and are being resurrected as historical monuments.

Today, capital "C" Culture pits school plays and musicals against Garman and Boal Barn theater productions; school bands and orchestras against the Nittany Valley Symphony and Centre Chamber Players; church, school and community choruses against college choirs and the State College Choral Society. Public radio hit the county ten years ago.

Pop culture puts a new national stamp on our rising generations every decade, ringing out even in park campsites from phonographs, stereos, boomboxes, video and computer screens. Grange Fair survives as Centre County's national specialty in its 128^th year. But nothing earlier has quite prepared us for that 800 pound gorilla, the Jordan Center.