Whitfield Frederick “Chummy” Hayward
Businessman, sportsman, philanthropist
Born January 22, 1912

Whitfield Frederick Hayward—universally known by his boyhood nickname of “Chummy”—is best remembered as one of the founding fathers of Bermuda’s Olympic movement and a philanthropist who supported a wide range of sporting and community causes.

In 1934, at age 22, Hayward, along with fellow swimmers John King and Jim Murray, started the move for Bermuda to enter the Olympic Games for the first time. Bermuda was invited take part in the 11th Olympiad in Berlin, Germany in 1936 when a team of six swimmers—Percy Belvin, John Young, Edmund Cooper, Forster Cooper, Leonard Spence and Dudley Spurling—made history by becoming the first Bermudians to take part in the Olympics.

Hayward travelled to Berlin with the team as manager and carried the Bermuda flag at the opening ceremony—a tradition he would continue to uphold at every Olympic Games until 1968, missing only the Melbourne Olympics in 1956.

He acted as a swimming timekeeper at the London Games in 1948 and was the head of timekeeping for swimming at the 1952 Games in Helsinki. He remained committed to the Olympic movement throughout his life.

Rediscovery of the cahow
January 28, 1951

Seven pairs of cahows, a species thought to have been extinct, were found on three islands off Castle Harbour—an event hailed by naturalists around the world.

The team that rediscovered the birds was led by Robert Cushman Murphy, curator of birds at the American Museum of Natural History. He was accompanied by Louis Mowbray, curator of the Bermuda Aquarium, and a 15-year-old schoolboy, David Wingate.

The rediscovery of the seabirds which had blanketed Bermuda skies by the thousands four centuries ago inspired David Wingate to devote his life to rescuing them from extinction. As Government Conservation Officer, he led the restoration of Nonsuch Island into a nature reserve for the island’s flora and fauna, including the cahow.

Source: Bermuda—Five Centuries by Rosemary Jones

Louis Mowbray (left) and Robert Cushman Murphy with a cahow in 1951.