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William Hartwell ‘Hart’ Perry Jr., who was born 23 August 1933, began rowing at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Massachusetts, after his baseball coach suggested that he maybe should “consider another sport”. Perry successfully took up rowing, and continued to pull an oar at Dartmouth, but was soon banned from sports until he had improved his grades. However, he rowed his sophomore year, but by his junior year he had been, as Perry himself would say, “growing the wrong way,” that is “too heavy for lightweight rowing and too short for heavyweights.”Instead he became the freshman lightweight coach in his junior year and the varsity lightweight coach his senior year. Perry took his crew to Henley Royal Regatta, the first lightweight crew from Dartmouth to go to Henley.
After Dartmouth, Hart Perry enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and while he was stationed in Hawaii, he coached at the Iolanni School. When he left the Coast Guard, he returned to Dartmouth to coach for two more years. In the beginning of the 1960s, he came to Kent School as a teacher and an assistant rowing coach to ‘Tote’ Walker. In 1964, Perry was appointed head coach at Kent School. In Rick Rinehart’s eminent book Men of Kent (2010), Perry has a prominent place as the coach for ten young men’s success when they were victorious at Henley, winning the 1972 Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup. “That is a highlight that will always be up there for me,” Perry told USRowing in a recent interview. In 1974, Perry was the first non-British Commonwealth citizen to be elected a Henley Steward, and he would become instrumental in bringing American crews to Henley.
Over more than 50 years, Perry lived a life in rowing: he rowed, coached, and served as an official in both national and international events, in two Olympic Games, 18 World Rowing Junior Championships, and 10 World Rowing Championships, and for decades he was working with Juniors within FISA, the international rowing federation. He was the president of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen, the predecessor organization to USRowing, and after he stepped down from that position, he became the driving force to raise money for U.S. athletes to compete in international regattas. During the years, he received several awards, i.e. in 2009, he and his beloved wife, Gillian, his right hand, were awarded the USRowing Medal, and on 20 January this year, he was awarded the World Rowing Distinguished Service to Rowing Award at the World Rowing Coaches Conference Gala at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, England.
Hart Perry was inducted into four rowing halls of fame, including the National Rowing Hall of Fame in 1990. Already from the start he was involved with the National Rowing Hall of Fame in 1956, and for decades he was working hard to establish a physical place for “the Hall”, especially since he was elected the Executive Director of the National Rowing Foundation (NRF), which is the organization in charge of inducting members into the Rowing Hall of Fame. In 2008, Perry finally saw a dream come true when the NRF’s National Rowing Hall of Fame opened in the G.W. Blunt White Building at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut.
Hart Perry died on 3 February 2011 after a short illness. He is survived by his wife Gillian; his five children; and 12 grandchildren.