March autograph pickups

[Michael B]

This arrived in the mail today. It is a menu from the S.S. Manhattan for July 18, 1936. It was one of two ships that took the U.S. Olympic team to Europe for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It is signed by:

Ernie Crosbie - 1932, 1936 & 1948 50km walk
Al Mangan - 1936 50km walk
Harold Manning - 3000m steeplechase - 5th
Glenn Hardin - LSU star 1932 silver and 1936 gold 400m hurdles
Archie Williams - 1936 gold 400m. Also a world record holder at the distance. He graduated from UCal/Berkley. Flight instructor at Tuskegee Institute during WWII (the Tuskegee Airmen). Later a bomber pilot and retired as a Lt Col.
Foy Draper - 1936 gold medal in the 4x100m relay with Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe and Frank Wykoff. Set a world record and the first 4x100 relay to clock under 40 seconds. He ran a 10.3 100m in 1935 losing to Owens. Killed in action during WWII. His plane went missing while flying over Tunisia during the Battle of Kassarine Pass on January 4, 1943.

Draper is the only U.S. Olympian who died during WWII that I have owned. This is my second one, the first was signed during the 1934 AAU championships.

Interestingly I have owned signatures of a Filipino medalist who died during the Bataan Death March, a Japanese gold medalist and army officer who died on Iwo Jima (suicide), German medalist who died on the Russian Front, German medalist who died in a POW camp in France just as the war ended and a Polish gold medalist soldier and resistance fighter who was executed by the Gestapo.