Morris Kirksey

Morris Marshall Kirksey was an American track and field athlete and rugby union footballer, born in Waxahachie, Texas on 13 September 1895, who died in San Mateo, California on 25 November 1981 at the age of 86. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area as a boy and graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1913. At the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp he finished second in the 100 metres behind Charley Paddock, then anchored the United States 4 x 100 metre relay team to gold in a world record time of 42.2 seconds, and two weeks later won a second gold as part of the American rugby team that beat France 8 to 0, which makes him one of the few athletes to win gold in two different Olympic sports. At Stanford he won the IC4A 100 yard title in 1921 and matched the world record of 9.6 seconds. He later became a psychiatrist for the California Department of Corrections, working at San Quentin and Folsom prisons.