PHILADELPHIA – Penn Athletics and the Penn Crew community was saddened to learn of the recent passing of John Hartigan C'63 WG'65. Hartigan succumbed to respiratory failure on Monday, June 1 at the age of 80.
 
A Class IV inductee into the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame in 2003, Hartigan was a two-year letter winner with the Penn heavyweight varsity crew (1962-63) as a coxswain. His junior year, he helped the Red and Blue to the EARC Sprints championship.
 
Hartigan—who was born with spina bifida, a failure of the spine to properly develop—later served as coxswain for two United States Olympic teams (1968, 1976) after graduation. He also was co-captain of the U.S. rowing team that won a bronze medal at the 1979 Pan-American Games.
 
"I never rowed with John, but he was always around giving flak to someone in that loud, flat Chicago accent of his," said Nick Paumgarten C'67. "My good friend, the late Frank Shields, loved John. He told me John was a wolverine—he would never back down from anyone or anything. What John was able to accomplish in life with the hand he was dealt was extraordinary."
 
"John was Shakespearean in his insults to all of us," said Gardner Cadwalader C'70, GAR'75. "For me alone, he had a novel threat: If I was not doing what he needed in our boat, his megaphone voice boomed out, 'OK, Cadwalader, it is you and me in the woods, naked with greased bodies, fighting it out and we will settle it right there!' The whole boat broke up laughing. Hartigan's insults were amusingly vivid. (p.s. We never went to the woods!)"
 
In his first Olympic competition, the 1968 Games in Mexico City, Hartigan was a member of the fifth-place United States team in the four-with-coxswain event. It was an all-Penn boat with Hartigan at cox and Luther Jones W'71, Bill Purdy C'68, Tony Martin EE'70 WG'76, and Cadwalader rowing.
 
In 1974, Hartigan was a member of the United States boat that won the inaugural Lightweight Eights World Championship and included Penn alumnus Mick Feld W'74 who was a lightweight oarsman for the Quakers. Two years later, he competed at the Montreal Olympics in the four-with-coxswain boat that was coached by former Penn heavyweight coach Ted Nash.
 
In 1979, Hartigan traveled to San Juan, Puerto Rico to compete in the Pan-American Games. That year he served as co-captain of the U.S. team and his four-with-coxswain boat earned a bronze medal. In 1980, he was crowned national champion in the four-with-coxswain at the U.S. National Championships and earned a silver medal in the coxed pair event.
 
Hartigan won another gold medal in the four-with-coxswain, this time at the 1983 Pan-American Games in Caracas, Venezuela.
 
Under the leadership of former Penn Lightweight Coach Bruce Konopka, W'78, Hartigan's lightweight eight boat finished sixth at the World Championships in 1986.