Whitman Hall of Fame
Dean Lodmell, a three-sport athlete at Whitman, rarely had a day off during the academic year.
A two-way player for the football team, Lodmell was one of only two players in the football program to earn both the Niles Trophy and V.W. Conrad Trophy in the same season (1955). In the spring, Lodmell played and started at first base on the varsity baseball team each of his four years at the College.
The time in between those two sports, however, was when Lodmell achieved his greatest successes. His winter skills on the slopes eventually took him to the all-division NCAA championships twice, as well as to the U.S. Olympic team trials of 1955.
At the collegiate championships Lodmell represented Whitman on the national level by earning seventh place in the slalom and eighth in the four-way combined in 1954 and 12th in the slalom in 1955. At the Olympic trials he placed 21st in the giant slalom and 30th in alpine combined final results.
Of Lodmell, who graduated with a degree in mathematics and physics, then-President Chester C. Maxey wrote in a recommendation letter, “Few Whitman students have done so many things so well as Dean Lodmell.”
