Harry Richardson and Francis Lindsay

The Heavenly Twins

Harry Richardson and Francis "Bud" Lindsay ran for the University of Maine during the late 1920s and were the best college distance runners in the country. Together they won six New England championships and one national title, tying at the finish as they had all through their college careers.

Richardson, a year older then Lindsay, was a native of Lee and ran at Lee Academy, while Lindsay was from Veazie. The pair achieved running at a level that had never been achieved before or since by any Maine college runner. They were coached by Frank Kanaly until 1929 when Chester Jenkins began what was to be a long impressive career as coach at UMaine.

While in high school at Lee Academy, Richardson had run a 4:36 mile under the coaching of Ted Curtis. Then, in his freshman year at UMaine, he won the freshman race in the New England’s in cross country. He went on to set a UMaine outdoor two-mile record of 9:35.8 in his senior year at his final state meet, while he and Lindsay tied in running a UMaine indoor record in the two-mile, clocking 9:27.4 in 1930, the year they graduated.

The Maine pair tied in virtually every duel meet they ever raced. They co-won the 1927, 1928, 1929 State Cross Country Championships as well as three straight New England Cross Country Championships, three straight State and New England Two-Mile Championships, and finally capped their careers by winning, hand-in-hand, the National Intercollegiate Cross Country Championships in 1929.

An account of Richardson's record two mile in his senior year goes as follows. The race was expected to be a close showdown between Richardson and Norman Whitten of Bates. Maine coach Chester Jenkins used one of his own runners, Everett Gunning, to pace Richardson for the first two laps. After a lap and a half, Whitten pulled out in front of Gunning. Then Gunning regained the lead just before the end of the second lap when Richardson took over the lead. By now Richardson was fully into his "machine like stride," as one newspaper account put it. Whitten steadily lost ground and the race never turned out to be the great match it was put up to be. Gunning, incidently, who was supposed to only serve as the pacesetter for two laps, ended up taking third.

In the 1927 N.E. Cross Country Championship in Richardson's sophomore year, he was declared the winner in a tie with Lindsay. The two led a very strong UMaine team which won the championship meet as they had in outdoor track the previous spring. Running in third place was UMaine's Victor MacNaughton. UMaine's Albert Benson was 11th, and his teammate and team captain, Andre Cushing, was 12th for a combined score of 29. Richardson and Lindsay were timed in 29:02.6 for the course at Franklin Park in Boston. Later in the season Richardson would finish second in the National Cross Country Championships while Lindsay took fourth. The following year they reversed positions.

For Richardson and Lindsay the greatest moment of their running careers would come on a cold day in November, 1929. A crowd of 3,000 had gathered at Van Cortland Park in New York on November 25 to witness what was to be one of the greatest displays of running talent the country had ever seen. Both Maine runners were heavily favored. In these days, colleges and universities of all sizes were run in one race for the national title. Even tiny Bates College was there with a strong team running against powerhouses like Syracuse and Cornell.

Here is the way one New York newspaper described the historic event. "The issue of the varsity event was in doubt for a while when the pack hung on so tightly to the leaders that it looked like any man's race. For half a circuit Lindsay set the pace and Richardson was buried in the scramble. But at the foothills, Richardson advanced to sixth place and when the harriers flew down the hill out of the woods, the Maine pair were moving serenely together off by themselves.

"After that there was never more than a yard between them. They paid little attention to the plodding Clark Chamberlain of Michigan some twenty yards behind, to Laren Brown, also of Michigan State, or to the Columbia might, Joe Hagen. The Maine youths strode along by themselves, conversed when so inclined and bother not a whit about at the surging pack stretched out behind them.

"As Lindsay and Richardson darted down the path through the woods the last time they approached the press auto the question was hurled at them 'Are you going to make it a dead heat?'
"Lindsay shouted back, 'Can we?'

"Gustavus T. Kirby, referee of the race, nodded assent and they crossed together for the first double victory in the history of the title chase. In the past when Cornell dominated intercollegiate cross country, as many as four runners at a time attempted to make it a dead heat, but on each occasion their alignment at the tape was not perfect and officials always picked a certain order of finish."

Even though Richardson and Lindsay were on a record-setting pace, the duo deliberately slowed to a trot for the last 100 yards in order to savor their well-earned victory, crossing the finish line like they had so many times before, hand-in-hand. Even so, their time of 30: 06 came within two seconds of breaking the national record.

The next runner behind them was Lauren Brown of Michigan State in 30:25. UMaine's Everett Gunning finished 19th, and other UMaine runners finished in 54th, and 65th place to put the Bears in 5th place in the field behind Penn, Michigan State, Bates, and Syracuse. Yes, that was tiny Bates in third!

"The story of the ambition of Maine's two premier harriers to run a dead heat in a major race dates back to 1927," the newspaper account continues, "when as sophomores they attempted to finish together in the New England varsity race. But the judges ruled Richardson had beaten Lindsay by inches at the tape.

"Again last year (1928) they were the best of the New England pack and came in together, but Richardson for a second time was adjudged the winner. Only last Monday they toed the mark at Franklin Park, determined finally to beat the field, which they did. But the official decision went to Lindsay, with Richardson second, although they finished stride for stride."

After graduating from UMaine Richardson returned to his home turf, teaching vocational agriculture and coaching track, cross country, and skiing at Caribou. "He was just terrific," said Emery Plourde, one of Richardson's best-ever runners who was later inducted into the Maine Running Hall of Fame. "Harry did more for me than any other coach I had at any level. He was always out there. He really put in the time. Before every race, he would come up to each of us and wish us luck, and he always stayed up ahead of us during a meet and would tell us what we should do. He knew all our capabilities."

Richardson married Alice Cary of Presque Isle and they had two daughters, Mary and Ruth Ann. "He was a generous man and had a lot of friends," his daughter Mary Bear of Caribou remembers." She was 12 years old when her father died in 1958. After teaching for 18 years he went into farming full time and grew potatoes in the Caribou area until he died.

After his college days, Francis Lindsay might have stayed with running and even tried out for the Olympic team. But he had gotten married, "and he felt he couldn't do justice to the marriage or the training if he attempted both," said his daughter, Paula Wilke of East Longmeadow, Mass. Lindsay served as headmaster at a private school for a couple of years after college but it is uncertain whether he coached any sports.

He and his wife moved to Massachusetts during the depression years in search of a better job, and he finally landed one at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford, Connecticut. He remained there until his retirement. During those years he earned a master’s degree in personnel and guidance from Springfield College.

Lindsay died in 1992. Both he and Richardson, known in their college days as "The Heavenly Twins," were inducted into the University of Maine Sports Hall of Fame in 1987.