At 5:48 on a chilly October morning in 1918, Private Dean Memmen stood in anticipation alongside his fellow United States Marines, gripping his rifle and waiting for the command. Through the morning fog, he looked out on a landscape cratered by repeated shelling, trees reduced to trunks and tinder, the ground strewn with the bodies of French soldiers who died before him trying to take the hill. Two years ago, he was an engineering student at Illinois and the war was “Over There.” Now, he was 4,000 miles from home in the Champagne region of France—not his beloved Champaign, Illinois.
The call sounded at 6:00 a.m., and it was time. The young Marines charged the chalky Blanc Mont Ridge, heading straight into German machine-gun fire. Memmen’s government-issued boots kicked up the dry soil of the hillside as he pushed through the gun smoke toward the warren of trenches the enemy had built in the ridge.
Just three months earlier, Memmen had survived two bullets to his left foot and leg in the Battle of Château-Thierry. But Memmen would not survive the Battle of Blanc Mont Ridge. He was injured on the ridge and died of his wounds the next day. He was 23.
Memmen was among the Illini who lost their lives during World War I, “the war to end all wars.” Memorial Stadium was conceived as a way to honor those lost while also accommodating Illinois’ growing football program. Of the 200 columns that support the east and west sides of the stadium, 189 are inscribed with the names of those who died. Memmen’s name is among those etched in limestone.
Five years after he died in France, Memmen’s cousins were some of the first fans to hold season tickets and attend the first football game in the stadium. In fact, the family has maintained that tradition continuously from 1923 until today, including Dean Messinger (GIES ’90), who was named for his distant relative.
Messinger remembers visiting Memmen’s column as a child when he attended games with his grandfather. As a teenager, Messinger joined the family business, Champaign Ice Cream Company, and sold ice cream in the stands.
The stadium has always been about more than football to him. “The stadium is classic, a piece of art,” said Messinger. “I’ve been to most of the other Big Ten stadiums, as well as other football stadiums and arenas, and they’re just an arena. They have no character or ambiance. In Memorial Stadium, I feel a part of something and uniquely connected to something special.”
Not only has the family passed down tickets, but they’ve also passed down Memmen’s name. At least one member of the family is named for Dean Memmen in every generation. As one of his namesakes, Messinger has passed on the name to his daughter, and she on to her son.
Over 14,000 white marble crosses punctuate the green grass in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, the largest American cemetery in Europe. The headstones are spaced evenly apart and create row after row of straight white lines. Their precise placement and calming visual repetition bring order to this land in the French countryside that was once witness to chaos and bloodshed. Memmen was laid to rest here, not far from where he died.
Though his life was cut short, Memmen’s memory lives on in his namesakes and in the stadium, where he can watch over every game and every generation that fills the stands.
