Blue White Illustrated

THE GREAT INDOORS Penn State changed the lives of the Holuba family. The Holubas showed their gratitude with a gift that changed Penn State's football program by allowing it to conduct practice no matter the weather | f not for a Polish immigrant from Berwick, Pa., who always said he came from "the other side of the tracks," the indoor athletic facility used by the Penn State football team since 1987 would not be known as Holuba Hall. Most Penn State fans should be familiar with Holuba Hall. It's the looming struc- ture that looks like a large airplane hangar just south of Beaver Stadium along Uni- versity Drive adjacent to the football team's outdoor practice fields. The facil- ity has been a key component of Penn State's practice routine for years, but it's been especially important this year, with the season stretching much deeper into the fall than is typically the case. When a nor'easter dumped 15 inches of snow on State College in mid-December, the Nit- tany Lions were still able to practice for their Big Ten Champions Week matchup with Illinois, and in a few months the fa- cility will once again be in heavy use on days when the weather is too cold or snowy to allow for spring practice ses- sions to take place outdoors. Its roots can be traced back to Penn State's first indoor practice arena in the late 1920s, and it's named after Stanley Holuba, a 1928 Penn State graduate and Nittany Lion athlete. In May 2019, the Penn State board of trustees approved a $69 million renovation project for the entire football complex that includes spectator amenities and other improve- ments for Holuba Hall. Fundraising is under way. Stanley Holuba was quietly giving money to support Penn State football long before large-scale fundraising be- came a necessity for the athletic depart- ment, leading to the creation of the Nit- tany Lion Club. As Stanley's youngest son, Bob, said recently, "My dad was sending money to [Coach] Rip Engle in the early 1950s, unsolicited contribu- tions, to go toward equipment, salaries, scholarships or whatever." A few months before Stanley died in October 1986, Bob Holuba, on behalf of the family, initiated a $1 million donation to honor his father with the Holuba name for the new indoor practice building. A family business Stanley was a football walk-on in 1924, and Bob was a guard on coach Joe Pa- terno's undefeated Orange Bowl teams of 1968 and '69. Their heritage has its roots in Poland. When Stanley was 5 years old, he and his parents immigrated to the United States and settled in Berwick, about 100 miles west of State College. "My father grew up across the street from the American Car and Foundry's huge industrial complex where my grandfather toiled as a machinist, build- ing subway cars for the New York City subway system at the turn of the century," Bob said. "He shared with me what it was like to be a walk-on in 1924 when there were scholarship boys on the team from the right side of the tracks. He got dis- couraged by not being given the look that he thought he deserved." Stanley quit football and turned to box- ing, competing as a reserve on the varsity team for three years. After graduating with a degree in agriculture chemistry, Stanley went to work for DuPont in West Virginia. On weekends, he was a running back for a semi-pro football team that would become the NFL's Detroit Lions in 1930. Stanley's career prospered, and in 1949 he and his wife, Angela, started a com- pany in Kearny, N.J., that manufactured household laundry and cleaning products and powdered detergents primarily for retailers that sold their items as private- label brands. Weis Markets, with dozens of stores in Pennsylvania and the Eastern corridor, was one of the company's best customers. They named the company Stanson after Stanley and his then-2 1 ⁄2- year-old son, Stanley Jacob Holuba. Bob was born several months later. The elder Stanley sent his oldest son to a private boarding high school in West Point, N.Y., The New York Military Academy. Stanley Jacob was the captain of the lacrosse team in his senior year of 1964, and his photo is in school yearbook with 14 other captains, including future President Donald Trump, captain of the baseball team. Four years later, Stanley Jacob graduated from Gettysburg Col- lege with a liberal arts degree and went to work alongside his father. Bob Holuba joined the company in 1976, but when the manufacturing business slowed in the early 2000s, the brothers liquidated that part. Stanley Jacob died in 2012. "We are now basically a family holding company, and I manage our assets," Bob said. "What built our fortune and enabled me to give to Holuba Hall was taking the profits that Stanson earned and investing them elsewhere totally unrelated to our business. I got into real estate develop- ment. I was into the leisure business I H I S T O R Y

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