Truxtun Hare


Thomas Truxtun Hare was an American track and field athlete who competed in the hammer throw and all-rounder events. He was also a college football player for the Penn Quakers football team of the University of Pennsylvania from 1897 to 1900. Hare is one of only a handful of men to earn All-American honors during all four years of college. He was selected as a charter member of the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951. While primarily a guard, he also ran, punted, kicked off, and drop-kicked extra points. In an attempt to name retroactive Heisman Trophy winners before the first one was awarded in 1935, Hare was awarded the mythical 1900 trophy.

Biography

He won the silver medal in the hammer throw in the 1900 Summer Olympics held in Paris, as well as placing eighth in the shot put and competing without making a legal mark in the discus throw. A prominent student at Penn, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall, he was also involved in many other sports, including archery and track and field.
He competed for the United States in the 1904 Summer Olympics held in St. Louis, Missouri in the all-rounder which consisted of 100 yd run, shot put, high jump, 880 yd walk, hammer throw, pole vault, 120 yd hurdles, 56 lb weight throw, long jump and 1 mile run, where he won the bronze medal. Tom Kielly and Adam Gunn won gold and silver respectively. He also was on the gold medal winning tug of war team in those same Olympics, making him one of the few Olympians to win all three medals, gold, silver and bronze. He competed in the 1904 Olympics just after he earned a J.D. law degree at Penn.
He later practiced law in Philadelphia, excelled as a painter, and authored two series of books. The first, the Kent of Malvern series, consisted of four books, depicting the development of a naughty boy into a worthy young man, guided by the good people of Malvern School. The next series, The Graduate Coach series, consisted of five volumes and was a celebration of the importance of sports in a man's life. Both were published by the Penn Press and were best sellers. He later became President of the Bryn Mawr Hospital, succeeding his brother C. Willing Hare at that job.
He and his wife Katherine Sargent Hare lived in Radnor on a farm known as Lime House and had four children. His elder son, Truxtun Hare, Jr. was also an All American football player at Yale, class of 1933. Truxtun served in the Navy and the CIA, and was President of the Pennsylvania Hospital from 1957 to 1970. The name Truxtun is taken from the surname of their forebear, Commodore Thomas Truxtun of the US Navy.