Highland Community College Athletic Hall of Fame
Inducted August 23, 1997
A gentleman, leader, and Kansas Senator, Ben D. Allen, probably more than any other person in the history of Highland Community College, was responsible for the survival and growth of the institution.
Ben Allen served as a member of the trustees from 1905 to 1958, the longest of any trustee member in history. In 1950, as treasurer of the school board, he estimated the cost of a new field house gymnasium to cost $80,000. Design and inflation ran the cost to over $103,000. The community was in no mood to vote additional funds for the field house, so Ben continued the project using railroad trestles from the abandoned track between Highland and Severance. The trestles were carried to his sawmill and cut for the field house. In the end, in addition to his labor, the difference between the $80,000 bond issue and the cost of the building came out of his own pocket. In 1955 the gymnasium was dedicated and appropriately named the Allen Field House.
