Cornell University Athletics

By the spring of 1893, the end of his junior year, Witherbee had been elected captain of the football team, editor-in-chief of the Cornellian Yearbook, conductor of the university band, and was a member of the varsity crew for two years. He also stroked his freshman crew. No one in the long history of Cornell had ever been so broadly honored, but he never became a senior. He drowned in Lake Champlain that summer when his sailboat capsized and sank. Witherbee lost his life vainly trying to save a sailing companion, among six in all who drowned. In his memory, the dressing quarters at Percy Field (the home field for the Cornell football team at that time and now the site of Ithaca High School) were named Witherbee Club House.