Harry Ellinger Dies

HARRY O. ELLINGER, Dartmouth line coach under Earl Blaik from 1934 to 1941, died suddenly of a heart attack in Washington, D. C., on February 11. The g9-year-old football assistant to Blaik at West Point was found dead in bed at the Washington home of Representative Hebert of Louisiana, whom he was visiting.

The cause of Ellinger's death recalled the story of his great disappointment when he failed to get his Army commission because his heart would not pass the rigid physical tests at the time of his graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1925. He recalled four years of rugged play as star guard on the Army football team and then rushed out to swim across the Hudson and back as further proof of his physical fitness, but Army physicians still refused to pass him. The Army which would not accept him as an officer buried him with full military honors, however, in services at the West Point cemetery on February 14.

Except for 1926, when he was assistant coach at Oregon, Ellinger had been with Earl Blaik each season. The two men returned to West Point as assistant coaches in the same year, 1927, and then came to Dartmouth together in 1934. Last spring Ellinger went back to West Point to serve as line coach when Blaik became the first civilian head coach in Army's history.