Eagan, Edward P. F.

Description

Edward Patrick Francis Eagan

Edward “Eddie” Patrick Francis Eagan was born on April 26, 1898, to Clara Anna Mayer Bartholomew and John William Eagan, a modest family in Denver, CO. He graduated from Longmont High School and attended college at Denver University for one year, during which time he won the western middleweight boxing title.

During World War I he was an artillery lieutenant and was the middleweight champion of the American Expeditionary Forces. After the war he attended Yale University. In 1919, he won the AAU’s heavyweight title, a national amateur title while a student. Eddie won his first Olympic gold medal as a light heavyweight boxer at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium.

After graduating from Yale in 1921, he attended Harvard Law School and the University of Oxford. In 1923 he won Amateur Boxing Association heavyweight title. Eddie fought at the 1924 Olympics in Paris as a heavyweight but failed to medal.

In 1927 he married soap heiress Margaret Colgate, who was a member of the family that founded Colgate-Palmolive. In Rye his family lived at lived at Happy Harbor – Forrest Ave.

Though he had taken up the sport just three weeks before the competition, Eddie managed to win a second gold medal as a member of the four-man bobsled team at the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, U.S.

In 1932, he was admitted to the New York bar and began a career in private practice. He spent five years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York before joining the United States Army Air Forces in 1942.

Eddie served as an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He served in the Air Transport Command and visited nearly every place where the Army had planes. He retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel and earned numerous decorations.

After the war, Eddie set a world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by scheduled airlines on December 13, 1948. He traveled 20,559 miles in 147 hours and 15 minutes stopping at 18 different stations and beat the previous record by 20 hours and 15 minutes. In 1945, Eddie was appointed chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission. He resigned in 1951 to focus on his law practice.

Edward Patrick Francis Eagan died June 14, 1967, Rye, New York, American boxer and bobsledder who was the only athlete to win gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics.