Laurens Corning "Spike" Shull was an All-American football player who was killed in action during World War I He played football, baseball and basketball for the University of Chicago from 1913 to 1916.
19 Facts About Laurens Shull
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Laurens Shull died of wounds suffered at the Battle of Chateau-Thierry in July 1918.
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Laurens Shull graduated with honors from Sioux City High School in 1912 where he was captain of the football, basketball and baseball teams.
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Laurens Shull was selected as a first-team All-Western player and a second-team All-American in 1915.
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Laurens Shull was the main cog in the Maroon forward wall and seldom allowed substantial gains to be made through him.
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Laurens Shull was captain of the Chicago Maroons baseball team in 1916 and a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, the Three Quarters Club, the Skull and Crescent, the Order of the Iron Mask, the Owl and Serpent and in his last year was selected a university marshal.
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Laurens Shull was president of the Young Men's Christian Association during his junior year and was a delegate to a YMCA conference of student leaders at Ithaca, New York.
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Laurens Shull became affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
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In May 1917, after the entry of the United States into World War I, Laurens Shull entered the US Army officer training camp at Fort Snelling.
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Laurens Shull sailed for Liverpool, England on September 7,1917, and was dispatched to France and was assigned to a Scottish regiment for training in trench warfare.
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Laurens Shull was deployed to Flanders where he was part of 15 engagements and was slightly injured in a German gas attack.
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On July 18,1918, Laurens Shull was fatally wounded at the Battle of Chateau-Thierry.
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Laurens Shull was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his action in leading his men against a German machine-gun nest on the day he suffered the wounds from which he died.
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Laurens Shull told me that he wanted to get into the Fort Sheridan Camp where so many of his friends would be, and in his droll way said, 'Mr Stagg, they'd get me the first thing, I'm so big.
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Laurens Shull gave me the impression that he felt that there was no sufficient reason why he should not go and he was going to offer his services freely.
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Laurens Shull's life has been beautifully true and his death has been supremely noble.
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Laurens Shull's body was initially buried in the American cemetery at Suresnes, France, but his remains were returned to Sioux City in 1921 and buried in a ceremony attended by 1,000 former soldiers.
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Laurens Shull was further honored in 1924 with one of the memorial columns at the new Memorial Stadium on the University of Illinois campus at Urbana, Illinois; he was one of two individuals who was not a University of Illinois student to be honored by a memorial at the new stadium.
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Laurens Shull's image wearing a doughboy uniform is carved into the exterior of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel completed in 1928.