Lupe Stamm

But playing basketball wasn’t the limit of Stamm’s interest in athletics. She also discovered an early interest in physical education. Born in Las Cruces in 1923, she participated in various sports and soon found herself, at age 13, coaching athletics as well. Before her high school career was over, she had received many medals and awards for athletic achievement, as well as awards for student leadership.

After high school and two years working at the prisoner-of-war camp near Lordsburg, N.M., Stamm enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. Her duty as a Women’s Army Corps member took her to training bases in the United States and then to duty overseas in France and Germany. Along the way she helped organize and she played in women’s basketball games. When her tour of duty was completed, Stamm returned to Las Cruces and enrolled at New Mexico A&M, where she was one of the first students in the women’s physical education program under the direction of Thelma Parker. When she graduated in 1949, she was one of the first women to earn a bachelor’s degree in physical education.

Stamm, #3, with her WAC basketball team in post-WWII Europe.

She soon met and married a fellow teacher, H.C. Stamm, in Belen, N.M., where she had gone to organize a girls’ PE program in the schools. After teaching physical education at schools in the Midwest, she and H.C. returned to NMSU in the 1960s, where H.C. received his education doctorate in 1968. They then moved to California where both Stamms continued to be involved in teaching and education. In addition to helping create PE programs at California schools, she taught English to immigrant children and studied for a master’s degree in physical education at Long Beach State University.

Stamm fondly recalls the Aggie Club in Los Angeles that she and H.C. helped organize in 1963. She points with pride to her copies of Los Angeles Aggie Club newsletters they wrote, and she remembers visits to the Aggie Club by former NMSU President Roger Corbett and his wife, Betty.

Throughout her life, Stamm has been ready to participate, ready to play, like a player stepping onto the court with the ball in her hands.