Lawrenceville’s Summer Olympians: John Edwin Brown Wofford, Class of 1949

Alongside John E.B. “Jeb” Wofford’s senior portrait in the 1949 Olla Podrida is printed a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard III that foretold his Olympic future: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

Unlike the ill-fated monarch, Wofford wasn’t about to meet his doom. On the contrary, he was just getting started. Just three years later, the 20-year-old would be riding his father’s horse, Benny Grimes, to a bronze medal in the team eventing competition at the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki. Wofford, who was born in Washington, D.C., and lived in Kansas during his time at Lawrenceville, hailed from a prominent equestrian family. His father, John W. Wofford, competed in the show-jumping events in the 1932 Los Angeles Games before focusing on Rimrock Farm, the family’s horse farm in Milford, Kansas, a decade later. Younger brother Jimmy Wofford won silver medals in 1968 and 1972 in Mexico City and Munich, and Jeb Wofford’s sister-in-law also competed in show-jumping in Rome in 1960. 

Formerly known as “combined training,” eventing involves a single horse and rider pairing that competes against other rider-horse combinations in events that span the three equestrian disciplines of dressage, cross country, and show jumping. If eventing can be compared to an equine version of the pentathlon, then team eventing adds an element of the relay, as competitors rely on the performance of their teammate to succeed. The eventing competition was considered to be more difficult in 1952 than it had been in 1948, and Wofford, along with teammates Charles Hough Jr. and Walter Staley Jr. were outpointed by Sweden and Germany. 

Wofford, who died in 2021, never again competed in the Olympics, but he remained active in eventing. According to the 1949 Class Notes in the fall 1957 issue of The Lawrentian, Sports Illustrated reported that Wofford was competing in the Wofford Cup Three-Day Event, which it called “the decathlon of the equestrian world,” in Colorado Springs. Named for John W. Wofford, the cup had been won by Jeb Wofford himself or by another of the Wofford horses in every year but one. 

Before he became an Olympian, Wofford etched his place in Lawrenceville lore as a key during the House football game between Hamill and Kennedy Houses in 1947. Toward the end of the contest, Wofford, a fullback for Hamill, was tackled by Kennedy’s Sandy Souter ’49 P’78 near the sideline. As the players tumbled out of bounds, they collided with Kennedy coach Jack Chivers ’24, who was using a crutch after breaking his leg weeks earlier. The crash not only sent the hobbled coach to the ground, but snapped his crutch. The crutch became a coveted trophy for the winner of the annual Hamill-Kennedy game and an enduring symbol of their House football rivalry. 

A version of this story appeared in the summer 2016 issue of The Lawrentian.