Broad Jump Champ in OSS.?

[KDFINE]

I am reading "A Covert Affair: When Julia and Paul Child Joined the OSS," by Jennet Conant. On page 38 it states that "A list of those she [Betty MacDonald] met that first day included "a Chinese artist, a Thai missionary, a newspaper reporter, Shanghai businessman, a private detective, the producer of Lucky Strike Hit Parade, a girl graduate from Hunter with a degree in international law, an Olympic broad-jump champion..." [and so on], apparently all recruits into the newly forming OSS. Does anyone out there have any idea as to the identity of the broad-jump champion?

[Conor Dary]

It is the OSS. Lying probably would have been a good trait. Unless it was Edward Gordon who won in 1932.

[KDFINE]

Thanks. Now I'll try reading up on him.

[dj]

Best guess is a confusion on the part of the author, or by people who were recounting things much later. I'd bet the "jumper" was Jumping Joe Savoldi, a late-'20s Notre Dame All-America fullback.

As a native Italian, he was recruited by the OSS to serve in the Allied invasion of Sicily.