JOE WHIPPLE
Football, 1937-38; Athletic Letterman Alumni Association secretary-treasurer 
Inducted January 25, 1992

Joe Whipple came to SMS from Girard, Kans., and was a football letterman for the Bears in 1937 and 1938.  Whipple was a running back who played on Coach Andy McDonald’s final SMS team in 1937, and was a member of the 5-2-2 team put together in 1938 by Coach Howard Blair in his first year at the SMS helm.  Following his graduation from SMS in 1940, Whipple remained an active supporter of Bear athletic programs, and became involved in the SMS Athletic Letterman Alumni Association when that organization was formed in 1960 by athletic director Aldo Sebben.  Whipple was involved in a project through which hundreds of SMS athletic lettermen were located and their names and addresses were catalogued for the formative stages of the letterman alumni group.  For many years, the Letterman Alumni Association elected a new president and vice-president each year, while Whipple stayed on as secretary-treasurer in a permanent capacity.  In that post, he maintained the records of the organization and contact with many former Bear athletes, as well as working on the project through which the SMS Athletic Dormitory was built in the early 1960s.  Whipple was involved in leadership roles in many of the association’s activities over the years, until the time the financial and administrative aspects of the association were merged with the SMS Development and Alumni office in the 1980s.