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ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME

RUSSELL L. FREELAND '51

Inducted: 1989

A four-year starting guard on the basketball team and its leading scorer during the 1949-50 season, Russ Freeland also was the first black student to play varsity football at DePauw. He earned four varsity letters in basketball, three in baseball and one in football, and he was a member of the "D" Men's Association four years. As a starting second baseman for the baseball team, he batted .300. A Rector Scholar, Freeland served as president of the junior class, member of the Council on Minority Problems for four years, member of the Student Governing Board, and Student Faculty Council. He started his career with International Harvester Company in Indianapolis in 1951 and later transferred to the company's world headquarters in Chicago. He was promoted through a series of positions and retired in 1986 as the company's corporate director of technical administration for Navistar International Transportation Corporation. He was appointed by Indiana Governor Roger Branigin to a four-year term on the Advisory Council to the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, and he served on Vice President Hubert Humphrey's Task Force on Youth Motivation. He was elected to the Indiana Silver Anniversary All-State High School Basketball team in 1972 and to the National Association of Basketball Coaches' Silver Anniversary All-America Team in 1976. An Indiana high school and small college basketball referee for 14 years, in 1965 he became the first black to officiate in an Indiana high school basketball sectional tournament.