Hail to the Chief (Hasher)

I’ve been thinking about our upcoming presidential election, and not coincidentally about presidents and hashing. A few years ago the buzz in hashing circles was that Bill Clinton once ran a hash. That turned out to be an exaggeration: when Clinton was governor of Arkansas he once jogged near a week-old Little Rock HHH trail and may have seen a trail mark or two. And even that diminished story is unproven. But hey, it represents the first connection between presidents and hashers . . . or does it?

Reading about the Roosevelt family summer home on Campobello Island, I learned that when Franklin and Eleanor were young parents, between 1905 and 1916 (FDR didn’t get polio until 1921, when he was 39) one of FDR’s favorite Campobello pastimes was to “[take] on the role of the nimble-footed hare” and lead his children on “strenuous paper chases.”

So Bill Clinton once jogged near a trail where hashers may (or may not) have been at some other time. Piffle. I scoff in his general direction.

FDR was a preHHHistoric hasher!

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