Van Wyck Retires From HAA After 50 Years' Service

Clarence B. Van Wyck, assistant director of athletics, will retire at the end of this term, William J. Bingham '16, director of athletics, announced yesterday. He will be replaced on July 1 by William Neufeld, assistant track coach here from 1936 until his departure for the service in 1943.

In an interview yesterday, Van Wyck looked back on fifty years of service at Harvard, beginning in 1896 when he became the secretary of Dudley A. Sargent. Sargent pioneered in turning out physical education teachers in a newly formed summer school. Some of his innovations caused consternation among college officialdom.

Years later, in 1942, Van Wyck quoted a piece of Sargent's Autobiography which cited some of the objections. Among them were "the brief costumes required for sufficient comfort," and "the coeducational freedom necessary for gymnastics and the practice of athletics." These factors eventually forced Sargent to start a separate women's college next to Hemenway Gymnasium.

In '98, Van Wyck recalls, a patriot by the name of George W. Hinman "who would have led T. R. up San Juan hill" started a student drilling program in back of the aging Hemenway. But it took the first World War to require the use of Soldiers Field for the trainees. This move led to the inclusion of equitation in the intramural sports curriculum.

He became secretary of the Department of Physical training in 1919, when compulsory athletics were inaugurated for all Freshman by Roger I. Lee '02, professor of Hygiene. Van Wyck gays that "Lee and William H. Greer did such an outstanding planning job, that no substantial changes have been necessary from the outset of the free elective program."

In 1941 his work quadrupled when physical training was made compulsory for all undergraduates. During the war all men had to exercise four times a week.