Hird started as a professional boxer and semiprofessional baseball player, but in 1900, he decided to pursue a military career and joined the Iowa National Guard. After competing at the 1912 Olympics, he fought in the Mexican border campaign of 1914 and in World War I. From 1928 to 1936, he served as U.S. Marshall for southern Iowa and then as a special agent for the Iowa attorney general’s office until retiring in 1943 as a lieutenant colonel.[2]