Hardwick, a Quincy native who was a three-sport varsity athlete at Harvard, was later named by Rice as one of the five greatest competitors the writer had ever seen, along with the likes of Ty Cobb and Jack Dempsey. Like Storer, Hardwick also fought in World War I, serving as a U.S. Army artillery captain who commanded a trench mortar unit in France. He then went on to a successful career in business, helping found the Boston Garden in 1929. Hardwick died of a heart attack while clamming at Church’s Beach on Cuttyhunk Island off the Massachusetts coast in 1949, and Rice, in an obituary, wrote that “of all the college football players I’ve ever known since 1900, I would say he was top man in the matter of flaming spirit. He loved football with an intensity beyond belief.... If football had a weakness for Hardwick it was that the game was not quite rough enough.” Along with Pennock, the fullback was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954.
HAUGHTON REMEMBERED
Finally, there was Haughton, who much to the relief of the student body signed a three-year extension to remain at Harvard through 1916. Prior to his hiring, it had been customary for schools to change head coaches every year or two, regardless of their record. Upon the contract’s expiration, Haughton served in World War I and in 1923 was named head coach at Columbia, a program that had been disbanded in 1905 following allegations of being too violent. The coach died after suffering a heart attack on the Lions’ home field on October 27, 1924. He compiled a career record of 97-17-6 and 71-7-5 at Harvard—still the fourth most wins in Crimson history—and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1951.
Following Haughton’s death, Hardwick remarked that “I came to Harvard placing Mr. Haughton on a pedestal. He was the idol of a boy’s intense hero worship. I worked three years under that idol, and I left college even a greater disciple of, not ‘Mr. Haughton,’ but my close friend ‘P. D.’”
A white stone memorial—designed by the Boston firm Walker, Walker, and Kingsbury and sculpted by Mary O. Bowditch for a cost of $10,000—was erected outside the Locker Building at Soldier’s Field on November 19, 1927. The largest tablet featured the coach, in uniform, in a characteristic crouch with one knee on the ground, and beneath it were the words “In Memory of Percy Duncan Haughton.” The other two panels featured a punter and a tackler.
Dean L.B.R. Briggs, Class of 1876, Chairman of the Athletic Committee during Haughton’s tenure at Harvard, summed up his eulogy with a belief that is still widely held today: “I believe that those who know football regard Percy Haughton as one of the greatest coaches that the game has seen.”
—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.