Cal Track: `What Would Brutus Hamilton Do?' Still Resonates Decades Later

Legendary Cal track coach Brutus Hamilton had many impressive layers

TELENET

In my conversations over the years with Don Bowden, the first American to run a sub-4-minute mile invariably invokes the name of Brutus Hamilton, his long-ago Cal coach.

Bowden’s tone is always closer to reverence than merely respect.

Hamilton is a man from a different era. Born in 1900 in the town of Peculiar, Missouri, he attended Mizzou and just missed winning a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics — 100 years ago last weekend.

He returned to compete at the ’24 Games, coached at Kansas, then led the Bears’ program for 33 years. He coached the U.S. Olympic track team at Helsinki in 1952 and, as Cal’s athletic director, hired Pappy Waldorf and Pete Newell.

But he was so much more than that, as Vahe Gregorian beautifully captures in a story he wrote for the Kansas City Star last weekend under the headline: From pandemic to world wars and MU, KU and Cal, this man’s legacy is worth celebrating.

Turns out that’s true more than most of us ever knew.

Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

Hamilton, who grew up on a farm in Grandview, Missouri, across from the Truman family home, enlisted in the military during World War I. He wasn’t sent overseas, but spent his time burying Missouri residents who had died in the pandemic of a century ago.

Two decades later, while coaching at Cal, Hamilton enlisted again during WWII, serving two years in England and Northern Africa.

Hamilton gained attention in 1935 by saying his research and knowledge convinced him that no man would ever run the mile faster than 4 minutes, 1.66 seconds.

In 1957, Bowden completed the distance in 3:58.7, the first American to eclipse the 4-minute barrier. And he did it under Hamilton’s tutelage.

"Brutus could tell from my workouts exactly how fast I was going to run in a race," Bowden said in an interview with Cal Sports Report this spring. "He'd say here's how you do it, and I went out and did it every single time, leading up to this race. 

"After I'd run basically close to 4 minutes in a distance medley at Fresno, Brutus said, `You can run under 4 minutes.' "

And he did.

Brutus Hamilton and Don Bowden / Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

Bowden said years afterward in an interview that Hamilton’s approach was to create a “balanced person.”

“He built character and built the person for a lifetime, not just a race,” Bowden said in 2017. “There are people today who still ask themselves, `What would Brutus do?’ 

What Hamilton did in the 1930s was welcome Archie Williams, a young Black quarter-miler from Oakland, onto his team. That inclusion was uncommon among Cal’s athletic teams at the time, but Hamilton saw something in Williams, who earned a mechanical engineering degree from Berkeley and won a gold medal in the 400 meters at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Gregorian found an interview Williams gave back in 1992 where he talked about his coach’s versatile athletic skills: He was an accomplished golfer and boxer, and once had a tryout with the New York Yankees.

Archie Williams / Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

But it was Hamilton’s “kind wisdom” that stayed with Williams.

“I have some letters that he wrote. Geez, it’s almost like Shakespeare, the way he handled words,” Williams said in the interview. “In other words, anything that he took up, he was good at. The main thing, he was a man among men. In anything.”

Brutus Hamilton died 50 years ago in Berkeley at the age of 70.

Here is Gregorian’s full story from the Kansas City Star:

And a second story he penned about Hamilton’s experience in World War II.

Both are lengthy, both are worth your time.

.

*** Don Bowden discusses how Brutus Hamilton helped him run his sub-4-minute mile at Stockton, California, in 1957.

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

Click the "follow" button in the top right corner to join the conversation on Cal Sports Report on SI. Access and comment on featured stories and start your own conversations and post external links on our community page.