Miler Johnny Overton (Yale 1917) would have been one of the great athletes of the Roaring 20s. Instead the US joined the Great War and Overton joined the Marines

Dr. Henry Sage Fenimore Cooper, a 1917 graduate of Yale, liked to talk about his classmate Johnny Overton, a miler on the track team who set several world records before he joined the Marines after graduation.
      In 1981 Cooper told me all about Overton.
      As we remember the US entrance into World War One, his is one of the many stories from it.