Biography
Raymond Pimlott Kaighn was born on December 8, 1869, in Philadelphia PA. His father was a sewing-machine dealer during Kaighn's youth.
Kaighn attended school from age five to thirteen, after which he took up work as an office boy in a publishing house. He continued worked two office jobs through his teenage years while taking a night course in business and receiving instruction in free-hand drawings.
The great example of his Christian friends led him to the International YMCA Training School (now Springfield College) in the fall of 1891.
In Springfield, Kaighn was involved in all aspects of campus life, as he served as class president and played on the football team. He was also a member of that boisterous class, which Dr. James Naismith instructed that winter.
Kaighn tried out for the Secretarial team of the International YMCA Training School, which was the undefeated school championship squad in 1892, but an accident prevented him from playing.
At a press luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in 1941, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of basketball, Kaighn was introduced as the “first man to be injured in a basketball game.”
Kaighn left Springfield after his first year, when he enrolled at Hamline University, carrying the invention of basketball to Minnesota with him.
He spent five years there serving as the University’s physical director to pay for his Bachelor of Philosophy degree, which he earned in 1898.
During his tenure as the physical director, basketball became an important part of his curriculum, as he used it the way Dr. Naismith had intended the sport to be played, to keep people active and doing something enjoyable during the winter months.
Kaighn returned to Massachusetts after graduating from Hamline and took up work with the YMCA. He served Associations in Haverhill and Holyoke, both in Massachusetts, before moving to New York to further his education and earn his Master’s degree from Columbia University.
Kaighn remained in New York City for many years, serving the Association in various capacities, including as Director of the Personnel Bureau for the War Work Council during World War I, considered one of the most difficult positions as he selected the men to serve the Association’s war effort. Click here to learn more about the YMCA's involvement in WWI.
Kaighn’s retirement from the YMCA in 1940 did not mark the end of his service to the Association.
In the 22 years of retirement prior to his death at the age of 92, making him the second-longest surviving member of the class, he continued to serve the YMCA and the Training School in a variety of roles.
One position was as President of the Springfield College Alumni Association, which he excelled in fundraising to expand and improve the college's campus.
Late in his career and in retirement, Kaighn had many articles published, and one book titled How to Retire and Like It.
It became quite popular in Springfield, where recently retired faculty and alumni, as well as those planning for retirement, were grateful for the advice Kaighn passed through it.