Robert "Red" Worrell died December, 1957.
Thirty-nine miles south of Pittsburgh, along the Monongahela River, lies the tiny town of Denbo, downstream from Brownsville.
In the late 1950s, everyone in the Monongahela Valley knew a young man named Robert Worrell. A great all-around athlete, he was called Red.
According to the Brownsville Telegraph, as later reported in the Brownsville Times Capsule, "during his senior year at Centerville High School, Worrell received the highest award in the nation when he was named to the All-American schoolboy team.
At Centerville High School he was named to high school All-American Team
- While in just 9th Grade the WPIAL permitted him to play varsity sports, football, baseball, basketball, track.
"He was the only gridder in history to win consecutive awards as the outstanding back in the WPIAL. He received over 75 college offers, and after initially selecting North Carolina, he changed his mind and enrolled at Penn State, where he starred...on the freshman team."
While at home for the holidays on a December afternoon in 1957, the 19-year-old "Worrell was helping his father erect a television antenna...Red was standing on the ground, holding a metal pipe attached to the antenna when it came in contact with a high tension wire."
Worrell collapsed to the ground, and despite the efforts of the Brownsville fire department, he died, leaving behind a wife, Carol, and their eight-month-old daughter, Kim Jeannette.
Fifty-three years later, Worrell's time at Penn State is remembered as it is every year, his name is associated with a Nittany Lion football player's good deeds.
On offense, the Red Worrell Award is given to a player for "exemplary conduct, loyalty, interest, attitude and improvement during spring practice."
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