Edward Hartshorne Bennett ’32

EDDIE (TIGER) BENNETT, who had suffered a series of strokes since 1985, died at his farm in Madonna, Md., on Feb. 24, 1990. Small and wiry, Eddie was shaped like a jockey, and he became one. Indeed he became one of the best-known foxhunters and amateur steeplechase riders in the East. He won the Virginia Gold Cup and competed nine times in the biggest race of them all, the Maryland Hunt Cup. In 1948 he won it—or thought he had. He finished first, but then was informed that on his second time around the course, leading the field, he had jumped the wrong fence. Paraphrasing Tennyson, he said later: "It is better to have won the Maryland Hunt Cup and lost than never to have won it at all."

Eddie's passion throughout his life was horses. He bred them, trained them, rode them, sold them. He hunted foxes in England before the war. Later, after service in the Coast Guard, he resumed his hunting and racing life in Maryland. He developed a large following of young riders. At his burial service representatives from various hunts turned up on horseback, and at a blast from the huntsman's horn, made a final, ritual jump over timber in his memory. As one friend said: "So we bid goodbye to Tiger Bennett, superb horseman, longtime gentleman-jockey and trainer, raconteur par excellence, sometime roisterer, scholar of horse matters, and friend to all."

Survivors include his longtime companion, Shannon Batchelor; a brother, Charles; a sister, Susanna Pelletreau Maguire; seven nieces; and five nephews. Our sympathies go out to them at the loss of one of our most individualistic and colorful classmates.