Sport: Lightbodies

Picking up their morning newspapers, most U. S. citizens read the front-page news about the war in the Far East or Roosevelt’s doings in the White House, but dyed-in-the-wool sport fans turned to a story about Jim Lightbody of Chicago winning three track events at the Olympic Games—one of them setting a new Olympic record for the 1,500-metre run. That was in 1904.

Last week oldsters rubbed their eyes when, picking up their morning papers, they read about Jim Lightbody winning a 600-yd. run and setting a new meet record. It was not triple-Olympic Champion Jim Lightbody. to be sure, but his son, a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore, running in the Quadrangular (Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell) Meet at Boston.

Son Lightbody, blond and handsome, who is working his way through college by mounting War posters for the Widener Library and guiding visitors around the Yard, is currently considered Harvard’s most outstanding quarter-miler, is on the board of The Guardian (new undergraduate magazine), is a member of the Dramatic Club and is on the Dean’s List (high-standing students). In spite of the fact that he broke his arm when he was five and broke his back when he was 14, hence has to do special exercises before running, experts expect Jim Lightbody Jr. to equal the feats of his famed father.

Father Lightbody, a University of Chicago graduate hard hit by the Depression, is now a WPA employe in Chicago.