Four Mysterious Citizens of the United States that Served On the International Olympic Com-mittee During the Period 1900-1917 Four Mysterious Citizens of the United States that Served On the International Olympic Com-mittee During the Period 1900-1917, Harvard University, William Milligan Sloane, Paris, Theodore Stanton, United States, America, American Olympic Committee, Olympic Games, Rutgers University, Pierre de Coubertin, International Olympic Committee, Karl Lennartz, Mr. Hyde, IOC member, Evert Jansen Wendell, Theodore Roosevelt, IOC members, Allison Vincent Armour, Olympic Research, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, New York, Messieurs Stanton, Caspar Whitney, Cornell University, William Howard Taft, Evert Jansen, John Updike, North American, The International Olympic Committee One Hundred Years, See Wolf Lyberg, French Foreign Legion, See Barbara Tuchman, Barrett Wendell, father Jacob, Allison V. Armour, George Armour, President Coubertin, American University Union, American Red Cross, Coubertin, Phillips Brooks, A. V. Armour, New York City, Harvard, See Roosevelt, Swedish Olympic Organizing Committee, E. J. Wendell, List of IOC members, Doctor Sloane, John A. Lucas, the United States, Professor W. M. Sloane, Pennsylvania State University, Modern Olympic Games, Henry Brewster Stanton, James Hazen Hyde, Theodore Weld Stanton, Evert Jansen Wendell John A. Lucas, Professor Emeritus William M. Sloane, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, New York Herald, Professor Sloane, James Haren Hyde, Stanton, Keith Jones, RUDL, Allison Armour, T. Stanton, Anatole France, See Stanton, the North American Review, American Biographies, Baron de Coubertin Scholarly Program Notes on the Graduate Vocal Recital of Zhang Lu, The tree symbol in Islam, A profile of Adriana Dadci's individual technical-tactical preparation, The reduced population and wealth of early fifteenth- century Suffolk, Pay and non-pay incentives, performance and motivation, Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families, Judo contribution to martial arts-techniques, strategies, values, Between Ethnic Memory and National Memory Four “Mysterious” Citizens of the United States that Served On the International Olympic Com- mittee During the Period 1900- 1917: Theodore Stanton; James Hazen Hyde; Allison Vincent Armour and Evert Jansen Wendell John A. Lucas* The Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), founder of the Modern Olympic Games, had his own peculiar and private reasons for selecting members of his International Olympic Committee (IOC). All that we know, especially from Coubertin’s two autobi- ographies (1909 and 1931), is that his reasoning embraced a meld of political, geographic, sporting, aristocratic, and personal deci- sion-making. One or more of these unilateral determinations resulted in selecting the American, William Milligan Sloane, who served from 1894 to 1925. Caspar Whitney was Coubertin’s second U.S. citizen to serve 1900-1905, although he never attended an IOC meeting. Some good research exists on both Professor Doctor Sloane and Whitney. Absolutely nothing of a meaningful nature exists on Stanton, Hyde, Armour, and Wendell. This research is an effort to, in part, till that void. This researcher, for 35 years, has collected both primary and secondary documents on these four “mysterious“ IOC members. The following research libraries contain helpful documents, and in several cases, the extant “papers“ of these interesting personali- ties: Rutgers University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University The Library of Congress, The Boston Public Library, The New York City Library, and The Archives of the IOC in Lausanne, Switzerland. This researcher has visited all of these libraries more than once, and frequently, more than three or four times, engaged in Olympic research on IOC members. In the case of the IOC primary documents, this researcher made personal and valuable and in- depth investigations to Lausanne in 1958, 1959, 1960, 1969, 1970, 1975, 1978, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1988, and possibly, five or six visits during the decade of the 1990s. I now feel comfortable and professionally prepared to discuss something on the personal professional, and IOC careers of Stanton, Hyde, Armour, and Wendell. American historian Barbara Tuchman wrote that “Human behavior is not arithmetic.” Novelist John Updike said the same thing about human motives, and about biography, both so much concerned with “conjectures, elaborated to fill empty space between act and explanation.”1 Biography is not synonymous with history, but biography well-done contributes to the unfolding of past actuality. The exact motives for the selection of Messieurs Stanton, Hyde, Armour, and Wendell to the IOC are poorly under- stood. Only Wendell was an athlete - a multiple sprint champion at Harvard University. The other three were men of influence, with vast “connections,” great wealth, and in the case of Hyde and Armour, unlimited leisure to follow their own passionate avoca- tions. Within these statements may lie something of their co-optation to the IOC membership list as numbers 25, 38, 58, 71.2 Coubertin’s “peculiar” selections no doubt were reasonable in the mind of the Olympic Games “renovateur,” but they are difficult to extract from his writings. The same is true of documents dealing with the four Americans, and the task of this researcher has been to read all available papers in order to arrive at tentative conclusions regarding their IOC admittance. Theodore Weld Stanton, 1851-1925 (IOC 1900-1904) Theodore Stanton’s mother was one of her country’s most important persons in the nineteenth-century civil rights movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) remained a liberal influence on her son Theodore. In 1840, she married Henry Brewster Stan- ton, a prominent abolitionist, New York State senator, and staff member on the New York Sun. Mrs. Stanton’s half-century contri- butions are chronicled in scores of histories and biographies. Their son Theodore received two liberal arts degrees from Cornell University (1874, 1876), before leaving for Paris, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.3 Theodore Stanton’s long career as scholar, translator, author, and significant literary agent, began in 1879 with a translation of the eight-volume work by Francois Le Gaff, Life of Louis Adolphe Thiers, Stanton‘s last contribution, with his sister Harriet Stan- * John A. Lucas is Professor Emeritus at The Pennsylvania State University, USA Bridging Three Centuries Fifth International Symposium for Olympic Research, pp. 195-206 196 Bridging Three Centuries Fifth International Symposium for Olympic Research - 2000 ton Blatch, was the two-volume Elizabeth Cady Slanton As Revealed in her Diary and Reminiscences (1922).4 Stanton was never an athlete nor involved in organized sporting competitions. For forty years, working out of Paris, he served as agent for scholarly journals, writer and correspondent for the Chicago Inter-Ocean, the New York Sun, the New York Independent, New York Times (NYT), Harper and Brothers, D. Appleton and Co., Henry Holt and Co., and overseas correspondent for the Associated Press, plus regular contributer to The Nation magazine. From 1916-1924, he wrote animated “Letters-to-the-Editor” in the NYT 5 An “International Congress For the Rights of Women” took place in Paris from July 25-August 9, 1878. The twenty-seven year old Stanton represented his mother, as he accompanied Julia Ward Howe and Mary A. Livermore.6 Several years later, in a weekly 1893 Chicago journal, The Open Court, Stanton wrote that French university students do not participate in on-campus sport, but “...among the pupils of the lyceum an interest in these healthful exercises is growing, thanks to the indefatigable efforts of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.”7 Incontrovertible proof exists that Stanton was an official delegate at Coubertin‘s Second Sorbonne Conference in June of 1894. Norbert Muller, contemporary Olympic historian, called Stanton “one of nine commissioners in attendance.” A Revue Olympique of January, 1901, written by Coubertin, stated that, ...present at the Congress were Th. Stanton, representing the sport of track and field athletics. From the United States, the Congress was represented by the eminent historian and friend of the president, Professor W. M. Sloane. In a June 10, 1998 phone conversation, film producer and author, Gary Allison, told this researcher that, ...Documentation exists that Stanton was a press commissioner at the 1894 conference, that he was U.S. repre- sentative of several prestigious American literary magazines, and was instrumental in getting Coubertin’s essays published.8 The Stanton manuscripts in the archives of Douglas Library, on the Rutgers University campus, contain correspondence between the IOC president Dimitrius Vikelas and Stanton, as well as letters from IOC charter member, William Milligan Sloane and Stan- ton. From Athens, Vikelas acknowledged receiving a letter from Stanton (dated January 5, 1895)... “regarding literary interests. I’m busy with Olympic Games preparation,” wrote the Greek scholar, who added that “in the paper that you are writing, you will get full participation by calling...upon the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, 20 rue Oudinot.”9 Stanton was true to his word and men- tioned both the Paris Exposition World’s Fair and these pending first modern Olympic Games in the Critic and in The North Amer- ican Review.10 Stanton was invited to serve on the IOC in 1900, but the particular month is not known.