Thomas Hitchcock was an American sportsman and military aviator. He was considered one of the greatest American polo players during the latter part of the 19th century.
Background
Thomas Hitchcock was born on February 11, 1900 in Aiken, South Carolina, United States. His paternal grandfather, Thomas Hitchcock, had been a financial writer and part owner of the New York Sun, but it was his father, also named Thomas (1860-1941), who set the family tradition. His father attended Oxford University where he played polo against Cambridge. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1884. In the United States he helped popularize the game--which the younger James Gordon Bennett had introduced in 1871--becoming captain of the United States team in the first Anglo-American polo match in 1886 at Newport and a charter member of the United States Polo Association (1890). A steeplechase rider and early member of the Meadow Brook Club at Jericho, Long Island, the elder Hitchcock also bred horses, which he raced in Europe, founded a golf club, trained hunting dogs, and became an ardent huntsman. His wife, Louise Mary Eustis of Aiken, South Carolina, was a daughter of George Eustis and a granddaughter of William W. Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Art Gallery. Sharing her husband's enthusiasm for sports, she was one of the leading horsewomen and socialites of her day and founder of the Meadow Larks, which trained young polo players. Tommy was the third of the Hitchcocks' four children and the older of two sons. Growing up at Mon Repos and at Broad Hollow, his parents' estate in Old Westbury, Long Island, he took to the saddle under their tutelage at the age of three. He trained in the Meadow Larks, competed at Narragansett Pier in 1913, and was a member of the junior and senior foursomes in 1916.
Education
Hitchcock studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He also graduated from Harvard in 1922.
Career
When the United States entered World War I, Hitchcock volunteered for military service but was rejected as too young. He then joined the Lafayette Escadrille, the group of American volunteers in the French aviation service. Shot in the thigh in March 1918 and forced to land in German-held territory, he was imprisoned at Lecheld. He escaped by jumping the train on which he was being transferred to another camp and, though contracting influenza, eventually made his way to France, where he joined the American Air Service. An eighteen-year-old lieutenant and holder of the Croix de Guerre for valor in downing three German planes, he came home in 1918 a hero. Upon his return Hitchcock entered Harvard, and while a student there gained national recognition as a member of the United States Polo Association's championship teams of 1919, 1920, and 1921.
During the postwar sports revival the game, which had been speeded up and technically improved by Harry Payne Whitney, Devereux Milburn, and other players, received broad coverage from the metropolitan press, the rotogravure sections, and sophisticated journals like Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Highly publicized international matches drew not only society notables but crowds of as many as 40, 000 spectators.
In 1921 the long-hitting, hard-driving Tommy Hitchcock led the United States foursome to victory over the British. Already a ten-goal player, he decided to dedicate himself to polo in 1922. He captained the Olympic team which lost to the Argentines in 1924, but led the Americans to victory over the English in 1927 and the Argentines in 1928. Recognized as probably the greatest player in the history of the game, he was elected in 1928 to the executive committee of the Polo Association. Hitchcock continued to play in major polo contests during the 1930s, maintaining a ten-goal rating in all but two years before 1939. At the same time he served as a director of the United Electric Shovel Coal Corporation and, after 1932, was associated with the banking firm of Lehman Brothers.
He became a partner in the Lehman firm in 1937 and gained some prominence in the development of American export airlines. An aviation enthusiast, he often flew his seaplane to work, landing in the harbor at the foot of Wall Street.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the veteran aviator volunteered and was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Corps. He was stationed in England, where he served as an assistant military attaché for air. In April 1944, while testing a P-51 Mustang, he died in an air crash near Salisbury at the age of forty-four.
Achievements
Personality
Tall and strongly built, Hitchcock was a quiet person of deep reserve, with few intimate friends.
Connections
On December 15, 1928, Hitchcock had married Margaret Mellon Laughlin, the widow of Alexander Laughlin Jr. , and daughter of William Larimer Mellon of Pittsburgh. They had four children: Margaret, Louise, and the twins Thomas and William.