Cecil Anthony Neuhauser

Although born in Georgia in 1891, Cecil Anthony Neuhauser moved when a child with his family to Slidell, Louisiana where he grew up and graduated from Slidell High School. He enrolled in Louisiana State University in 1907 to study mechanical engineering but also pursued his interest in music by joining the LSU band. This represented a considerable commitment in time, for the band figured importantly in many campus activities, not solely athletic events. The band provided music for chapel services and student assemblies, for example, and also traveled off campus to take part in such occasions as the State Fair in Shreveport and Carnival in New Orleans. Neuhauser rose to the second-in-command position of First Lieutenant in the band. While not studying for his demanding science courses or participating in band rehearsals and performances, he would head to the athletic fields on campus as a valued member of the track team. His record pole vault at a state tournament in 1914 testifies to his achievement. Neuhauser was a member of the Friars Club, one of several social organizations at LSU during the early 1900’s. At this time the university was a small community comprised of fewer than 1,000 students, and his participation in many different aspects of campus life suggests that he was a well-known and valued presence at LSU.

Neuhauser graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1915, and after the United States entered World War I in 1917 he found himself along with thousands of other young men at Camp Beauregard in Pineville, Louisiana, one of thirty military training camps across the country established by the War Department. Never actually leaving the camp to join a US expeditionary force, Cecil Neuhauser died of meningitis at Camp Beauregard in January, 1918.