Barry Wood (American football)

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For other people named Barry Wood, see Barry Wood (disambiguation).
Barry Wood
Date of birth(1910-05-04)May 4, 1910
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
Career information
Position(s)QB
US collegeHarvard University (1929–1931)
Career highlights and awards

William Barry Wood, Jr. (May 4, 1910 – March 9, 1971) was an American football player and medical educator. Wood played quarterback for Harvard during the 1929–1931 seasons and was one of the most prominent football players of his time. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980.

An accomplished student as well as a gifted athlete, Wood went on to a highly successful academic career in medicine and microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis and Johns Hopkins University.

Early life

Wood was born in Milton, Massachusetts.[2] His father was a Harvard graduate and trustee.[3] He attended Milton Academy. After graduating, he spent a year at The Thacher School in California, then entered Harvard in 1928.[4]

Athletic and extracurricular career at Harvard

A multitalented athlete, Wood earned a total of ten

varsity letters at Harvard: three each in football, hockey, and baseball, plus one in tennis.[5][6]

Wood first made his national reputation as a sophomore in 1929, when he led Harvard to a comeback 20-20 tie with Army: Wood threw a 40-yard touchdown pass and drop-kicked two extra points, including the kick to tie the game at the end.[1][3] Michigan's Fielding H. Yost called Wood in 1929 the greatest passer he had ever seen.[3]

In Wood's senior year, 1931, he was team captain. In one noted game, Harvard came back from a 13-0 deficit to beat Army 14-13 as Wood led two touchdown drives, and made two crucial defensive plays (a touchdown-saving tackle and an interception) to save the win.

Time magazine.[1][8] He was the consensus first-team quarterback as selected by most of the 1931 College Football All-America Teams.[1][9]

Wood was at the center of a controversy involving the famous sportscaster Ted Husing. Commenting on Wood's poor play in the 1931 Harvard-Dartmouth game, Husing opined, "Wood is certainly playing a putrid game today." Two plays later, Wood threw the winning touchdown pass in Harvard's 7–6 win. Harvard fans protested Husing's use of the word "putrid", and the Harvard athletic director notified Husing's boss, William S. Paley at CBS, that Husing would be banned from broadcasting Harvard home games.[3][7][10]

Wood was well known for his role in Harvard's rivalry with Yale, which was led by its own three-sport star,

grand slam home run to beat Wood and the Harvard baseball team 4–3.[11][12] Wood was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980.[1]

Wood was president of the student council, elected to

summa cum laude.[13]

Medical career

Wood was also a leader off the field, praised as a model student-athlete by celebrated writers of the day such as

Baltimore, Maryland. In 1932, he married Mary Lee Hutchins.[4] To earn money for medical school,[7] he wrote a book entitled What Price Football – A Player's Defense of the Game.[14]

Wood earned his medical degree in 1936.

St. Louis for 13 years, then returned to Hopkins in 1955 as vice president of the university and hospital, and as a professor of microbiology. In 1959, he became director of the department of microbiology, and remained in that post until his death in 1971.[2]

Beginning in his undergraduate days, Wood had developed an interest in the role of

interleukin-1).[16]

Wood wrote more than 125 papers and several books, including co-authorship of a microbiology textbook.

National Academy of Sciences in 1959. He served as president or a board member of numerous professional organizations, including the Central Society for Clinical Research, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He was a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation, and the President's Science Advisory Committee.[4] He received a Distinguished Achievement Award from Modern Medicine and a posthumous Kober Medal from the Association of American Physicians.[2]

Wood died in 1971. Shortly before his death, an interview with Wood was videotaped for a documentary motion picture in the Leaders in American Medicine series produced by the medical honor society, Alpha Omega Alpha.[4][17] The Wood Basic Science Building[18] at Hopkins is named in his honor.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Barry Wood biography at College Football Hall of Fame website (retrieved May 29, 2009).
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h The W. Barry Wood, Jr. Collection Archived 2008-02-25 at the Wayback Machine at The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions website (retrieved May 31, 2009).
  3. ^
    TIME
    , November 23, 1931 (subscription required).
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-309-02888-2
    , pp. 386–418.
  5. ISBN 978-0-7385-1074-3, pp. 29–30 (excerpt available at Google Books
    ).
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-8122-3627-0, pp. 141–42 (excerpt available at Google Books
    ).
  7. ^ a b c Bernstein, Football: The Ivy League Origins, p. 149–151 (excerpt available at Google Books).
  8. TIME
    November 23, 1931 at Time website (retrieved June 3, 2009).
  9. ^ 2008 NCAA Record Book for Division 1 Football Archived July 14, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, p.220 (retrieved June 1, 2009).
  10. ISBN 978-1-58261-744-2, pp. 39–40 (excerpt available at Google Books
    ).
  11. ^ a b c d "Best of the Bulldogs," Harvard Crimson, March 3, 1959.
  12. ^ "Albie 'Little Boy Blue' Booth" biography at College Football Hall of Fame website (retrieved February 7, 2009).
  13. ^ Bergin, Thomas G., The Game: Harvard-Yale football rivalry, 1875 - 1983, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1984, pg. 363
  14. ^ Barry Wood, What Price Football: A Player's Defense of the Game (Houghton Mifflin, 1932).
  15. ^ a b c William Barry Wood, Jr., M.D. Archived 2008-08-28 at the Wayback Machine at Washington University School of Medicine website (retrieved May 31, 2009).
  16. ^ a b Theodore E. Woodward, The Armed Forces Epidemiolgical Board: Its First Fifty Years (Office of the Surgeon General, Dept. of the Army, 1990). (This volume includes photo of Wood here.)
  17. ^ Leaders in American Medicine Archived 2009-07-09 at the Wayback Machine at Alpha Omega Alpha website (retrieved May 31, 2009).
  18. emporis.com
    .


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