1950s
Maj. Gen. Robert Haas, MEd ’56, Massillon, OH, received a Strasburg Tiger Foundation Distinguished Alumni award during the May 2022 graduation ceremony at Strasburg-Franklin High School.
Haas was in the ROTC at The University of Akron and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He commanded a combat platoon in Korea, earning six medals for his leadership, including the Bronze Star and a Combat Infantryman Badge. After earning a master’s degree in education at Kent State, he taught and coached at Strasburg-Franklin High School in Strasburg, Ohio. He continued to teach at Massillon City Schools and was promoted to principal, then assistant superintendent.
Haas joined the Army Reserves and the Ohio Military Reserves and was promoted to the rank of major general. His 50-year military career spanned World War II, the Korean War and the Persian Gulf War. He was inducted into the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame (located in Columbus, Ohio) in 2008.
Lois Youngen, BS ’55, Eugene, OR, who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in the early 1950s and taught at the University of Oregon, was honored by Kent State’s Varsity “K” Athletic Hall of Fame as the 2022 Distinguished Athletic Alumna on Sept. 16, 2022.
She also was inducted into the Tuscarawas County Sports Hall of Fame on June 18, 2022. Two days later, she spoke at the Dover Public Library in Tuscarawas County for a program titled “Lois Youngen—Still in a League of Her Own.”
Youngen received a doctorate degree from The Ohio State University in 1971. She taught for 36 years in the physical education department at the University of Oregon, where she coached or taught 26 sports and recreational activities and was an exemplary professor and administrator. In 1988, Youngen and other women of the league became part of the permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Doris “Rae” Badertscher, BS ’57, Marion, OH, arranged for the Marion County Historical Society to display a collection of toothpick sculptures by her late husband, James Badertscher, BA ’57, who died in 2017. The pandemic delayed the exhibit, but 75 of his toothpick structures were finally displayed at the historical society from July through November 2021. The detailed structures included trains, cars, steamships, a castle, Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, flowers, a wheelbarrow and a push lawn mower.
She says her husband, who spent most of his career in health care administration, began creating toothpick structures during his time at Kent State, where the couple first met. After they married in 1958, he built pieces on a regular basis, focusing on this hobby during the winter months when he couldn’t pursue his other hobby, gardening.