Fred Bonine

Frederick N. Bonine (October 21, 1863 – August 22, 1941) was an American sprinter and eye doctor.

Early years and athlete Bonine was born in Niles, Michigan, in 1863. His father, Evan J. Bonine, a physician with a practice in Niles, had been a civil war surgeon; a diary in the Niles museum recounts his travel south by stagecoach and his history of performing many amputations. Fred attended the Niles public schools, then enrolled at the University of Michigan where he received his medical degree. He received advanced training in ear eye nose surgery in Frieberg, Germany.

An article about Bonine published in 1925 and distributed by the Associated Press (AP) claimed that he was a member of Michigan's football and track teams. The aforementioned 1925 AP article also claimed that in 1886, Bonine was the captain of the Michigan track team that became the first athletic team from the west to compete in New York.

Medical practice

Bonine later became an eye doctor. According to Bonine, each year, tens of thousands of patients from around the world reportedly sought treatment at Bonine's office above a corner drug store in Niles. Bonine's obituary reported that he reputedly treated as many as 517 patients in one day and saw 200 patients in a day. Hundreds were said to have lined up each day, none with appointments, to see him, with each being charged the same fee of two dollars for a first visit and one dollar for subsequent visits. A 1925 AP article claimed that special buses from Chicago to Niles ran twice a week to bring patients to see Bonine. This figure is completely impossible, though, suggesting a misquote, a math error, a wild exaggeration, or the like. The fight never took place.

Bonine became ill with pneumonia in the spring of 1938. He suffered a stroke in June 1938 from which he recovered in part, but he was unable to return to his medical practice. Bonine died at his home in Niles in August 1941 at age 77. Stores and factories in his home town closed for his funeral, which was held at the Trinity Episcopal Church.

2022 reassessment In 2022, skepticism was raised about much of the information in the contemporary news accounts by Paul Campos, calling the claims of treating over a million patients and being an Olympic-class runner implausible and unlikely. Rather, according to Campos, it is more likely that in the course of promotion of the possible Dempsey-Wills boxing match, journalists talking to Bonine, one of the organizers, repeated or exaggerated wild claims. Campos based much of his claims on research of records at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan. Campos did not find Bonine listed in the all-time rosters of the Michigan Wolverines football team, suggesting that the claim of him being a member is doubtful. The University of Michigan did not even have a track-and-field team until 1898 at the earliest, casting doubt on the contemporary claims of him having captained such a team in the 1880s as well. The claimed time at the 110-yard dash was so fast that if taken seriously, Bonine was the fastest human in the world for decades, which Campos thought would have surely come up in the University of Michigan records if really true. Yet, the claimed 110-yard dash record was nowhere to be found there. Campos did find a record of Bonine completing the 100 yard dash in a time of 10.6 seconds at an IC4A event, making him the University of Michigan's first individual national champion in any sport; an impressive feat, but not the same as a world-class record setter. For Bonine's claims of being an ophthalmologist so popular special buses were chartered, Campos found them entirely implausible. To see as many patients as claimed would require spending less than five minutes per patient while working continuously with no vacations nor breaks and never seeing any repeat patients, and also implied that Bonine should have been very wealthy. More generally, transit at the dawn of the 20th century was sufficiently slow and expensive that the idea of hordes of people traveling for hours to come to Niles, Michigan, for a short check-up was not credible.