By LANEY COOK, Student Reporter
For more than a century, the Lincoln statue has been sitting on the Alva campus, overlooking Oklahoma Boulevard from the grassy lawn near Herod Hall.
In 1915, Frank Ingels, a graduate of NWOSU’s class of 1911, sculpted a bust of President Abraham Lincoln’s head.
His younger brother, Roland Ingels, was a graduate of NWOSU’s class of 1915. Frank Ingels gifted the Lincoln bust to his younger brother’s class as a graduation present.
The class of 1915 then donated the bust to the university.
NWOSU President Grant Grumbine unveiled the bust on commencement day in May 1915.
The names of all the graduates from the spring 1915 semester are engraved into the base of the statue.
According to “NWOSU: A Centennial History,” the bust was first located between two buildings, but was moved over when Herod Hall was constructed.
Ingels was born on Jan. 2, 1886, and died on April 26, 1957. He originally was from Tamora, Nebraska, and then came to college as an art student at Northwestern.
According to an article from Oklahoma Panhandle State University, Ingels met Professor Lorado Taft from the art institute and impressed Taft with two busts he sculpted while in school.
Ingels moved to Chicago to work in Taft’s studio to design and create sculptors. He stayed there for 10 years.
During his time in Chicago, Ingels created a statue for OPSU called “The Sower.” He sculpted this as a gift to the Panhandle Agricultural to “show something of a nature that would inspire their young folks.”
The Sower was unveiled on the OPSU campus on July 3, 1915, only a few months after the unveiling of the Lincoln bust at Northwestern.
