Shockers everywhere, at events long ago or happenings just the other day, always have something interesting to say. Take this sampling as a Shock Talk example:
“The South Carolina State Department of Athletics, in conjunction with the SC State Former Athletes Association, will honor former football coaching great Willie Jeffries during the ‘Honoring the Legacy of Willie Jeffries’ weekend on Oct. 16-17, 2015 in Orangeburg, S.C. The weekend will be two days filled with fun activities honoring the coaching legacy of Coach Jeffries.”
— From a promotional article featured on the online site for South Carolina State Bulldogs news and information. Former Shocker football players were among those in attendance at the “two days filled with fun.”
“Best part of the night was getting to hang out after the show with two great guys! Cool to meet all of the FGL band members and singer-songwriter Thomas Rhett!”
— Jeff Hansen, posting on Facebook after the bro-country duo Florida Georgia Line’s concert at Wichita’s INTRUST Bank Arena on Sept. 25, about hanging out with FGL’s Tyler Chiarelli, at left in the photo, and Dan Weller ’95/97, also a member of FGL’s band, in a Shocker T-shirt and hat gifted to him by the WSUAA. Weller rocked his new Shocker gear onstage, and the T garnered a comment to Hansen’s Facebook post: “Lovin’ the Shocker Shirt!” Weller talked to The Shocker’s staff writer Jessica Seibel ’08 about touring with FGL and his time at Wichita State as a business student.
Hey, Shockers! For this Shock Talk entry we’ve got something out
of this world for you. We’re going to share some breaking alumni
news about the WSUAA’s very first Alumni Achievement Award winner, Lincoln LaPaz ’20. LaPaz (1897-1985), a mathematics graduate of Fairmount College, was an astronomer and a pioneer
in the study of meteors, and his name is often associated with
UFO investigations on behalf of the military during the late 1940s
and early 1950s:
Earlier this year, the WSUAA was contacted about sharing one of
its photos of LaPaz with NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corp., for
a 60-minute science television program. The program, it was explained, is part of a series called Cosmic Front NEXT.
Each week on Thursdays in Japan a new Cosmic Front NEXT program is broadcast, says Yasue Drabble, of Washington International Business Ventures, a firm that is assisting NHK with
the program series. Drabble describes Cosmic Front NEXT as
being “similar to PBS’s NOVA series, but Cosmic Front NEXT focuses more on subjects in the areas of physics, astrophysics
and cosmology, while NOVA covers a wider scientific area.” The program that is slated to include LaPaz, she says, is a program
about antimatter, which was one of LaPaz’s research interests.
LaPaz, whose many professional highlights included founding the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico, held a master’s degree from Harvard and a doctorate from the University of Chicago, in addition to his bachelor’s degree from Fairmount College — where he was active in a galaxy of collegiate activities. In 1917, for instance, LaPaz led a group of Fairmount students — 12 guys and one girl — that became known as the Jinx Gang. Membership and initiation into the group was top secret, although the gang’s mission was not: protecting the Stone Jinx. The Jinx had been created by Fairmount’s football rival the Southwestern College Moundbuilders, who blasted the Wheatshockers 41-3 in 1912. To memorialize their win, Southwestern students selected a stone, one in the shape of a tombstone, and painted it with a grinning black cat clad in Fairmount’s colors of black and sunflower yellow, and with the date and score of the game. They placed the Jinx in a Winfield, Kan., graveyard, where it stayed until Fairmounters stole it — until the Moundbuilders stole it back. And so it went, until LaPaz formed the Jinx Gang to ensure the Jinx would stay securely on Fairmount’s campus. There is no record of where the Jinx ended up. Could experiments with antimatter be the answer?
