Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

"He wrote to them about getting up at 6 a.m. to fish
for 10-inch browns; about the potatoes he was growing
on a small farm outside Ithaca; and about the
best place on campus to watch birds."
two bricks, one for Scotty Little and one
for me."
Marcham's association with boxing began
in an informal way when he refereed
a match shortly after he arrived at Cornell
but he steadily became more involved,
and in the middle 'Thirties, it was he who
convinced the university faculty, over a
certain amount of opposition, that boxing
should be given the status of an intercollegiate
sport.
"The godfather of boxing through the
modern era," athletic director Bob Kane
'34 has called him. "In the early 'Forties,
when we gave up intercollegiate boxing,
it was Fred Marcham who kept it going
on an intramural level."
His portrait, painted by the late Prof.
Christian Midjo, fine arts, hangs in the
boxing room at Teagle Hall, and there is
also a plaque presented by the '55 Boxing
Club, "dedicated to Prof. Frederick G.
Marcham, coach, adviser, and friend,
whose coiitinued devotion to boxing has
made this room possible." The Marcham
Trophy, awarded to the outstanding boxer
of the year, was established in 1963.
Appointed boxing instructor at a salary
of $400 in the fall of 1941 (the year before
he was named Goldwin Smith Pro-
fessor of History), Marcham soon found
himself involved in the physical education
program, which had taken on new importance
as Army and Navy units began
flooding the campus for academic and service
training. On an average day in the
war-time period, he spent two hours in
the morning teaching boxing or helping
with calisthenics or soccer, and two hours
in the afternoon in the boxing room.
"We took much pride," he has written,
"in the so called commando course, developed
largely under the direction of
Georges Cointe, the fencing coach, in the
general area of Kite Hill parking lot, and
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