Hans & Ella Reuter

This scholarship was established in 1978 by friends and family of Hans and Ella Reuter. Hans and Ella were dedicated to the La Crosse community and the university. Hans passed away in 1981 at the age of 96; Ella passed the following year in 1982 at the age of 92. Their two daughters were also graduates of UWL.

An elderly man stood at the counter of a la Crosse sporting goods store wanting to buy a five-speed bike to make riding in the hilly terrain of the Coulee Region easier. The salesman asked the man, “How old is your little boy?” “Eighty-one,” the man answered. Hans Reuter, affectionately called “Mr. Perfection” by some, was considered the epitome of physical fitness when he first came to La Crosse Normal School in 1920. The story about his buying a bike is just one example of the fitness he maintained throughout his lifetime. Students of Reuter remember well how, even when he was in his 70s, he demon­strated PE class activities that they felt were impossible. Upon Reuter’s retirement from La Crosse State College in 1956, President Rexford Mitchell said of him, “l am impressed to this day with the spring in his step, the smile on his face, and the bounce of his spirit. I am impressed most of all, however, with the contribution he has made to the educational program of the College,.to the students of La Crosse State College, and through them to young people everywhere.”

Reuter taught classes here for 36 years and is remembered for developing good teachers who followed his methods and shared his teaching aims, principles, and philosophies. He mastered course devel­opment and shared this expertise with student teachers through his classes and the curriculum guide he developed called “The Syllabus.” It paid off. Superinten­dents of schools throughout the nation kept coming back to hire UW-L graduates because they “didn’t teach like the beginning teachers.” Reuter demanded perfection. “We practiced on the apparatus until our hands were bleeding and until we reached the perfection needed,” one student said. Yet, students and peers considered Reuter a fair, dignified man with a subtle sense of humor and named the first men’s residence hall in his honor. Reuter – an artist, craftsman, naturalist, sportsman, gardener, inventor, designer, and teacher – lived by the philosophy: “The education of the physical — blending the man of action with the man
of wisdom.” In 1979, his name was added to the UW-L Athletic Wall of Fame.