Author Archives: kihm
Marjorie LeBoutillier
I have a special affection for extraordinary people who have been largely, and unfairly, forgotten, and one of my recent favorites is Marjorie LeBoutillier, a polo player of great ability. She first surfaces in Aiken, South Carolina, in Harry Worcester Smith’s Life and Sport in Aiken and Those Who Made It (1935), in which he […]
Henry Babcock, Yale and Polo
Henry Denison Babcock Jr. had the world by the tail. His grandfather, Samuel D. Babcock, was a wealthy businessman with a home on Fifth Avenue, a “country seat” at Riverdale-on-Hudson, and memberships in the Metropolitan, Union and Manhattan clubs, the New York Yacht Club, and the Country Club of Westchester County. Henry’s father, Henry Babcock […]
Griswold Lorillard and Polo’s Westchester Cup
Nathaniel Griswold Lorillard became famous for something he didn’t do, and has been almost completely forgotten in connection with something he actually did do. To begin, he was born in clover. His father was Pierre Lorillard IV, head of a tobacco company that had been thriving since 1760 (and thrives to this day). The lad […]
Mary, Babs and Gertrude
Mary Duncan Sanford and Babs Tyrrell-Martin grace this photo, most probably taken during the 12th competition for the Westchester Cup, in 1939 at Meadow Brook, Long Island, where the best polo players of the U.S. and the U.K. were competing for a trophy first put up for grabs in 1886. On the left, Mary Sanford. […]
O.M. Wallop, Yale and Polo
The other day, I stumbled across another Yale polo story, this one with a player named Wallop. How could anyone resist picking up that thread of history? The story began in 1883 when Oliver Henry Wallop graduated from Oxford and went to Wyoming. This may strike you as an odd move, but he was the […]
Clarence Mott Woolley, Yale and Polo
Clarence Mott Woolley Jr. led, for a time, a charmed existence. Clarence Mott Woolley Sr. made central heating possible in America by providing cast iron radiators for millions of homes; for this, he was well compensated, so young Clarence’s educational options were not limited. He attended Phillips Andover and then Yale. Because his father had […]
Two Funerals
:: My Grandfather’s Funeral :: March 18, 1968 This piece was originally written for a composition class at Syracuse University. The instructor, Mr. Taggart, was trying to make something of my “self-satisfied writing style.” I still remember his efforts, and appreciate them. I have changed a word or two, and added notes from a journal […]
Dorothy Reddington
Abbie, Kihm, [Bill] and Dorothy November 12, 2004 Dorothy Reddington was no mystery to me. Yes, when Laurie and I walked into Sage Chapel on the Cornell University campus for her memorial service, Roy Orbison’s “Mystery Girl” was playing. And there was some mystery about where the rest rooms were in this ancient building, the […]
The Coors Boycott, 1987
March 27, 2004 In 1987, because I had included Coors Winterfest in an article about Christmas beers in 1986, the Syracuse New Times received a letter from the local council of the AFL-CIO expressing astonishment that such a liberal, alternative publication would include any mention of this notoriously anti-union brewery. The letter was accompanied by […]
Abbie Stories
Abbie was born December 2, 1983, and joined our family on January 27, 1984. These are a few of the stories from her childhood that I did not want to lose. * * * We met Abbie on a Wednesday at Catholic Charities, in an upstairs room, in an old building. It was equipped as […]
Faithful Readers 