Wabash College Athletics

Kenneth L. Beasley, as a college athlete, you proudly wore both the Wabash College scarlet and the Harvard crimson. College sports can’t offer much greater opportunity than that, can they? Here at Wabash College you started and lettered in football in your sophomore, junior, and senior years, in the days when freshmen could not play at the varsity level. Of course, your senior year was the great 1951 team that compiled a record of 7-0-1. Your teammates thought so highly of you that they elected you team captain, and you were named the 1950 Most Valuable Player.

In graduate school at Harvard, you evidently missed the Scarlet so intensely, you had to put it on again. In Cambridge they call it “crimson,” but you played just as hard at Harvard rugby as you had at Wabash football. Later, during your high school teaching career, you coached two undefeated teams: Evanston Township High School in Illinois, and Richmond High School, where you had starred in football, basketball, and track as a student. You worked for many years as assistant to the president of Northern Illinois University and rounded out your career at Butler University. Your work has been praised by none more significantly than SRA International, a leader in the field of research administration, when they honored you with the Distinguished Contribution to Research Administration Award in recognition of your own research in the field. All in all, you live a model Wabash life: Scientiae et Vertuti, a sound mind in a sound body.

But tonight as we induct you into the Wabash College Athletics Hall of Fame, we believe there was no moment of satisfaction or thrill greater for you than the moment back about this time in 1949. There you were, a sophomore, tearing toward the end zone while the ball is in the air. Suddenly your hands are up; only seconds left on the clock, and you catch the pass -- to beat DePauw. The scarlet flag flew very proudly over Wabash that day! Ken Beasley, you were a hero then and you remain so today. The National Association is proud to induct you into the Wabash College Athletics Hall of Fame.