Harry Gale Nye, Jr.

Harry Gale Nye Jr. (February 12, 1908 – September 11, 1987) was a Chicago-born American industrialist, entrepreneur, and world champion sailor. He graduated from the Berkshire School and joined the class of 1933 at Yale University where he was a member of the Society of Book and Snake. Nye, a descendant of the Yale family whose gift founded the university, left Yale prior to his graduation upon his father's death in order to return home to Chicago to become president of the Nye Tool and Machine Works. The Nye Tool had been the plaintiff in a patent infringement case heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1923. In 1933, Mr. Nye together with Jim Murphy founded Murphy & Nye Sailmakers, a business which is today a prominent Italian fashion apparel company and frequent sponsor of and supplier to Louis Vuitton Cup and America's Cup campaigns such as United Internet Team Germany and Emirates Team New Zealand. Nye was widely regarded as one of the nation's most respected yachtsmen. Nye's yachts aptly donned the family name, Gale. He twice won the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac in 1950 and 1951 and twice won the Star World Championship in the Star class in 1942 and 1949. Nye won many other international sailing competitions including the Bacardi Cup (in 1938, 1940 and 1941), a regatta which was started by the Bacardi (rum) family and held in Havana, Cuba in the pre-Fidel Castro era.