Lee McClung

Lee McClung

Thomas Lee "Bum" McClung (born March 26, 1870 in Knoxville , Tennessee , † December 19, 1914 in London , Great Britain ) was an American football player and government official. He was related to General Albert S. Johnston and Secretary of State John Marshall .

Career

Thomas Lee "Bum" McClung, son of Eliza AL Mills (1833-1881) and trader Frank H. McClung (1826-1898), was born in Knox County about five years after the end of the Civil War . Nothing is known about his youth. He attended the Phillips Exeter Academy . He then went to Yale University in New Haven , where he graduated from the top of his class. He received the most votes as the most popular member of his senior year. He was also a member of the student connection Skull & Bones . McClung chaired the junior boardwalk committee in his class. He has been approached as Lee since college. At the time, he was the most famous football player in the country while at Yale. In his athletic heyday, he was 5  feet and 10  inches (1.78 m) tall and weighed between 165 and 180 lbs (75 and 82 kg). He played on the university baseball team and in every football season from 1888 to 1891. During that time he set a new record of 54-2 and a total of 2269-49. It was unusual at the time to have a freshman on a team. McClung was an exception here. He was the only known freshman on the 1888 team. He scored 176 points in 1889 and 494 throughout his career. In 1891, he was a captain on the Yale football team. They didn't concede a goal that season. They set a 13-0 record and a 488-0 point record. McClung graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1892 . Despite injuries, he never left the field, although football was considerably rougher at the time. On November 21, 1891, his team defeated Harvard 10-0 and retaliated for their hard defeat a year earlier. His last college game was five days later, on Thanksgiving , against Princeton , where he defeated the Tigers 19-0 with the same eleven players. McClung believed that he had designed the cutback play . He later returned to New Haven and served as an assistant coach for many years. His reputation lasted a long time and even Time Magazine reported him in 1941 as "a turtlenecked Yale man of the Bum McClung era." In 1963 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame .

McClung spent the year following graduation touring Europe and California . At the University of California he got a job as the first coach. He then worked for the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad in Saint Paul ( Minnesota ). He was employed by the Southern Railway Company from 1899 to 1901 when he became assistant to the second vice president. In 1902 he became Assistant Freight Traffic Manager in the company and held the post until 1904, at which time he was appointed Treasurer at Yale University. He took up the position on December 15, 1904. In the following years he began to write satires about the sale of the closed Ingham University . He referred to it as:

"A defunct college that we should be very pleased to sell on very low terms to any one making due application ... If it may prove an incentive to the consummation of the deal I should be very much pleased to throw in a cemetery which is located on the grounds. "

He also modernized the treasury and accounting method at the university.

McClung was a member of the Republican Party . On September 23, 1909, President William Howard Taft named him Treasurer of the United States . He took up his post on November 1, 1909. He received $ 8,000 a year in salary. On January 8, 1910, he presented his predecessor with a check for $ 1,260,134,946.88, a confirmation of the money and securities in the Ministry from the day McClung took over. It took over two months to count all assets, as is the custom when a treasurer leaves his post. At the time, this was the largest financial transaction from one man to another in world history. During his tenure, he called for the worn out, dirty banknotes to be withdrawn at a higher rate in order to introduce a clean currency. McClung held his post until his resignation on November 14, 1912, which took effect a week later. He resigned from his post because of a dispute at the Treasury Department . It was a mutiny led by Abram Andrew , then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who had trouble with Treasury Secretary Franklin MacVeagh . McClung was involved at the time. Andrew resigned July 3, 1912, criticizing MacVeagh's loose business practices and poor administrative skills, naming several tax officials who agreed with him, including McClung. MacVeagh asked McClung to dismiss Andrew's testimony, but McClung refused and the relationship between the two became strained. Meanwhile, President Taft proclaimed a ceasefire in the Treasury Department until after the elections . McClung announced his resignation nine days after Taft's significant defeat. McClung's successor, Carmi Thompson , received an even larger check on December 4, 1912 for $ 1,519,258,908.57. The day before, he still held a speech in Pittsburgh ( Pennsylvania ), claiming the following:

"It is physically possible to steal $ 100,000,000 from the Treasury of the United States."

McClung died in a private clinic in London, after spending three months earlier, in Frankfurt on typhoid ill. His brother CM was with him when he passed away. His body was transferred to the United States on board the St. Paul steamer , which left Liverpool on December 26, 1914 . The funeral was held on January 4, 1915 at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York City . He was buried two days later in Old Gray Cemetery in Knoxville, where his sister lived. McClung apparently never married. He had two brothers who went to Yale University.

McClung was director of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company in Hartford ( Hartford County ), director of the Marion Institute of Alabama, a National Councilman in the Boy Scouts of America and Treasurer at the American Association for Highway Improvement. He was a member of the Metropolitan Club, Riding Club, and Chevy Chase Club in Washington, DC , the University Club of New York City, and the Graduates Club and New Haven Lawn Club of New Haven. He was also elected President of the Yale Alumni Association of Washington on December 22, 1910 .

Trivia

One of his obituaries read:

"Ah! A remarkable athlete, a wonderful football player, a lovable classmate, a diligent student, a manly man - a type of Yale men idealize for emulation. Find something Lee McClung. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eliza AL Mills McClung in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
2. ^ Frank H. McClung in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
3. ^ The School Journal , Volume 77, EL Kellogg & Company, 1909, p. 106
4. ^ New Picture, March 3, 1941 , Time
5. ^ Sale of Ingham University, The New York Times, Dec. 18, 1906, p. 8
6. ↑ Receipt for $ 1,260,134,946, The New York Times, January 9, 1910 p.12
7. ^ Vast US Fund Counted, The Washington Post, December 5, 1912, p. 6
8. ^ Chance to Loot Treasury, The Washington Post, Dec. 4, 1912, p. 1
9. ↑ Late Lee M'Clung Football Marvel; Was Also Star for Yale on Diamond, The Washington Post, Jan. 17, 1915, p. 2

Web links

• Lee McClung in the database of Find a Grave (English)