Sport: Rowing
Born: January 21, 1935
Died: February 24, 1990
Town: Morristown, New Jersey
Arthur Delancey Ayrault Jr. was born January 21, 1935 in Long Beach, CA and grew up in Tacoma, WA. The son of a World War II naval commander, “Dan” was a talented young athlete whose best sports were tennis and basketball. The Ayraults sent Dan east for high school, and he became the BMOC at Morristown Boys High School (now Morristown-Beard), playing varsity football, basketball, tennis, baseball and track, while also serving as sports editor of the school newspaper and yearbook. He was voted the school’s top athlete, as well as most scholarly, handsome, optimistic and likely to succeed.
Dan returned to the West Coast and enrolled at Stanford in 1952 and became captain of the rowing team his senior year. He qualified for the Olympics in 1956 as part of a three-man coxed pair team, with Conn Findlay in the stroke seat and Kurt Seiffert as cox. Each country was only allowed one entry. Dan and his mates edged West Germany and the USSR for the gold medal. The West Germans had beaten the Americans in the semifinals by one second; the US team took the final by three seconds.
After graduating from Stanford, he continued competing in national and international events as the founding member of the Lake Washington Rowing Club in Seattle. He won a national pairs title in 1958 and qualified for the 1960 Olympics as a member of a coxless four team along with Ted Nash, John Sayre and Rusty Wailes. They won the gold medal in Rome, finishing the final less than two seconds ahead of Italy, with the Soviets right behind them. Between 1956 and 1960, Dan served three years as an officer in the US Navy.
After his discharge in 1959, Dan begun a teaching career at the all-boys Lakeside School in Seattle. He received a master’s degree from Harvard in 1967 and was named head of school in 1969. Two years later, he oversaw the merging of Lakeside and St. Nicholas girls school. He continued has headmaster of the new Lakeside school until his death in 1990 from a heart attack. Among his students were Bill Gates and Paul Allen.