Its a long article but well worth reading. It is the story of the 1932 winter olympics bob sled event. As a taster here is a partial description of just one of the characters. These guys deserve to be rembered. Bold emphasis mine.
Look long enough and you will find the tablet erected in memory of Billy Fiske in St Paul's Cathedral. It is mounted on the back wall of the crypt, between Nelson's tomb and the gift shop. It is a cold grey slab of granite, fixed opposite a bust of the poet WE Henley, and alongside a frieze of an astronomer named William Huggins.
"William Meade Lindsey Fiske III," it reads. "An American citizen who died that England might live. August 18th 1940."
Underneath, mounted on green felt in a small golden frame, hang a tattered pair of RAF pilot wings.
Billy Fiske was born in Brooklyn in 1911. "He was the kind of man," his biographer wrote, "who the sunlight seemed to follow around. He could have stepped out of the pages of a Scott Fitzgerald novel." After a stint in Chicago his parents sent him to school in St Moritz. It was there that he caught the bobsled bug. Preposterously talented for his age, Fiske persuaded a group of schoolmates that they should enter trials for the USA bobsled team at the 1928 Winter Olympics, which was being held in St Moritz on a run that Fiske and his friends knew well.
Fiske won selection as a driver for the USA's second sled. He went on to win the gold. He was 16 years old.
The full article.
Premium Link Upgrade
Feel free to go to the site and post a blog thank you
Look long enough and you will find the tablet erected in memory of Billy Fiske in St Paul's Cathedral. It is mounted on the back wall of the crypt, between Nelson's tomb and the gift shop. It is a cold grey slab of granite, fixed opposite a bust of the poet WE Henley, and alongside a frieze of an astronomer named William Huggins.
"William Meade Lindsey Fiske III," it reads. "An American citizen who died that England might live. August 18th 1940."
Underneath, mounted on green felt in a small golden frame, hang a tattered pair of RAF pilot wings.
Billy Fiske was born in Brooklyn in 1911. "He was the kind of man," his biographer wrote, "who the sunlight seemed to follow around. He could have stepped out of the pages of a Scott Fitzgerald novel." After a stint in Chicago his parents sent him to school in St Moritz. It was there that he caught the bobsled bug. Preposterously talented for his age, Fiske persuaded a group of schoolmates that they should enter trials for the USA bobsled team at the 1928 Winter Olympics, which was being held in St Moritz on a run that Fiske and his friends knew well.
Fiske won selection as a driver for the USA's second sled. He went on to win the gold. He was 16 years old.
The full article.
Premium Link Upgrade
Feel free to go to the site and post a blog thank you