Norman Cleaveland came from a sporting family background. His mother, Agnes Morley Cleaveland played basketball for Columbia University against Berkeley in the very first inter-collegiate women’s sporting event while his uncle, Bill Morley, was a three-time All American football player at Columbia who went on coach his alma matter and be elected into the College Football Hall of Fame. Agnes would later find fame as a best selling novelist.
Norman attended Stanford and played rugby for four years as well as playing on the football team for three years. After graduating in 1924, Cleaveland spent 22 years in Malaysia supervising the tin dredging operations for a British company a profession at which he continued to make his living after returning to America. He wrote a book about his experiences in Malaysia during the “Communist Troubles,” entitled Bang Bang in Ampang, and he had earlier written a well-reviewed biography of his grandparents, the Morleys, a legendary family in the 19th century history of New Mexico. He was the last surviving of the USA rugby Olympic gold medallists.
United States