Bessie Park (1915)
A native of LaFayette, N.Y., Bessie L. Park ‘01 was a faculty member at Cortland between 1915 and 1941 and a pioneer in women’s Physical Education. Reference of Park’s time as a student of the Cortland Normal School is mentioned in newspaper clippings which feature Park as the star of the 1899 women’s basketball team. A Cortland Standard article summarizes a game against Oswego in which Cortland emerges victorious due to “the clever passing and dodging of Miss Park.” Despite her own participation in a competitive sport, Cortland did not sanction women’s varsity athletics until the 1970s and their participation was limited to “Play Days.” Introduced by Park in 1929, “Play Days” were meant to encourage “the fair sex of the State Normal schools to participate in a greater number of athletic activities” without the “inherent and and attendant evils of varsity athletics.” However, women of the Physical Education Department were barred from participating in the event and had to serve as officials.
Bessie Park aided in the development and growth of the Physical Education Department at Cortland when she returned to her alma mater in 1915 to direct women’s physical education. Within her first few years as director of the women’s program, New York State passed a law which required all public and private schools to offer Physical Education. In response to the 1916 law, Bessie Park and Principal DeGroat lobbied across the state to allow Cortland to offer a Physical Education curriculum to fulfill this need. Their efforts were rewarded, and Cortland became “one of the first, if not the first, specific attempts to assist the State Education Department in making practical application of the new law.” However, after the 1919 fire, Bessie Park and Principal DeGroat once again had to campaign once for Cortland’s Physical Education program. They successfully secured approval from the State Education Department to host the program despite the lack of an official building to house it. The Cortland Chamber of Commerce unanimously agreed to underwrite the program and raised $3,000, a modern day equivalent to $50,000, with the help from local businesses and community members. As a result, the plans for the construction of Old Main were modified to include a swimming pool, gymnasium, and athletic fields to accommodate for the a successful program. With the completion of the new building in 1923, and sufficient financial backing, the 1930s marked a new era of Cortland’s Physical Education program.
Under the direction of Bessie Park and Francis Moech ‘16, the Physical Education program at Cortland experienced further expansion and professionalization. In 1930, the State Education Department extended the program from three to four years. To accommodate this change the Physical Education department increased their faculty from three to twelve positions. Despite having separate men’s and women’s Physical Education Departments until 1983, new faculty members such as: Mary Washington Ball, Harriet Holesten, Chugger Davis, and Fred Holloway, brought consistency and uniformity to the program and the improved the quality of instruction therefore legitimizing Cortland as a prestigious Physical Education program across the nation. To ensure that only the most qualified students were accepted into the program, Cortland instituted a quota of only admitting thirty men and thirty-five women each year. An increase in interest in the program from prospective students and limited admissions, allowed the faculty to set higher and higher standards for applicants and students. When Bessie Park retired in 1941, the physical education program became synonymous with the College, and its reputation continued despite the transformation of Cortland’s mission in the following decades.
Bessie Park returned to Cortland in 1994 when President Donnal V. Smith asked her to become the first executive secretary of the Alumni Association. In an effort to reorganize and better connect alumni to the College, Bessie Park mailed seven thousand letters which asked them to join the Association and announced the publication of an alumni magazine the Cortland Alumni. Along with being the first editor of the Cortland Alumni, Bessie Park organized alumni clubs throughout New York State and developed stronger connections between already established clubs and the Alumni Office. Following her successful revitalization of the Alumni Association, Bessie Park served as a member of the Alumni Board of Directors from 1946 to 1967. Throughout this time, Park wrote an early history of the College titled Our Alma Mater that was published in 1959 and was awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the Cortland College Alumni Association in 1970.
In January 1980, just a year after her passing, the College dedicated the PER Center in honor of Bessie Park, renaming as Park Center, and her part in shaping Cortland’s nationally recognized Physical Education program. Park was also commemorated in 1993 when she was inducted into Cortland’s C-Club Hall of Fame and recognized as "the guiding spirit" behind the establishment of the physical education major. Lastly, Bessie Park’s dedication to Cortland and women’s physical education is memorialized in the Bessie L. Park 1901 Award which is presented yearly at Honors Convocation to a female physical education major for outstanding efforts and contributions to the campus, community, and the profession.