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When Peg Hoitt Van Allen '57 was born on May 19, 1935, it caused quite a stir in the big brick house at 105 Main Street in Durham. Ted Lewis, already grandfather to two boys, had let it be known that he was dying to have a granddaughter. When word came that the baby, a girl, had been born and named Margaret, after her grandmother, the president of UNH ran up and down the sidewalk along Main Street in front of his house—in his pajamas—shouting, "It's a girl! It's a girl!"

"That's the kind of man he was," says Van Allen. "There was nothing stuffy about him, and he had a wicked sense of humor."

Although Lewis died of cancer at the age of 63 when Van Allen was a year old, she speaks as if she knew him, and with good reason. Lewis is remembered for having had not one but two illustrious careers, first as a major-league baseball pitcher and then as a professor and president of two universities. He was close friends with both baseball legend Cy Young and poet Robert Frost. And he was viewed as a colorful figure in both arenas. In baseball, he was known as Parson Lewis, thanks to his refusal to play ball on Sundays. In academia, he was called the Pitching Professor.

As a result, the life of Edward Morgan Lewis has been well documented in both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the halls of academia. It was also documented by his family, and Van Allen has photos dating back to the 1800s as well as an informal biography of her grandfather, written by her uncle, John Lewis, in the sometimes-flowery prose of another era. These mementos, plus the family stories she heard growing up, have given her even more cause to admire the grandfather she never knew.

It's become a cliché to describe a life story as something out of Horatio Alger, but Lewis actually read Alger's rags-to-riches stories—far into the night, by lamplight. His own story begins in Machynlleth, Wales, where he was born on Christmas day in 1872, and from which his whole family fled eight years later, under cover of darkness, to escape their creditors. (Van Allen is particularly proud that her grandfather eventually returned to Wales to pay back "every single penny" of his father's debts.)

The Lewises, more or less destitute, crossed the ocean in an old steamship and then headed toward Iowa by train to join some relatives, who had given them just enough money to get there. When Ted's father took ill, the family was forced to disembark in Utica, N.Y., where they settled into a large Welsh community. Ted and his three sisters worked hard to learn English; their parents spoke Welsh till the end of their days, says Van Allen.

A Welsh church in Utica provided the family with a "modest home, close to the New York Central Railroad tracks," writes John Lewis, "and for several winters they braved icy winds and snow, gathering pieces of coal dropped by passing trains, just for the luxury of heat." Young Ted also peddled coal from a little wagon that he pulled around town, later working at a grocery store to help support the family and pay his father's debts.

It was in high school that Lewis read a bundle of inspirational books, including some Horatio Alger stories, given to him by a kindly school superintendent. An article in the local Welsh newspaper gave him the idea of applying to a college in Ohio where, he had read, a poor boy might work to pay for his own education. In 1891, he enrolled in a prefreshman course at Marietta College and worked as a hotel night clerk, janitor and letter carrier over the next two years.

Although he'd had little experience with baseball, it reminded Lewis of a game he'd enjoyed playing in the pastures of Wales, called Duck on a Rock, in which players throw small stones at a larger stone in an attempt to knock it off a big rock. A coach at Marrietta discovered Lewis's innate pitching ability and trained him during his freshman year. At the end of that year, Lewis had won 10 out of 12 games—as well as an oratory contest.

Back in Utica for the summer, he played for the local professional team, the Genesees. His girlfriend, Margaret Williams, whom he had met in Sunday school at a Welsh church, faithfully attended every game, often instigating her own cheering section, and Lewis typically escorted her to the stands before the game began. One day, however, she was late. Here's how Van Allen's uncle, John Lewis, describes the incident:

"Play Ball!" the umpire yelled, and the game began—without the arrival of Miss Williams. After Ted had taken the mound and pitched several times to the first batter, he suddenly noticed his young lady-love, desperately waving her parasol and nudging the gate with her high-button shoes. Without calling time, he dropped the ball and walked off the diamond.

Dead silence electrified the crowd, players and umpire. Not a soul moved. Yet, all the eyes glazed in wonder as he calmly walked to the gate. But, when he doffed his cap and took Maggie's arm, instant pandemonium broke loose: a tumultuous, standing ovation—accompanied by honking horns, banging pans and whistles—greeted him, as he hustled back to the mound, to resume trouncing the local club.

Friends later said: "Ted's gallantry—that day—won Margaret's heart for good."

Lewis' talent as a pitcher did not go unnoticed, and in the fall he began his sophomore year at Williams College in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship. There he excelled in many ways. He was named one of the top college pitchers in the country his first year and during his last two years won 14 of the 16 games he pitched in the Triangular League (Williams, Amherst and Dartmouth). Having become quite popular at the elite school, despite his background of poverty and immigration, he was not only first in his class but also president of the class when he graduated in 1896. He married Margaret three days later—dressed in the uniform of the Boston Beaneaters, ready to embark on his major-league career.

Lewis became known as "Parson" Lewis among his teammates not only for his refusal to play on Sundays, but also because of his studious and religious nature. He always had a backpack of books with him, and he often took his teammates—including Cy Young, who had no religious training according to Van Allen—to church with him. In fact, his victory over the Louisville, Ky., team in his very first game, his son writes, earned him this description in the local paper: "Mr. Lewis ... transformed nine big strong men into monkeys before the eyes of the multitude. The Kentucky Colonels were as disconcerted as the builders of the Tower of Babel—they knew not what to do. Yet in spite of this, they say Lewis is studying for the ministry. This is what he did and then claims to be a Christian."

A devoted baseball fan herself, Van Allen is proud of her grandfather'saccomplishments on the baseball diamond, but she especially cherishes the anecdotes that reveal his character, whether on the field or off. One time, for example, he brought a ball game to a halt in order to interrupt his team's merciless heckling of a rookie pitcher on the opposing team. Lewis, who remembered being heckled for nine innings straight in one game at the start of his career, John Lewis writes, marched out onto the mound and "advised the startled and timid young man to straighten up his backbone and ... disregard the static coming his way." Upon being escorted back to the bench by an umpire, Lewis received "an ice-cold reception" from his Boston teammates, but they never again heckled a rookie pitcher "with the same nastiness."

Lewis helped the Beaneaters (later known as the Braves) win two of the team's seven pennants during the 1890s, and in 1898, he led the National League in percentage wins, with a record of 26-8. In 1901, he played on the very first Red Sox team, and during that season—his last—he pitched the team's first shutout. Then, having earned his master's in elocution from Williams two years earlier in anticipation of a career in academia or the ministry, he decided to teach at the college level.

Lewis' baseball career ended in "a blaze of glory," writes his son. "At the end of the game [a 3-2 win over the pennant holders, Chicago] in front of two standing ovations, he walked to the stands and kissed his wife. That fall he became an instructor of rhetoric at Columbia, a far, far cry compared to the roar of the fans and the crack of the well-swung bat. The period Ted played in the National League contained many players who eventually made the Baseball Hall of Fame ... but only one great pitcher from Boston in baseball history became president of two universities—Parson Lewis."

After a brief stint at Columbia, Lewis taught at Williams, and then the Massachusetts Agricultural College in Amherst, where he taught literature, primarily poetry, and served in a number of roles from dean to president. He also made two unsuccessful bids for a Congressional seat during this period.

At the agricultural college, Lewis struck up what would be a lifelong friendship with another English professor, Robert Frost, and was the first to read one of Frost's poems at a public event, in 1916. The pair shared a love of baseball as well as poetry and would play "singles" baseball in the backyard whenever they got together. In fact, when Frost spoke at Lewis's memorial service, he said this about the connection between their shared interests:

He told me once ... that he began his interest in poetry as he might have begun his interest in baseball—with the idea of victory—the "Will to Win."

He was at an Eisteddfod [arts festival] in Utica, an American-Welsh Eisteddfod, where the contest was in poetry, and a bard had been brought in from Wales to give judgment and to pick the winner; and the bard, after announcing the winner and making the compliments which judges make, said he wished the unknown victor would rise and make himself known and let himself be seen. (I believe the poems were read anonymously.) The little "Ted" Lewis sitting there beside his father looked up and saw his father rise as the victor. So poetry to him was prowess from that time on, just as baseball was prowess, as running was prowess. And it was our common ground.

In 1927, Lewis left Amherst to become president of UNH. During his nine-year tenure, he is credited with the completion of several new buildings and the athletic fields later named for him. His administration also saw the establishment of sabbaticals for faculty members, retirement plans for faculty and staff, and higher admissions standards for students. During this period, his papers show, he knew and corresponded with many prominent Americans, including Presidents Coolidge, Taft , Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt; explorer Admiral Byrd and heavyweight champion Gene Tunney.

More memorable to Peg Van Allen are her impressions of family life in the big brick house. Van Allen had the opportunity to stay overnight there a number of times when she became friends with President Harold Stoke's daughter, Marcia, in the 1940s. Like her mother before her, Van Allen then got to know "all the little cubby holes and secret passageways," she says. "Marcia had a Scottie dog that she dressed up, and I had a cocker spaniel that I dressed up." But what struck her most, perhaps, was something under the dining room table: a button for calling the housekeeper. ("I'd never known anybody who had a button to call anyone," she recalls with amusement.)

Ted and Margaret Lewis also had a housekeeper in the president's house, of course, but she had Sundays off. "My grandfather expected my grandmother to have students in, about a dozen of them, every single Sunday night," Van Allen says. Her grandmother usually made her special chocolate cake—still a family favorite—and apparently Lewis efforts to get to know the students were a success. Clara Skoglund '38 later told Van Allen that Lewis knew every single student by name, and she almost fainted the first time he addressed her as Clara when passing by on the sidewalk. He is also known to have given an interest-free loan to at least one student who was on the verge of dropping out for lack of funds.

For Van Allen's parents, the president's house was a special place indeed. Her father, Sam Hoitt '28, who eventually became the director of UNH Cooperative Extension, grew up in a large farmhouse at 28 Mill Road, which is still standing today. (A number of UNH buildings on that side of campus, as well as the houses in the Faculty Roadneighborhood, were all built on land that originally belonged to the Hoitt Farm—and the house was later home to UNH art professor John Hatch and his family for many years). One of six children, he had a small upstairs bedroom from which he had a straight line of sight to the upper story windows of the president's house. When he was courting Lewis' daughter, Gwendolen, the pair used to communicate in code with flashlights from their respective bedrooms, says Van Allen, asking each other questions like, "Do you love me?" "How much?" Their wedding was held at the president's house in March 19, 1932. Three years later, President Ted Lewis was running up and down the sidewalk in his pajamas exclaiming about the birth of his new granddaughter.