The "The Story Of The 'We Are...Penn State' Motto: Part II" Story

It was an ordinary day. My story yesterday told the story of Wally Triplett who was one of two Negro (I use Negro rather than African American or black, since that is what he preferred to be called) players who played for the Penn State Nittany Lions in the late 1940s.  Their team had been invited to play in the 1948 Cotton Bowl, but the Cotton Bowl, which is played in Dallas, Texas, didn't allow Negroes to participate since they were a segregated state at the time.  They asked Penn State to come to Dallas without Wally and his teammate Dennie Hoggard.  The players took a vote and voted unanimously that the entire team would go or they would stay home.  They declared that "We are Penn State" and wouldn't go without their teammates.  The Cotton Bowl relented, with the approval of Southern Methodist University, their opponent in the game, but the two Negro players weren't allowed to sleep in the same hotel as their white teammates, so the entire team stayed at the nearby Dallas Air Naval Training Base.  The 1948 Cotton Bowl was the first interracial football game at the Cotton Bowl in Texas.  During their stay in Dallas, the team found a nearby nightclub and decided to make a visit...with Wally.  The owner said, "We ain't never had no n---- in here, but you come on."  The game ended in a 13-13 tie.  This all happened 17 years before Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.  Wally's last visit to Beaver Stadium was in 2018 when he visited with current coach James Franklin and made a documentary called "We Are".  He died November 8, 2018. An historical marker is outside Beaver Stadium near the museum entrance telling about Triplett and his accomplishments and the team chant..."We Are" was alleged to have been born during that time.  The student publication, "Onward State" ran a "Penn State History Lesson" claiming that the origin of the iconic "We Are Penn State" phrase and cheer was from the actions of the 1947-48 football team, who admirably stood up to racial prejudice.  The same story has been published in The Daily Collegian, Penn Stater alumni magazine and the local newspaper, the Centre Daily times.  But, it that true?  Penn State historian, Lou Prato, in the publication Town and Gown, said that isn't true.  He agrees that it is an inspirational story and proud moment in Penn State history, but it's not true!  The real source of the phrase and cheer was told first in 1999 by Lou in Town and Gown.  In that article, which has been reposted several times since, Prato details how the Penn State cheerleaders in the mid 1970s and early 1980s created the cheer.  Now it has grown into an iconic statement for students, alumni and others, even in airport lounges, connecting everyone to Penn State.  Lou says he even has evidence.  First: Between 1948 and the early 1980s there was no mention of "We Are Penn State."  Second: Lou's 1999 article in Town and Gown, says that there were no cheerleaders who mentioned the events of the Cotton Bowl in '48 and the use of "We Are Penn State".  Third: Penn State athletics marketing created a video in 2008-09 where they mentioned the use of "We Are Penn State" for the first time.  Fourth: 2 years before that video, Mr. Triplett did another video for Penn State in Motion and never once mentioned the phrase "We Are Penn State."  So, Lou Prato claims that the cheerleaders created the phrase and cheer exactly as they described it to him in 1999.   Even Mr. Triplett emphasized many times that the important phrase to him was "We play all or none," rather than "We're Penn State."  Mr. Prato says what the team did in 1947-48 is a great an honorable part of Penn State history and never received the attention it should have, but the effort is dishonored by an effort to make a mythical link to the phrase and cheer where none exists.  Furthermore, to make that link steals the legacy of the cheerleaders who actually created the phrase and cheer.  I guess each and ever person will have to make their own conclusions, but for me...well, I will still yell "Penn State" when I hear someone else yell out "We Are!"  What else would you yell?  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.