Simon Gillis

Simon Gillis grew up on Cape Breton Island but moved to New York as a teenager to join his brother. Representing CCNY and the NYAC, he was later runner-up in the 1906 AAU hammer throw. Gillis had one major tragedy in his athletic career when, during a practice in an empty lot on Park Avenue, one of his throws struck a local boy in the head after the boy had run onto the lot to retrieve a ball. The boy died later that day.

Gillis worked in New York as a police officer, but did that for only a few years, before he moved to Spain where he worked as a contractor and engineer. He then returned to New York where he worked for Thomas Edison creating screen titles in silent movies, and even appeared in a few as a policeman. In the 1910s he and his wife moved the family to Phoenix, where they ran a rooming house during the Depression, before Gillis returned to a career in engineering, specializing in building smokestacks for smelting metal.

Personal Best: DT – unknown; HT – 51.89 (170-3) (1908).