Bill Brown 1934 William H. Brown spent his sports time at Andover busy on the tennis squad and as manager of the baseball and basketball teams. He later attended Harvard, where he became involved with rowing. He joined the PA faculty as an English instructor in the fall of 1938 and founded the Academy’s rowing program 17 years later. After locating a place to store the boats and oars—the old Lawrence Canoe Club—Brown began the task of acquiring that equipment. He approached a number of Ivy League rowing programs and asked each to donate a shell, which Harvard, Yale, and Princeton graciously did. When the school reopened after spring vacation in 1955, 107 boys signed up for crew—one of whom was Oscar Tang ’56. Three years later PA sent its first crew to Henley.
Prior to starting PA’s rowing program, Brown coached an undefeated golf team, founded the sailing team, assisted in hockey and basketball, and early on was coach of six-man football. He retired in 1979 and recently returned to campus for the 50th anniversary of crew at Andover, when five boats, filled with alumni eager to row their old course, were launched into the Merrimack. The day also honored Brown as the founder of the program and celebrated a new crew fund named in his honor. Brown recounted that evening: “The trustees in the ’50s had tried to dissuade me from establishing a crew program. Little did they know that 50 years later we would have the president of the board [Oscar Tang] rowing on the Merrimack.”
Coach Brown with 1956 crew Andover Athletics Hall of
Honor
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