Benjamin W. Griffith (1980) - Bucknell Athletics Hall of Fame

Benjamin W. Griffith

Induction:
1980
Class:
1899

Sports/Position: Football, Baseball, Administrator
Ben Griffith had a distinguished Bucknell career as an athlete, scholar, teacher and athletic administrator. As a football quarterback and baseball second baseman he was a teammate of Christy Mathewson in both sports. He later (1909-20 and 1926-45) served as the university's first graduate manager of athletics. Griffith, who was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was awarded a Ph.D. by The Sorbonne and was an authority on the French novelist Honore de Balzac. A professor of romance languages at Bucknell for 33 years, he was honored by the senior class when the 1941 edition of L'Agenda, Bucknell's yearbook, was dedicated to him. The citation noted that "Fame and recognition have many followers; service and unselfish devotion but few. And even fewer are those who can honestly claim to be real scholars with a keen interest in athletics. Because he is one of those singular men and because for 33 years he has typified what is finest in Bucknell traditions ... We acknowledge and honor a truly great Bucknell man." At the time of Griffith's death in 1945, a colleague at a neighboring school wrote that, "[Griffith] was always on the right side of any athletic problem when there was a wrong and a right side. He stood for the finest and best in athletics, and will leave a mark that will extend down through the years."
(Bucknell Hall of Fame Class of 1980)