Features
A Man for All Seasons
by Jerold Wikoff
When Prof. Emeritus Lou Hammann ’51 first stepped onto the Gettysburg campus in 1947, Henry Hanson was president of the College. Freshmen like him were required to wear “dinks” (beanies) and signboards that identified their home towns. Seven military barracks lined the south side of West Lincoln Avenue and housed more than 200 students. Some students were sleeping on cots in Plank Gymnasium.
Nine years later, when Hammann began teaching in the Bible Department, Willard Paul had just succeeded Walter Langsam as president. Stine Hall had opened, the first of three new dormitories to replace the barracks. And Hammann found himself teaching five sections per semester on the Old and New Testaments.
Change only accelerated as the decades passed. By the time Hammann retired in 1996 Carl Hanson and Charles Glassick had completed lengthy tenures as president, and Gordon Haaland was the sixth president since Hammann’s freshman year. The Bible Department no longer existed, replaced years before by the Department of Religion. The barracks were only a dim memory, as was Contemporary Civilizations and the rest of the College’s general curriculum requirements from 1947 to 1969.
Hammann experienced a lifetime of change at Gettysburg College, but he was also a vibrant part of bringing about that change. In addition to teaching, he coached the College soccer teams from 1959 to 1966 — first the freshmen team, then the varsity. He was also the designated supply pastor for United Church of Christ parishes within a 75-mile radius. “There was a lot to do,” he said.
Between 1963 and 1974 Hammann earned an master’s degree in philosophy from Penn State and a Ph.D. in religion at Temple University. And then there was the business venture in 1983 with his younger brother They opened a fresh seafood market on Railroad Street. “But that is a story too short and too long to tell,” he said.
Hammann loved every moment. “I’ve never regretted change,” he said. “I’ve always preferred to look ahead rather than spend time regretting what couldn’t be stopped.”
In a hurry
Hammann has always been a man in a hurry with a sense of purpose that has remained constant over decades.
Arriving on campus in the autumn of 1947, Hammann was “bewildered and a bit confused,” he told Stephen Mount ’94 in a 1992 oral-history interview for Prof. Michael Birkner’s History 300 class. “I didn’t know exactly what to expect,” he said. “My father went through the eighth grade, and my mother— I don’t think she went that far, so I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school. Nobody I knew was able to give me any experiential report on what college was like.”
Hammann’s bewilderment didn’t last long. “I was pretty much on my own, but I quickly found my way,” he said. At the time a Freshman Tribunal existed, which enforced what were then known as “freshman customs” — wearing dinks, memorizing songs, participating in a tug-of-war with sophomores — but Hammann had little time for such distractions.
“The Freshman Tribunal was just a form of hazing,” Hammann said. “It was sort of initiatory rights that I looked on as kind of silly. I just kept out of the way. As far as I was always concerned, I was here to go to classes.” And those classes had a profound impact.
Hammann cited Contemporary Civilizations, taught by philosophy and psychology professor Sheldon Ackley, as a course that greatly influenced him. “That class was one of my first,” Hammann said. “And it simply changed my life. Until then I had no idea that people thought things like that.”
Hammann did join a fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, in his sophomore year and played varsity soccer as well. He also held a place on the debate team. But his focus on studies never varied. “If anyone tried to pressure me to do something else, I just told them no,” he said. He even quit his participation in R.O.T.C. because he thought it was “kind of hokey and had other things to do with my time.
“For me, what really influenced my academic career was certain professors on the faculty — Norm Richardson in philosophy, Fred Schaeffer, who was head of the Greek department, and some others in psychology, sociology, and Latin. They gave me opportunities that I didn’t even know existed.”
Remembering Lou Hammann
I had Lou for only one class - the Senior Scholars Seminar that he co-taught with Carl Leinbach in 1976-77. The topic was conflict, a topic that Lou was passionate about. As I think back on that course, what touches me was his willingness to allow me to go off on a tangent with my major project. I wanted to do something related to my psychology major, and he and Carl allowed me to do a project on the resolution of role conflict in the developing child. I don't think that was necessarily the sort of project they had envisioned, but Lou always wanted to encourage a student to pursue an interest or passion. And I appreciated that.
Lou and his wife, Pat, are people who truly live by their principles. Their role in establishing the Hundredfold Farm demonstrates that. The values of that community include the avoidance of a sense of hierarchy through joint ownership of common land, decision-making by consensus, stewardship of the environment, the cultivation of intergenerational relationships, etc. This is Lou - a person who not only holds these values, but finds a way to live by them. We at Gettysburg College talk about the importance of leading a life of integrity, a life in which one's values are aligned with one's actions. I can't imagine a better example of that than Lou Hammann.
—Janet Morgan Riggs '77, Gettysburg College President
"Philosophers think twice about that which others never think once." Lou shared this "Lou-ism" with me last fall semester. He took me to lunch and engaged me in what I had come to expect from any conversation with him — warm hearted, world-bending confusion.
After the meal I told Lou, "You know, you're to blame for it all."
"Blame for what, Alex?" he asked with pretend incredulousness.
"For getting me tangled up in philosophy."
And it's true. His Philosophy 101 course during my first year wetted my thirst for philosophy. Without the blind dates with Descartes and Whitehead that Lou set me up with, without the philosophical dissection of Shelley's Frankenstein, and without the loving respect he showed me - as if I were one of his colleagues - I would not have majored in philosophy, which was the best decision of my Gettysburg College career. Lou's inspiring and inquisitive method of leading class discussions set the tone for my four years here and set me on the philosophical path. It's along this path that I see myself continuing to trek for many years to come.
—Alexander T. Englert '09
Lou is at home in the paradoxical, the quixotic, the mysterious and all that myth captures better than reason. "If you're not confused, you're not thinking," he tells bewildered young philosophy students as he celebrates the mind's struggle with the wild anarchy of the world. As a philosopher of this world rather than a dreamer of perfect worlds Lou loves the conversation that is philosophy and the community it creates."
—Lisa Portmess '72, Professor of Philosophy
Remembering Lou Hammann
I had Lou for only one class - the Senior Scholars Seminar that he co-taught with Carl Leinbach in 1976-77. The topic was conflict, a topic that Lou was passionate about. As I think back on that course, what touches me was his willingness to allow me to go off on a tangent with my major project. I wanted to do something related to my psychology major, and he and Carl allowed me to do a project on the resolution of role conflict in the developing child. I don't think that was necessarily the sort of project they had envisioned, but Lou always wanted to encourage a student to pursue an interest or passion. And I appreciated that.
Lou and his wife, Pat, are people who truly live by their principles. Their role in establishing the Hundredfold Farm demonstrates that. The values of that community include the avoidance of a sense of hierarchy through joint ownership of common land, decision-making by consensus, stewardship of the environment, the cultivation of intergenerational relationships, etc. This is Lou - a person who not only holds these values, but finds a way to live by them. We at Gettysburg College talk about the importance of leading a life of integrity, a life in which one's values are aligned with one's actions. I can't imagine a better example of that than Lou Hammann.
—Janet Morgan Riggs '77, Gettysburg College President
"Philosophers think twice about that which others never think once." Lou shared this "Lou-ism" with me last fall semester. He took me to lunch and engaged me in what I had come to expect from any conversation with him — warm hearted, world-bending confusion.
After the meal I told Lou, "You know, you're to blame for it all."
"Blame for what, Alex?" he asked with pretend incredulousness.
"For getting me tangled up in philosophy."
And it's true. His Philosophy 101 course during my first year wetted my thirst for philosophy. Without the blind dates with Descartes and Whitehead that Lou set me up with, without the philosophical dissection of Shelley's Frankenstein, and without the loving respect he showed me - as if I were one of his colleagues - I would not have majored in philosophy, which was the best decision of my Gettysburg College career. Lou's inspiring and inquisitive method of leading class discussions set the tone for my four years here and set me on the philosophical path. It's along this path that I see myself continuing to trek for many years to come.
—Alexander T. Englert '09
Lou is at home in the paradoxical, the quixotic, the mysterious and all that myth captures better than reason. "If you're not confused, you're not thinking," he tells bewildered young philosophy students as he celebrates the mind's struggle with the wild anarchy of the world. As a philosopher of this world rather than a dreamer of perfect worlds Lou loves the conversation that is philosophy and the community it creates."
—Lisa Portmess '72, Professor of Philosophy
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