At Yale, Arthur Wear was a member of the freshman, college, and university baseball teams, but was not noted as a lawn tennis player. However, for the doubles event at the 1904 Olympics he teamed up with Clarence Gamble and they lost to the winners, Wright and Leonard, in the semi-finals. After graduating from Yale, Wear joined the family dry goods business in St. Louis in 1903 and remained with the firm until the outbreak of the World War I. He commanded an infantry company in the battle of St. Michiel and, although not actually wounded, his health suffered badly; as a result of refusing to obtain proper treatment for a probable perforated duodenal ulcer, he died, still commanding his battalion, during the Meuse-Argonne fighting. His older brother, Joseph Wear, also won a bronze medal at the 1904 Olympics.