Billy Fiske - US Embassy, London
The Statue
The idea of a Billy Fiske statue near the US Embassy has received tremendous support from many sectors. Both US Ambassador to the Court of St James, Robert Johnson and RAF Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston have written to the Wandsworth Council in support of approving a site near the Embassy. The Foundation is currently working with the Wandsworth Council to finalise a site in Nine Elms Park suitable for the Fiske statue. The Foundation is dedicated to meeting all the cultural and environmental requirements of the Council.
About Fiske
William Meade Lindley Fiske III was born in New York in June, 1911, the son of a successful international banker whose family could trace their American roots back to the Mayflower. He wouldn’t live to see his 30th birthday, but managed to leave a lasting legacy.
At 13 his family moved to France, he attended private schools in England, and developed an early keen interest in sports and speed. During his winter holidays in Switzerland he took up bobsleighing and cresta. He held the record for the famous Cresta Run at St Moritz and in 1928, at the age of just 16, he was given a place as driver in one of the American five-man bobsleigh teams in the Winter Olympics (the only year that there were five people on the teams).
In 1932 he was made captain of America’s four-man bobsleigh team, and carried the US flag at the opening ceremony at Lake Placid, NY. At both Olympics Fiske’s team won the Gold Medal. Fiske would remain the youngest Winter Olympic champion for another 60 years. It is likely Fiske could have gone on to win a third consecutive gold in 1936, but while his was invited to compete, he made the decision to boycott the Nazi-organised Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
A lifelong Anglophile, Fiske moved to England after the ’28 Olympics, to study economics and history at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and after graduating, Fiske took up a post with the international bankers Dillon, Reed, & Co., working mainly in Europe. This gave him the chance to indulge and develop his sporting interests, and his growing love of England and the British people. He became a member of the exclusive White’s Club in London, where he met and socialised with many members of No.601 Squadron, Auxiliary Air Force. In 1938 he met Rose Bingham, the former Countess of Warwick, whom he later married. Encouraged by his new friends in 601 Squadron, he also learned to fly.