On #MemorialDay, we remember and honor those who have served and continue to serve our country. 🐺🇺🇸

📸: The Belltower, built in memory of the #NCStateAlumni who lost their lives during World War I. Their names are etched into the memorial plaque inside the Shrine Room. pic.twitter.com/VkeK2BBE3p

— NC State Alumni (@NCStateAlumni) May 31, 2021

Best known as an NC State landmark where we rally and celebrate, the Memorial Belltower was built to honor NC State alumni killed in World War I. This #MemorialDay weekend, we remember its history.

Best known as an NC State landmark where we rally and celebrate, the Memorial Belltower was built to honor NC State alumni killed in World War I. This #MemorialDay weekend, we remember its history. Read more: https://t.co/LTOnysrQQN pic.twitter.com/yUU7RdRjep

— NC State University (@NCState) May 29, 2022

On #MemorialDay, we remember and honor those who have served and continue to serve our country. 🐺🇺🇸

📸: The Memorial Belltower, built in memory of the #NCStateAlumni who lost their lives during World War I. pic.twitter.com/MEhEB6gByA

— NC State Alumni (@NCStateAlumni) May 30, 2022

for Memorial Day weekend 2023

War and Remembrance

Friendship and sacrifice laid the foundation for NC State's Memorial Tower. Learn the story that inspired the university's iconic Belltower.

They forged a friendship on the scruffy grass now known as Pullen Park's Red Diamond Field and the old North Carolina State Fairgrounds near the modern NC State campus, an older student and a young buck playing on the left side of the football team's offensive line.
At the age of 25, tackle Vance Sykes must have seemed like a grandfather on a team of players as young as 16. From the Orange County community of Eflin, it took a while for this son of a tobacco farmer to light out for Raleigh to study civil engineering at the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, which was not even 15 years old when he arrived in the fall of 1903 as part of a 125-member freshman class.
He was older, perhaps wiser, than young end Frank Martin Thompson, a Raleigh boy with tremendous athletic skills that were obvious from the time he transferred from faraway Davidson to enroll in his hometown school in 1905.
They played together just two seasons, 1905 and '06 for one-year coaches George Whitney and Willie Heston. They won seven games, lost only twice and participated in five tie games back during the dangerous flying wedge era of college football.
They became lifetime friends.

Thompson was assigned to the 15th Machine Gun Battalion in the 5th Infantry Division at Camp Merritt in New Jersey. His unit shipped out for Europe three days after Thompson's 32nd birthday. Thompson's unit was sent to the front lines near Regneville-sur-Meuse to begin the Allied Army's assault in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel on Sept. 11, 1918. Two days into the fighting and just 30 minutes after he began his first live combat, Thompson was killed in a hail of machine gun fire, the only officer in his division to die during the assault on Saint-Mihiel. He was buried in the American cemetery on the battlefields of France, near Thiaucourt-Regnieville.

Word quickly spread back home, in the form of a telegram sent to Thompson's sisters Lillian and Daisy in Raleigh. Living in the town of Hamlet and serving as the president of the Richmond County chapter of the Alumni Association, Sykes found out about his teammate's death in a small news story in the alumni magazine.
He penned the following letter, dated Oct. 25, 1918, which was published in the magazine's November edition.
I have just finished reading Alumni News. It was a shock to learn of the death of Frank Thompson. I know Frank did his duty without fear and hit the Hun lines like he did on the athletic field.
I hope that a movement will be put on foot to perpetuate the names of our alumni who have given their lives in France that the world might live in peace. I know that the alumni would subscribe liberally to a fund to be used for this purpose, and it is nothing more than is due our heroes.
With kindest regards to all my College friends,
Vance Sykes (BE 1907)

https://news.ncsu.edu/2021/05/war-and-remembrance/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=ncstate&utm_content=75a16078-54b8-48eb-96aa-a8f6662537b4&utm_campaign=socialhub

Redemption Lives in Belltower

Raleigh-born and NC State-educated John C.S. Lumsden Jr. lived a remarkable life of invention, passion, adventure and murder. The veteran of two wars is one of the 35 names listed in NC State's Memorial Belltower that honors students and alumni killed in World War I.

https://news.ncsu.edu/2023/05/redemption-lives-in-bell-tower/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=ncstatealumni&utm_content=10cfa1e9-cdf9-4c70-8a9c-738c354bdd9f&utm_campaign=socialhub