Senior headshot.

Early Life:

William Richard Randolph Granger Jr., the first of Dr. William Randolph Granger Sr. and Mary Louise Turpin’s six children, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on December 22, 1890. The Granger family moved three times: from Arkansas to Oklahoma, to Virginia, and finally to Newark, New Jersey. He had five brothers: Carl, Leo, Lloyd, Augustus, and Lester. Four of the six sons attended Dartmouth College, while the other two brothers also attended other Ivy League institutions.

Seated first row, second from right.

Dartmouth Career:

While at Dartmouth, William participated in track and field and cross country for four years.  In 1913, he helped Dartmouth defeat the University of Pennsylvania by winning the 880-yard run in 2:01.4. Granger made headlines later in that year when he beat Olympic hero Mel Sheppard in the half-mile in Diocesan Union of Newark’s Annual Games. The next year he would claim the New England Intercollegiate Championship in the 880, running a solid time of 1:58. He was also a member of the two-mile relay team that won the Indoor Intercollegiate Championship at Columbia University in his sophomore year, defeating Cornell and Harvard.

After Dartmouth:

Following his graduation from Dartmouth, Granger continued his education at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in order to pursue a medical degree like his father had done years earlier. He completed his residency at a hospital in Washington, D.C, by the name of Freedman’s Hospital.

Granger finished his residency and moved back to New York in order to be a physician in Brooklyn. He worked there as a physician for 52 years before retiring in 1970. In some remarks on Granger, Dr. Jesse Lyons wrote, “William R. R Granger Jr. was to medicine in Brooklyn what Jackie Robinson was to baseball … both were pioneers. Both fought great odds. Both cracked established prejudice.” Randolph brought copious amounts of success to the family name before he passed away from Parkinson’s Disease in 1973, at the age of 82.

Photo Credits:

1. Dartmouth College, Aegis 1915 Yearbook, (Dartmouth, NH: Graduating Class of 1915, 1915), Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.
2. Dartmouth College, Aegis 1915 Yearbook, (Dartmouth, NH: Graduating Class of 1915, 1915), Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.
3. Dartmouth College, Aegis 1915 Yearbook, (Dartmouth, NH: Graduating Class of 1915, 1915), Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.