JOHN WOODRUFF
Courier editor helped pay for Woodruff’s living expenses while at Pitt
Former University of Pittsburgh track and field legend John Woodruff was inducted posthumously into the Collegiate Athlete Hall of Fame for track & field, as announced by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) on Thursday afternoon, April 14. Woodruff is one of 30 members in the inaugural Hall of Fame class, the New Pittsburgh Courier has learned.
“The Collegiate Athlete Hall of Fame is intended to acknowledge the great athletes who have made collegiate track & field and cross country such incredible sports,” said Sam Seemes, CEO of the USTFCCCA, in a statement. “Not only do we have a large queue of past athletes that are worthy of enshrinement into this hall of fame, we also recognize a vital responsibility in producing first-class presentations to properly commemorate their accomplishments”
During his storied Pitt career, Woodruff collected three straight NCAA titles in the outdoor 800m run from 1937-39 as he is the lone three-time NCAA outdoor champion in program history. Woodruff’s decorated legacy also includes gold medals at the historic Penn Relays.
Woodruff was the first Pitt athlete to earn Olympic gold and did so at the famed 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics. At those ‘36 Games, he was the first of four African Americans to win a gold medal in track and field. Woodruff claimed his gold medal in the 800-meter run, winning a race that is considered one of the most dramatic in Olympic history.
JOHN WOODRUFF visited Pitt in October 2006 to be honored during Homecoming events, including the African American Alumni Council’s Awards Night. From left, AAAC President Linda Wharton Boyd; John Woodruff; Roger Kingdom, gold medalist in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games; and Pitt Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg. (Photo courtesy Pitt Chronicle)
The first class of inductees – 30 chosen solely on their accomplishments while a collegiate athlete – displays excellence in collegiate track & field and cross country at its very best. Combined they have compiled 205 national collegiate individual titles, 99 world records and 19 Olympic gold medals.
Eligibility for induction this year was limited to men who had completed their collegiate eligibility prior to 2000 and women prior to 2010.
Woodruff, for all of the accomplishments he had on the track, is forever linked to a decision made by the University of Pittsburgh in 1937. As told by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Paul Zeise in a 2007 obituary for Woodruff: “Pitt was scheduled to compete in a multi-team meet at Annapolis, Md., in 1937, but the track coach from the Naval Academy told both Pitt and New York University that their African-Americans were not welcome because there were no accommodations available for Blacks at the school. New York University pulled its team out of the meet, but Pitt coach Carl Olson made the decision to go to the meet and compete without Mr. Woodruff. According to Pitt Emeritus Trustee Herbert Douglas, who was a bronze medalist in the long jump at the 1948 Olympics and a longtime friend of Mr. Woodruff, this snub by the Pitt track team troubled Mr. Woodruff for a long time.”
Woodruff received a formal apology from the university — some 70 years later. Former Chancellor Mark Nordenberg issued the apology to Woodruff during a Pitt football homecoming weekend in 2006.
Woodruff, born in 1915 in Connellsville, Pa., and died in 2007 at age 92, had a connection to the Pittsburgh Courier. When Woodruff was a freshman at Pitt, he had said he “got a room at the YMCA in the Hill District and a job helping to clean Pitt Stadium and the basketball gym after games,” according to the Pitt Chronicle. The Pitt Chronicle later said that “financial assistance from Pitt track coach Carl Olson and from Robert L. Vann, editor and publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, the leading African American newspaper of the day, helped Woodruff pay his living expenses during his freshman year at Pitt and, subsequently, in Berlin during the Olympic Games.”
Woodruff earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Pitt in 1939 then earned a master’s degree at New York University in 1941.
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