National Football Foundation

MacLeish, a Glencoe, Ill., native, lettered in football at Yale in 1913 and captained the water polo team before embarking on a Pulitzer Prize-winning writing career.

He began his heralded writing career as an editor of the Harvard Law Review while attending Harvard Law School. After he received his degree, MacLeish spent three years practicing law, before moving to Paris to join a community of literary expatriates that included Ernest Hemingway. Some of MacLeish’s poetry was published in The Black Sun Press.

He returned to America and spent eight years as a writer and editor for Fortune Magazine. In a controversial move by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, MacLeish was tabbed as the Librarian of Congress and was responsible for promoting the library through various forms of public advocacy.

During World War II, he served in the Research and Analysis Branch of the CIA, putting together a team that studied various social factors from geography to philology. He returned to teaching at Harvard after the war ended and remained there until his retirement in 1962. He came out of retirement in 1963 to teach at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

In 1959, MacLeish won the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes when his play J.B. won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. J.B. also won a Tony Award in that year. MacLeish won two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry in 1933 and 1953. He also took home an Academy Award in 1965 for his documentary on Eleanor Roosevelt and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. MacLeish passed away April 20, 1982, at the age of 89.