The song was first sung at the Alumni Dinner in June 1901 during Commencement
Week. Governor Beaver, President of the Board of Trustees, arose immediately
and proclaimed it "the official song of Penn State". With President
Atherton's agreement, it became so. Pattee's original version had six
verses but later two were omitted and the four-verse version is accepted
as the Alma Mater.
The issue of standing "at Boyhood's Gate" waiting to be "molded into
men" bothered Pattee from the first. Penn State had been coed for thirty
years when the song was written but Pattee felt the ethos of the school
was so male oriented that the song was appropriate as written. He later
had second thoughts. In his posthumously-published autobiography, he
realized that the words bothered many and suggested possibly changing
"boyhood" to "childhood" and "mold...into men" to a repeat of "Dear
old State." In 1975, with Professor Patricia Farrell acting as a spokesperson
for many who felt a change long-overdue, the Board of Trustees accepted
Pattee's original suggestion in honor of International Women's Year.
The Penn State Nittany Lion
The athletic symbol of the Pennsylvania State University is the North
American felis concolor, variously known as the mountain lion, cougar,
puma, or panther. The large tawny-colored "cat" became extinct in this
region a quarter of a century after the University was founded in 1855.
Penn State is located in the broad Nittany Valley near Mount Nittany,
terminal point of a range also called Nittany--a name said to be derived
from Indian words meaning a protective barrier against the elements.
While the name itself can be seen on W. Scull's map of Pennsylvania,
dated 1770, in approximately the correct place, regional folklore connects
the name Nittany or Nita-Nee with two Indian maidens. The mythological
Nita-Nee was a princess whose people reveres her for leading them into
the fertile central Pennsylvania valley, safe from enemy tribes. When
she died, the mountain miraculously arose overnight at the burial site,
and the name thus was given to the geographical landmarks.
Nita-Nee became a favored name for Indian girls, one of whom figures
in another popular legend. She fell in love with a white trader who
was forced to flee by her seven brothers. They drove him into a nearby
cavern (Penn's Cave), where he died, crying out for his lost Nita-Nee.
We now recognize that the legends of the Indian maidens were the invention
of author and publisher Henry W. Shoemaker, the story of Nita-Nee and
her lover Malachi Boyer, first appeared in print in 1903. Shoemaker
then attributed the tale to "an aged Seneca Indian named Isaac Steele."
He later admitted the various Indian names were "purely fictitious."
Adoption of the Nittany Lion as Penn State's athletic symbol was an
idea of Harrison D. "Joe" Mason '07. At Princeton in 1904, he and other
members of Penn State's varsity baseball team were shown two Bengal
tigers as an indication of the merciless treatment they would encounter
in the game. Mason replied with an instant fabrication of the Penn State
Nittany Mountain Lion - king of the beasts - who would overcome even
the Tiger. The team defeated Princeton and Mason persevered with his
idea.
Confusion with the African Lion is was common until the symbol was
officially adopted when the class of 1940 presented its gift of a sculptured
Nittany mountain lion in 1942. The work of noted sculptor Heinz Warneke,
the crouching powerful figure is now the popular Nittany Lion Shrine,
located at Penn State's University Park campus on a grassy mound amid
tall trees near Recreation Building.
