UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When Stewart Neff was hired at Penn State on Jan. 10, 1966, a gallon of gas cost 32 cents, Neil Armstrong had yet to walk on the moon, the Super Bowl didn’t exist, and Rip Engle was Penn State’s head football coach.
A lot has changed in the last half-century — except for Neff’s employer. The 70-year-old Penn State Police lieutenant celebrated 50 years of service to the University on Sunday, a milestone commemorated with a celebration in his honor at the Beaver Stadium police station Monday afternoon (Jan. 11).
It’s an extraordinary achievement for a man who never set out to be a police officer. Instead, Neff, a self-proclaimed country boy from Warriors Mark, Pennsylvania, had every intention of becoming an agriculture teacher when he graduated from Tyrone Area High School.
Neff in fact studied agriculture at Penn State for a few semesters (terms in those days) after high school until life, as it so often does, intervened. He got married and left Penn State to take a job in State College, but within a year was laid off and looking for work. His wife also was expecting their first child, so he again turned to Penn State, not to resume his studies, but to provide for his family.
“I kept coming to Penn State and coming to Penn State, looking for a job,” Neff said. “I was always over in Willard Building at the employment office, where human resources was then, and in the meantime I could have collected unemployment and didn’t. I worked for my father in the morning, and in the afternoons I worked at the Weis store. I did odd jobs for people because it’s just the way my family was; you worked for what you got.”
Neff began his Penn State career working in food services in West Halls — at a starting salary of $1.68 an hour. Then, in April 1966, a job came open in campus patrol, the forerunner to today’s University Police. Despite the fact that he hadn’t completed his probationary period and was not yet 21 years old as campus patrol required, Neff applied for the job.
“In food services, there was a little old lady named Mary Hite,” Neff said. “She was very, very helpful, a nice lady. When I applied for the job in campus patrol, I was interviewed by a man named Fred Hite. He was a lieutenant. Fred said to me, ‘Mary recommends you very highly.’ I did not know it at the time, but Mary was his wife. So I was hired on as a dispatcher and worked in that job for about two years. Then the opportunity came up for a foot patrol job. So I applied for that. It was nice; people took you under their wing and showed you the ropes.”
At that time campus patrol focused mostly on building security and resident and pedestrian safety, not to mention enforcing the University’s curfew. They carried neither firearms nor handcuffs, and they were not empowered to make arrests.
“We did do some investigations,” Neff said, as evidenced by the fact that he was later promoted to the investigative unit before making sergeant. “It was quite a different world.”
The world was different, but changing. The turbulent 1960s ushered in protests over civil rights, student rights and the Vietnam War.
“Right about that time there was a fair amount of unrest around campus. It had to do with the Vietnam War and the scientific research in support of it,” Neff recalled. “Agriculture research was a major issue here on campus, along with the Applied Research Lab, because they were targeted for demonstrations. The Applied Research Lab had internal security, but we had to provide perimeter security. We did have a Molotov cocktail thrown at the Wagner Building because ROTC was housed there. There were demonstrations and sit-ins at Old Main.”
On Nov. 28, 1969, tragedy struck Penn State with the murder of 22-year-old Betsy Aardsma in the second-floor stacks of Pattee Library, a crime that remains unsolved to this day. Neff was assigned to help guard the library following the murder.
In time, Neff resumed his studies at Penn State, though he switched from agriculture to law enforcement coursework, and he and five fellow officers were the first from the University to receive formal police training at the Allentown Police Academy.
Neff readily admits he’s “worked a little bit of everything over the years,” including serving as police service officer, police service supervisor, patrol supervisor, training officer and range instructor, as well as working in police records. Today, Neff is a lieutenant in event management, coordinating the police presence at events at the Bryce Jordan Center, Rec Hall and elsewhere on campus. He’s also in charge of Penn State Police’s vehicle fleet, and he is a HAZ-MAT technician.
“I’m pretty fortunate that through the years I’ve worked with a good group of people who looked out for one another,” he said.
Neff has had a number of unique assignments over the years, including leading the football team’s police escort to Beaver Stadium on football Saturdays, transporting Joe Paterno to the stadium on occasion in his later years and, ultimately, leading the late coach’s funeral procession from campus to College Avenue.
But when asked of his most gratifying moments, Neff is quick to say that his three children are his greatest accomplishments. His oldest daughter, Laurie Ann Walker, works in the Office of Physical Plant with her husband, Stan. Another daughter, Wendy Wagner, works in State College, and her husband, Brad, works at the HUB. Neff’s son, 14-year-old Kolton Peck-Neff, figures to be a future Nittany Lion, while two grandchildren are already Penn Staters.
Between family and his love of working on old trucks and old farm equipment, Neff has plenty to keep himself busy, but he says retirement is not yet on his radar. As if further proof of his work ethic and commitment was needed, Neff also is a 34-year member of the Warriors Mark Township supervisors, and he has been president of Bald Eagle Lodge No. 51 of the Fraternal Order of Police for the past quarter-century.
“Lieutenant Neff has always had the same high energy and drive for all of the years I've known him,” said Tyrone Parham, former director and chief of University Police, who worked with Neff for 25 years. “He is a hard worker and well known throughout campus and the community. Fortunately for Penn State, he is also the department historian, who checks his memory bank instead of paper. He is a wealth of knowledge and has worked tremendously for the University. I congratulate him on this significant accomplishment and wish him many more years to come.”
So while 50 years is indeed a milestone, for Neff, it’s by no means a finish line.
“At 40 years they had a little function for me, and I said then that I didn’t plan to be here for 40 years, but I didn’t plan not to be here, either. It just happened,” he said. “That’s the way with this one. There was no goal set or anything like that.
“My family’s always been hard workers and long workers, busy all their lives. Not that I don’t have other things to do, but it’s been interesting, and mentally, I think, it’s kept me alert.”