Josiah Mc Cracken - Later Life

Later Life

After graduating from Penn, McCracken remained involved in college football as both a game official and coach. During his medical residency and internship period, McCracken was a football referee, linesman or time-keeper for many Ivy League varsity games, including the Harvard vs. Yale games of 1902 and 1904. In 1903, he returned to Kansas for one season as the Cooper College football coach. McCracken Field at Sterling College's Smisor Stadium is named in his honor. Also in 1903, three Penn 1900 Olympic athletes—Dr. Alexander Grant, George W. Orton and Dr. Joe McCracken—established Camp Tecumseh, a residential summer camp in New Hampshire for young men. The camp’s mission now as it was then, is “to make good boys better” through healthy athletic competition.

McCracken completed his medical internship at Columbia University and his medical residency at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. In 1906, the University of Pennsylvania Christian Association sent McCracken to China to establish a Christian medical school in Canton. McCracken served as president of the University of Canton Medical School from 1907 to 1913 and then as dean of the Pennsylvania Medical School of St. John's University in Shanghai from 1914 to 1942. McCracken spent a total of 36 years in China training Chinese doctors and improving existing medical schools. When the Japanese occupied China in 1942, Dr. McCracken and his family were expelled and placed aboard an Italian ship in Shanghai. Their escape from China required the assistance of the Swiss Consulate. Their passage home took them down the coast of southeastern Asia, across the Indian Ocean to Mozambique, Africa. In Mozambique they were transferred to a Swedish ship that took them around the Cape of Good Hope to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and finally to New York. During World War II McCracken served as a Major in the U.S. Public Health Reserves. Joe's wife Helen and his daughter Mary both died in the United States during the war. After the war McCracken returned to Shanghai for another year before having to return to the United States for health reasons. During retirement McCracken continued to raise funds for the hospitals and medical schools in China until the takeover in 1952 by the communist government.

The McCracken's had eight children,seven whom were born in China. A son of Joe and Helen, Dr. Josiah C. McCracken Jr., was a Penn football running back in the 1930s,whose nickname was the "Shanghai Express." During World War II Joe Jr. rose to the rank of Major in the U.S. Army Medical Corp and received the Bronze Star for his service in the southwest Pacific.

In May 1952 Joe Sr. returned to Kansas to visit relatives and the graves of his parents. While in Sterling he decided to sell his parents' farm. He donated the proceeds from the sale of the family farm to Sterling College in appreciation for what the school had done for him and other young people since then.

Joe McCracken Sr. died in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, on February 15, 1962, at nearly 88 years of age, and is buried alongside his wife Helen and daughter Dr. Mary McCracken in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY. Also buried in Woodlawn Cemetery are several of his distant relatives who had changed the spelling of the McCracken surname to MacCracken, including Henry Mitchell MacCracken, Chancellor of New York University, who conceived the idea of a Hall of Fame for Great Americans; and his sons Dr. Henry Noble MacCracken, President of Vassar College; and Dr. John Henry MacCracken, President of Lafayette College.

On May 23, 1956, Joe was elected to the University of Pennsylvania Track Hall of Fame. On November 11, 2000, he was inducted into the University of Pennsylvania Athletic Hall of Fame.

During 2008 the University of Pennsylvania Christian Association established the Dr. Josiah C. McCracken Society .

In 2009 Joe McCracken was nominated for induction into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame so he could take his place along side the other two Kansas Musketeers Kennedy and Outland previously inducted.