First Olympic Champion Quit School To Compete In Games

Athletes have come and gone from Soldiers Field, but perhaps none has spent so short a time, left so abruptly, and then earned such lasting respect as James B. Connolly '99, the first champion of the modern Olympics Games nearly 60 years ago, and today revered as the aging dean of America writers of sea stories.

It was Connolly's peculiar blend of pugnaciousness and competitive spirit which ended his Harvard athletic career and turned him into a sports idol at the end of the 19th century.

In 1896 he was a slim, tall red headed Irishman from South Boston. The previous fall he had entered the now defunct Lawrence School of Engineering at Harvard as a mature, 26 year old freshman who had spent five years with the U. S. Engineering Corps.

In his teens he had won the national championship in the hop, skip, and jump, setting an American record in the process.

Now, in March of '96, Connolly stood before Professor Hollis, Chairman of the Athletic Committee--now the Department of Athletics--with a bold request for an eight weeks leave of absence.

He wanted time off to compete in the first revival of the Olympic games in 1,500 years. They were to be held in Athens.

"Athens, Olympic games," Hollis snapped back with disdain. "You know you only want to go to Athens on a junket." Connolly restrained the reply on his lips.

"You feel you must go to Athens," the Chairman continued.

"I feel just that way, yes sir."

Hollis then suggested to Connolly that he resign and on his return, make re-application to the school. The young Irishman hesitated not. With directness boarding on audacity, he replied:

"I'm not resigning and I'm not making application to re-enter. I'm through with Harvard right now. Good day."

The next Harvard and most of the world heard of Connolly was a month later, when, with nine other American athletes, he showed up in Athens and proceeded to win the hop, skip, and jump--the first event on the first day of the modern Olympics.

It was his great triumph and the University's loss, for Connolly had sailed to Greece under the colors of the Boston Athletic Association, not the Crimson.

Ten years later he lectured to the Union on literature and 43 years after that, in 1949, received a major "H" in track at the 50th reunion of his class.

A week from today Connolly will celebrate his 87th birthday. His red hair has turned soft white, and his slim frame is slightly stooped and rather frail. A charley horse restricts him largely to his apartment on Brookline Street, but not his acuteness.

Commenting on modern adventure writing--he has himself written 25 novels about the sea--he observed, "It's just a racket to make money. As for you masculine writers with their pseudo blood and thunder, it takes more than a pipe to make an author virile."