Chadron State College Athletic Hall of Fame
He played halfback on offense and in the secondary on defense for the great Chadron State football teams of the late 1940s. A highlight occurred in the final game of his career on Thanksgiving Day 1949, when he intercepted four passes while playing in the Bean Bowl in Scottsbluff against Idaho State. Only one CSC player, Keven Logan in 1985, has ever matched that feat.
Lewellen is a native of Minatare where he played on the football team that was accorded the Class C state championship and an all-class top 10 ranking his senior year in 1941. He was a member of the track team that tied for the state title the following spring.
He had planned to enroll at CSC after graduating from high school, but World War II interrupted those plans. He became a staff sergeant with Patton’s 16th Armored Tank Division that drove the Nazis out of eastern Europe in the spring of 1945.
After graduating from CSC, he taught and coached at Hay Springs and Chadron. During his seven years as the Chadron coach, his basketball teams had a 122-35 record, qualified for the state tournament three times and won the Class B state championship in 1960-61. He then was the Chadron Middle School principal two years and superintendent at Rushville five years and at Mitchell nearly 20 years.
Lewellen has an exemplary record of service to Chadron State. He has been the leader of the Purple Passion group that is made up largely of CSC alums from the late ‘40s and meets annually at various locations in the western half of the nation. In addition, he and his wife, Irma, have established scholarships to CSC that are available to seniors from six Panhandle communities where he and his family have lived. He also has served on the board of directors of the Chadron State Foundation and received the college’s Distinguished Service Award in 1988.
He has also established close ties with the citizens of Plazen, Czechoslovakia, one of the towns his tank division liberated. Beginning in the 1990s, he made 13 trips in the month of May to help Plazen celebrate its freedom.
