This Minnesota man won rowing gold at 1924 Paris Olympics, but it didn’t define him

Liam Goff remembers wearing his great-grandfather’s Olympic gold medal when he was growing up.

A century ago, at the 1924 Olympic Games also in Paris, three Minnesotans competed on the United States’ men’s eight rowing team — where they won gold.

Goff’s great-grandfather and Minneapolis native Alfred Wilson was captain of the men’s eight rowing team at Yale in 1924. Alongside Wilson were two other Minnesotans: Alfred Lindley and Leonard Carpenter. MPR News was not able to reach descendants of Lindley and Carpenter.

After winning the collegiate championship, Yale’s team — including the three Minnesota men — were sent on to represent the United States at the 1924 Olympics.

According to his Olympic biography, Wilson rowed crew for all four years at Yale and was captain of the team his senior year. Wilson led the crew to victory over Harvard four times in the Harvard-Yale Boat Race.

Wilson raced on the eight-man rowing team which consists of eight rowers and a coxswain (the person in charge of steering and ordering the rowers). The men raced on a 2000-meter course, which became the Olympic standard in 1912 and still is today.

Wilson and the Yale rowing team won gold with a time of 6 minutes and 33.4 seconds in 1924. At the 2024 Olympics, the men’s eight rowing gold went to Great Britain with a time of 5 minutes and 22.88 seconds, and the U.S. won bronze at 5 minutes and 25.28 seconds.

Despite being an Olympic gold medalist, Wilson’s great-grandson remembers him just as Grandpa Al.

Goff, a high school social studies and theater teacher in Washington D.C., explained how being related to a gold medalist has impacted him and his family.

“It just became a fun story to tell,” he said. “To put it plainly, it was kind of understated. We’re not like a big, patriotic family. We didn’t all rally around like, alright, it’s the Olympics, it’s a big deal for our family. But there was this knowingness of ‘Yep, Grandpa Al rowed, isn’t that cool?’ and that was kind of the extent of it,” Goff recalled.

Goff and his brother used to wear his great-grandfather’s gold medal, not fully understanding the value of the object.

“When I was younger, holding his gold medal, being like ‘this is something that so many people covet around the world and especially in this country,’ … I’m holding this thing from 80 years ago, not fully knowing the extent when I got older how special it was.”

These childhood memories reflect the overall outlook of the gold medalist in the family. After Yale and the Olympics, Wilson didn’t row again. He had a career and raised a family, which Goff recalls he regarded as his biggest achievements in his life.

It’s not “the crowning achievement of this man’s life who was an amazing father and grandfather, and, although I didn’t meet him, his presence as a great-grandfather is in my life too.”

Goff said the family recently watched home videos that showed Wilson drinking lemonade on the porch with an “old school, kind of elder statesman vibe.”

Wilson’s story of going from Olympic gold to Grandpa Al taught Goff and his relatives a life lesson.

“It makes me feel like one can have these passions, these skills and talents … and succeed at the highest level, but that doesn’t have to define you,” said Goff, who is passionate about theater. “You can move beyond it, grow out of it or just let it be part of your story, but not like the be all end all.”

Wilson was also a fan of the theater. According to his obituary in The Star Tribune, he was a patron of the Guthrie Theater, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Minnesota Orchestra.

Wilson moved to New York City to work at an investment firm after graduating from Yale. When World War II broke out, he headed back home to Minnesota where he worked for his family’s company — the Honeywell Corporation.

Wilson’s father was the brother-in-law to W. R. Sweatt, who purchased Honeywell in 1898. By 1916, Sweatt had expanded the company’s product line and patented the first electric motor.

According to his obituary in the New York Times, Wilson became a vice president of Honeywell in 1943 and was in charge of the company's aeronautical division, which manufactured bombsights in World War II.

Grandpa Al retired to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where Goff’s mother would spend the summers with him and other family.

“He was kind of a socialite on Martha’s Vineyard and loved to host dinner parties and was friends with the playwright Jules Feiffer,” Goff said.

Wilson died at age 85 in 1989.

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