July 29, 2009
All-Time Hoya Week
Last week was a banner week for me. The headliner was the taping of the latest installment of the ESPN television series, Homecoming. The show featured Alonzo Mourning '92, one the greatest athletes in the long intercollegiate history of Georgetown University, in the sports version of the old TV show, This is Your Life. ESPN will air the one-hour show on Thursday, August 6 at 7 p.m. EDT and again at 11 p.m. on ESPN2.
All-time great Patrick Ewing with future star Trey MourningNow, I tend to refrain from rating the all-time greatest athlete on the Hilltop. I won't start now. Nevertheless, would Alonzo be one of the top contenders? Absolutely. The greatest ever? Won't go there. Not with all-time superstar Patrick Ewing sitting in the auditorium for the Homecoming show. And not with the two other visitors I entertained on campus the previous and following day.
LeGendre granddaughter Martha Tucker and cousin Jane MuszynskiAs the TV trucks were crowding Healy Circle last Wednesday in preparation for Thursday's taping of Homecoming, I hosted another homecoming in the Library archives with local resident Martha Payne Tucker and her Maine-reared cousin Jane LeGendre Muszynski. Martha is the daughter of the late Jean LeGendre Payne. That makes Martha the granddaughter of all-time Hoya great Bob LeGendre '22. I had just blogged about her grandfather several days earlier (link here). Bob was the dominant Hoya superstar of his era. Together, we poured through the old yearbooks and early editions of The Hoya for most of the day, discovering new tidbits about Georgetown's legendary pentathlete and one-time world-record holder.
Michael and Nicholas Libretto learn about their famous forebear
from their grandmother Barbara
After the last of the ESPN trucks had departed, I was paid a visit on Friday by New Yorker Barbara Blozis Libretto, her husband Mike, and her two grandsons. With her instantly recognizable maiden name, Barbara is the daughter of the late Joseph Blozis, which makes her the second cousin of all-time Hoya great Al Blozis '42. I blogged and wrote about her world-reknown relative several years ago (link here). Al was the dominant Hoya superstar of his era as well. We spent half a day in McDonough and in the archives looking at Blozis memorabilia, from his WWII purple heart, to his football Hall of Fame plaque, to his written correspondence with the Jesuits, to the special edition comic book created in his honor, to the 16 lb. ball of iron, the shot put with which he set one record after another.
What a week for the stars of yesteryear! I could feel the spirit of the Blue and Gray pulsing with the physical and ethereal presence on campus of four of Georgetown's finest: Bob, Al, Patrick and Alonzo. The confluence of these four names in the same week not only made me proud to be a Hoya, but reminded me of Georgetown's tradition of athletic excellence through the generations. The best of the best? Take your pick.
As we say on the Hilltop, "Utraque Unam." Have it both ways.
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July 13, 2009
A Time to Remember
The first Golden Age of Sport in America occurred during the 1920’s when larger than life figures captivated the nation’s attention with exploits in their respective sporting venues: Babe Ruth (baseball), Jack Dempsey (boxing), Red Grange, (football) Bobby Jones (golf), Suzanne Lenglen (tennis), Jack Kelly (rowing), Bill Tilden (tennis), and Man o’ War (horse racing). Public interest was similarly focused upon the finest athletes participating in the sporting events once commonly referred to as “Athletics,” and today better known as Track and Field.
The opening ceremony of the 1924 games and track and field events took place
in the Olympic Stadium of Colombes (capacity of 45,000)
85 years ago today -- July 13, 1924 -- the track and field competition at the 8th Olympiad in Paris, France concluded. These were the first Games to feature an Olympic Village and the last one organized under the presidency of modern Olympics founder, Pierre de Coubertin. These games also saw the introduction of the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger). With the number of participating nations growing from 29 in the 1920 Antwerp games to 44 in Paris (along with the presence of 1,000 journalists), the Olympics had finally begun to gain widespread acceptance as a major athletic spectacle.
Well beyond the recall memory of most persons alive today, the 1924 Olympics surely carry some of the most interesting story lines of any Olympic games:
• USA trackman William DeHart Hubbard became the first black athlete ever to win an individual gold medal in the Olympics; he triumphed in the long jump (then known as the running broad jump).
• The saga of British gold medalists Harold Abrahams in the 100 meters and Eric Liddell in the 400 were chronicled in the 1981 Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Liddell, a devout Christian, opted out of his best event as well as two relays because the preliminaries were held on a Sunday. Nevertheless, he got his gold and a bronze in other events.
• USA swimmer Johnny Weissmuller burst on the scene, winning two individual gold medals and a single team relay gold. He added a bronze as a member of the water polo team. He would later become even better known for his prolific role in Hollywood as Tarzan.
• USA swimmer Gertrude Ederle earned a relay gold and two individual bronze medals. Two years later, she caused a sensation by becoming the first woman to swim across the English Channel -- and in a time almost two hours faster than any man had ever achieved.
• USA gold medal winning crew was comprised of the entire Yale rowing squad, led by captain Stillman Rockefeller, who would go on to head The First National City Bank of New York (later CitiBank) for 17 years. In the boat with him was Benjamin Spock, who would later become a well-known expert on child-care).
• In gymnastics, 24 men scored a perfect 10. Twenty-three of them scored it in the now discontinued event of rope climbing.
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Georgetown played a large role in these games, sending five Hoyas to compete in Paris, its most ever at one Olympics in the sport of track & field. The Hoya contingent that year : Emerson Norton (decathlon), Jimmy Connolly (3,000m team race), James Burgess (4x400m relay), William Dowding (long jump), and Bob LeGendre '22 (pentathlon). While Norton captured a silver medal, it is the story of Bob LeGendre that merits reciting here.
Robert Lucien LeGendre arrived on the Hilltop from Lewiston, Maine in the fall of 1918. The youngest of 13 children, he was an athletic prodigy, playing scholastic football, basketball and baseball. His blazing speed and size on the gridiron soon caught the eye of GU coach John O’Reilly, who quickly put him on the track team. With his natural athleticism, Bob began to compete in the pentathlon, a multi-event contest that included the long jump, javelin, 200 meter run, discus, and the 1500 meter run. 
Following his freshman year, Bob earned a spot on the U.S. team competing at the Inter-Allied Games in Paris, where he captured the gold medal in the pentathlon. One year later, he tied for third place in the pentathlon at the Olympic Games in Antwerp. He lost the tie-breaker for the bronze through a secondary point scoring system.By the time he graduated from Georgetown, Bob was crowned national pentathlon champion three times and widely acknowledged to be the most outstanding athlete ever to wear the blue and gray. He was not finished with world-class competition though.
In the 1924 Olympics, Bob shattered the world record in the long jump (25’ 5.5”). However, since the jump was part of the pentathlon competition, his effort contributed to winning a bronze medal in the pentathlon and did not earn him the gold. Because he had not competed in the long jump at the U.S. trials, Bob was not eligible to jump in that individual event. As it turned out, his world record jump ended up exceeding DeHart Hubbard’s gold medal-winning mark in the individual long jump event by more than one foot. Blessed with movie star good looks and a magnificent physique, Bob actually signed a Hollywood contract, but never pursued an acting career. Instead, he earned a second degree from Georgetown in dentistry and served as an officer in the dental corps of the U.S. Navy. Sadly, Bob succumbed to bronchial pneumonia in 1931 at age 34.
We are left to wonder forever, "What if?" Still, what he achieved during his brief life brought great honor and glory to his family, his Alma Mater and his country.
Hoya, Hoya Saxa!Hoya, Hoya Georgetown!
Hoya LeGendre! LeGendre! LeGendre!
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