Tommy Hitchcock Jr. matriculated in 1920, after studying at Harvard University. He had already served in World War I, as a pilot in the Lafayette Flying Corps wherein he survived capture by the Germans, after his plane was shot down in occupied France.
Though he left Brasenose in 1921, before taking a degree, he was a very successful American polo player as well as the model for Tom Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
Hitchcock’s father had attended Brasenose in the 1880s, and was also known as a leading polo player, as well as a horse trainer. In 1944 Tommy Hitchcock Jr. was killed in a plane crash while testing fighter planes.