Oakley Melendy’s collegiate athletic career was truly the
stuff of legend. A four-sport, sixteen-season athlete, Melendy set
an unprecedented standard of excellence that has been unmatched in
the history of Bowdoin Athletics.
As versatile an athlete as the State of Maine has ever seen,
Melendy was a native of Augusta and graduated from Gardiner High
School and Phillips Academy in Andover,Massachusetts. He made an
immediate impact, participating on the football, hockey, baseball,
and track and field squads as a freshman at Bowdoin.
He was a dynamic star for Bowdoin’s three consecutive
state championship football squads, playing three different
positions—tailback, fullback, and quarterback. The Polar
Bears went 20-5-3 in his career, marking the best four-year record
for Bowdoin in the twentieth century. During the winter, Melendy
joined the ice hockey team despite not playing prior to coming to
Bowdoin. He skated with the Polar Bears to a pair of State
Championships and an All-New England honor in 1939.
In the spring, Melendy played shortstop and outfield for the
Polar Bear baseball team, aiding the unit to another State crown
and captaining the squad in 1939. He also captured the State
Championship in the javelin for the track and field team, often
hustling to compete at Whittier Field in between innings of
baseball games at the Pickard Diamond. In addition to his
improbable varsity accomplishments, Melendy also played on the
school’s independent basketball team prior to the squad
earning varsity status in the 1940s.
A lifetime athlete, he competed well into his later years,
earning both the Maine Seniors Golf Championship and Maine Tennis
Association Senior Division Doubles Championship in the 1970s. He
was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.
Melendy graduated from Bowdoin with a degree in chemistry and
earned his medical degree at Columbia University in 1944, prior to
serving two years in the U.S. ArmyMedical Corps. He was a surgeon
in Augusta, Maine, where he and his wife, Joyce, raised four
children. Oakley Melendy died in 2001.
