FEATURES
Renaissance Riddick
Riddick Stadium
Wallace Carl Riddick (right) held lots of titles during the early years of NC State. Dean of Engineering. President. Football coach.
Football coach?
Yes, Riddick was the university’s first football coach, a position he held in 1898 and 1899 after learning the game as a student at Lehigh University. He was such a strong influence on NC State athletics (for many years he was a member of the university’s Athletics Council) that Riddick Stadium was named in his honor. The photo above shows a 1910 baseball game at the old stadium.
At right is Riddick in 1940, using the instrument on which he took his first surveying lesson nearly six decades earlier. He joined what was then the NC College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1892 as a professor of mechanics and applied mathematics before beginning his rise to the very top levels of the university administration.
He became known as the “Father of Engineering in North Carolina,” but with his many talents in academics, administration and athletics, “Renaissance Riddick” would fit just as well. 