Anne Boyle Gilmartin: A Pioneer of Women's Rowing

When she was Anne Boyle 

On a recent night, when I was talking about my book at the new Narberth Book Shop, Anne Boyle Gilmartin turned up. Now in her 80s, she is as enthusiastic about rowing and the Philadelphia Girls Rowing Club (PGRC) as she was as a teenager back in the 1950s.

She reminisced with me about those days, when PGRC --the first competitive rowing club in the country -- was still struggling to find women to row against. "I heard about rowing and thought, 'that sounds interesting,' Anne told me as we sat in her Drexel Hill, PA home, sparkling with holiday decorations.

What followed was nothing but fun and laughter. She made friends. She flirted. She got great coaching. And she traveled. "We raced on the Potomac, in Boston, in New Rochelle, N.Y.," she said, showing off her medals.

Anne's medals

And she competed in the first major races that PGRC had against a serious women's team, in 1956 against Florida Southern in Lakeland.

According to the research I did for my book, PGRC raced against a sorority team. A Lakeland, Fla. newspaper called the match-up historic -- the day "women took over man's traditional eight-oared shell and launched intersectional competition."

Anne rowed that day with Ernestine Bayer, widely called the "mother of women's rowing," and a founder of PGRC in 1938. By 1956,  the intrepid Ernie was 47 years old "and not to be dissuaded from racing, despite criticism that she was too old," I wrote in my chapter on women's crew. PGRC lost, but only by a foot.

Anne remembers being coached by Tom Curran, a champion rower of the 1930s who by the 1950s was also leading La Salle College crew to victory. "He was a rogue," she said, laughing, as she remembered "the Bear." But he was tough, too. "If you didn't dance the way he fiddled, you were in trouble," she said.

Eying the photo of Curran coaching a men's eight  on page 116 in my book (a photo I wrote about on my Boathouse Row website), she spied Romeo Boyd and swooned. Sounding like Shakespeare's Juliet, she recalled calling out to him: "Romeo....Oh, Romeo..." 
"He'd take me and throw me in the water. We just had fun."

What "Unretiring" has Wrought!!

First big regatta on Schuylkill, 1835, Nicolino Calyo

It took me three years, but my book, Boathouse Row, Waves of Change in the Birthplace of American Rowing is finally out. Taking on this project has been transformational.
First of all, I was totally absorbed by the crumbling minute books, old newspapers, photo archives, and documents stashed in boathouses, people's homes and such repositories as the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company. The stories I discovered fascinated me. They took me inside a time when immigrants were pouring into Philadelphia and the country, a time when people clung to clubs and traditions for a sense of belonging somewhere. They had costumes, nicknames, and other strange customs. Gambling was rife, races were thrown, and Boathouse Row pushed for amateur rules for the sport. (They were the first amateur rules for any sport in the U.S.)  Hundreds of thousands would descend on the river to watch the most popular spectator sport of its era. You can find lots of photos and information on my website, BoathouseRowTheBook.
Then, too, I got to interview a lot of people with long memories of more recent times. Such fun, having an excuse to get to know some fascinating folks.

Signing my book at the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta

And picking the more than 160 photos for the book tapped into my experience as a projects editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where I focused not only on words, but how a big story would appear visually.
In other words, every skill I ever learned as a journalist -- reporting, writing, research, fact checking, visuals -- all came into play in this, the biggest project of my career.
As I look at the book on my kitchen counter, with its gorgeous cover, color photos, many stories and its heft, I'm stunned that I was able to create this.
Of course,  I could not have done so without Temple University Press and a generous grant to the press from philanthropist H. F. Gerry Lenfest. Daniel J. Boyne, author of several important rowing books, wrote a gracious blurb for the jacket.
As I am interviewed on public radio's WHYY  Radio Times  or excerpted in the Philadelphia Inquirer , or in Main Line Today, it's like an out-of-body experience for me. My calendar is filling with appearances and book signings.
Never could I have imagined that my journey to the "next great thing" would be so much fun.

100,000!! (but who's counting)

Happily tunneling through

Today, "Unretiring" passed the 100,000 hits mark. Wish I could say it was for one day, but it's more like several years, though frankly, I got my flu shot so I don't expect a virus to attack.
I have immersed myself lately in a subject I never planned to know anything about. But my path to discovery has been exciting and invigorating. Within a few days, I'll be turning in my book, having tunneled through records of the last century and a half. If anyone had  told me that I'd become perhaps the foremost expert on the history of Boathouse Row in Philadelphia when I left newspapering, I would have cracked up laughing. But a couple years later, ask me anything!! Which goes to show that there's life after newspapers for those many who have sadly lost their jobs and those likely to follow.

I'll be picking my blog up again soon. But thanks to search engines, people keep finding old posts which accounts for the  record today.

Thanks, everyone!  May you have a happy new year with a little risk taking to explore outside your comfort zone. Never know what excitement you may find.

Tom Thomas: You Can Row Home Again

Tom Thomas: Coaching city kids is his passion

Rowing. That’s what William C. "Tom" Thomas Jr. really loved -- even as he married, raised a couple kids, worked in college administration and as a lawyer for 27 years.

That and coaching young people.

So Tom was in his element on the Schuylkill River as I watched him coach city youths a few weeks ago in a non-profit program called Philadelphia City Rowing.

You can find him working by the river almost every afternoon. He makes sure the boats, housed in a narrow shed at the end of clubby Boathouse Row, are shipshape. He encourages the teens to erg on rowing machines, do push ups and jump on and off a balance beam to strengthen all the muscles in their bodies --virtually every one of them is used in the strenuous sport of rowing.

Philadelphia City Rowing: sweating and erging

And, you’ll see him out in the coach boat with his megaphone, urging his charges to swing their bodies in rhythm with the pull of their oars in the exquisite choreography of sculling.

As I tried to hear him over the buzz of the outboard motor on the coach boat, Tom told me how he had come to help city kids get onto the river and learn a sport for which they would otherwise have little access.

Throughout the history of Boathouse Row, the high schools that have dominated rowing were the prep schools and the Catholics -- and more recently suburban public high schools. With only a few exceptions, the city’s public school kids haven’t had a crack at this sport, which involves costly boats and boathouses, unaffordable in a city that barely supports music or libraries.

Philadelphia City Rowing, funded by foundations, private donors, and a handful of dedicated staff and volunteers, is finally making it happen. Besides the rowing, the students are expected to keep up their grades, so PCR coaches them academically, as well, and gives them college counseling. So far, every kid who stuck with rowing through his or her senior year has made it to college.

Every muscle gets used

Tom said that as a student at Washington-Lee High School, in Arlington, Va., he had the luck to row for legendary coach Charlie Butt. He also spent summers as a lifeguard at the Jersey shore in Ventnor “under the watchful guidance of Stan Bergman,” who coached at Holy Spirit High School and was later head coach at the University of Pennsylvania. Tom later rowed four years at Rutgers. Still, he knew he would never be the athlete his father was. “My dad was extremely competitive, a national caliber runner, all-state football in high school.  Very accomplished.”

With his son rowing, his dad, too, became excited about the sport and bought a double scull after retiring from a 30-year career as an Air Force pilot. Father and son competed together in the Head of the Charles in Boston in the 1980s. “In his 60s, when I’m rowing with him, I’m trying to keep up with him and I’m in my 30s! My dad inspired me. Though I had his shadow to kind of walk in,  I always felt it was an encouragement, not an ‘I can’t measure up.’  I didn’t worry about it. I just did the best I could.”

Time passed. Suddenly Tom was in his late 50s. With his kids grown and a law career that left him unsatisfied and wanting more, he circled back to his first love.

“I’m here all day, every day. It has to be done,” explains Tom, who works as director of PCR’s rowing program.

Tom: working to create opportunity

This fall about 80 city high school kids from very diverse backgrounds came out, a record for the five-year-old program, though the number is likely to settle somewhere in the 60s.

How does he feel about his post-vocation avocation?

“In almost any non-profit you don’t get what you’re worth. By the same token it’s a matter of trying to make this program do something and you can’t do it with 20 or 30 hours a week. You’ve got to put more in.”

Before the kids arrive from school,  Tom's out in the sliver of land PCR has wrested from Boathouse Row, fixing boats, getting practice plans together, watching coaching videos and keeping abreast of the sport. “I can’t sit on my laurels,” he says.

His reward? ‘Just watching these kids work harder and grow into rowing.”

As for a Name, the Answer is …..

Thanks to many of you for responding to my plea on what I should call myself for the Library of Congress  Some of you thought I should not walk away from my byline of many years (Dorothy Brown). Others advised that I needed a name with more gravitas.
I have decided! I am me! I'm settling for the name I feel most comfortable with -- the name I've preferred since getting married, the one I've been using for this blog -- which by the way does not have "Dorothy" in it!
I tried out my new byline in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, where I wrote a piece that dovetails with the book that I should be working on now instead of blogging.  Here's the link.
The article is about the surprising history of the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta, happening Oct. 25-26.
Also, I've decided I have to walk the walk, but in this case it's 'row the row.' If I'm writing a book about Boathouse Row, I need to race!  I'll be on the river with my niece at 2.55 p.m. Saturday, rowing our little hearts out over the 2.5-mile course. We hope to do it in under 25 minutes, which won't be any record, except for us.
Challenges! That's  what we need to continue living at peak performance.
Again, my thanks to all for your advice. --"Dotty Brown"

Burnishing Olympic Gold, 50 Years Later

The victorious Vesper 8, posing in 1964. Bill Stowe is on right.

As Olympic rower Bill Stowe says at the end of his book, "All Together," about winning gold:
"There is no greater high and it can endure for years."
50 years, to be exact.
It's been that long since a motley crew from the Vesper Boat Club won gold at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in the eight-oared boat. Many of those men in that surprise upset will be honored tomorrow at a banquet  hosted by Vesper. For that occasion, I wrote a piece in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, which I'm reprinting below.   Interestingly, two of the rowers -- Bill Stowe and Emory Clark -- have written books about this seminal experience in their lives. (Clark's is yet unpublished). And all of them, every four years, at Olympic time, are asked to talk about their victory and show their medals, now touched by thousands of hands.

By Dorothy Brown

'Old men." "A curious crew." "A crusty bunch of adults." That's what the

press called the eight-man crew from Vesper Boat Club as they swept the

national trials and, in a huge upset, headed for the Tokyo Olympics.

The year was 1964, a half-century ago, and the ragtag Vesper crew had

just upended six decades of collegiate dominance of the Olympics'

premier rowing event. Their feat also placed Boathouse Row in an

international spotlight, secured its prominence as a coaching mecca, and

helped catapult the sport here and around the country.

Playing a significant role was Olympian Jack Kelly, brother of Grace and

son of John B., for whom Kelly Drive is named. Jack Kelly, a longtime

city councilman and Vesper officer, lured the nation's best rowers, even

arguing for "special assignment" for Olympic hopefuls in the military.

Who were these men?

Tom and Joe Amlong, a brawny pair of loud-mouthed brothers in their late

20s, one in the Air Force, the other in the Army; Hugh Foley, 20, and

Stan Cwiklinski, 21, quiet, hard-working students at LaSalle College; Bill

Knecht, 34, a father of six with a sheet-metal business; and three men

who had rowed in college - Marine Lt. Emory Clark, 26, and Boyce Budd,

25, (both Yale) and Navy Lt. Bill Stowe, 26, (Cornell).

Their 115-pound cox, Bob Zimonyi, was a 46-year-old Hungarian refugee

who often muttered his commands in his native language.

"A boatload of men will beat a boatload of boys every time," boasted

their diminutive, hard-driving coach, Al Rosenberg, after his "men"

outpaced the "boys" of undefeated Harvard and the University of

California at the trials.

Rosenberg, who died in December, will be missed Saturday<NO1>1-25<NO>,

at a banquet honoring the Vesper Eight and others who competed in the

'64 games. Theirs is an aging fraternity but their stories, to be retold

at the event, are a testimony to the championship spirit that continues

to draw elite rowers to Boathouse Row.

Athletes like Olympic-aspirant Vicky Opitz, 25, who trained at Vesper

before competing in the World Cup last year in Switzerland, where her

eight broke the world record. Her crew then nailed the World

Championship in South Korea.

"Part of my decision to train in Philadelphia," she said last week, "was

its incredible history as a mecca of rowing on the East Coast and the

stories that come out of there of people who are willing to push and

sacrifice to accomplish their goals."

In his diary, Emory Clark wrote of the pain and the joy of training on

the Schuylkill in the winter of 1964:

"You put the boat in and rain goes down your neck, but once you get out

and warmed up it's terrific - even if you are rigged low and you get

hung up every stroke and Al calls you on your release - I enjoyed it out

there tonight - lashing away at the water, cussing Zimonyi and counting

strokes.... Dark when we came in and still nasty. Wonderful. ... Pray

that the warm weather will see an end to our aches and pains."

Fellow rower Bill Stowe, in his 2005 book All Together wrote: "We rowed

six days a week in all kinds of weather, and we killed ourselves. When

we were not rowing, we weightlifted - tortured our bodies. ... We

greeted the sun in the morning and put it to bed in the evening. ... It

was both wonderful and dreadful."

It was nearly nightfall on Oct. 15, 1964, when, in a wind-delayed race,

the Vesper Eight churned its way toward the finish line, still 500

meters away. Suddenly, "there was a bright explosion and another, and I

had something else for my ravaged brain to focus on," Clark wrote.

"Could we have passed the finish line? Had I so miscalculated?"

Under flares bursting to light the way, Vesper streaked across the

finish five seconds ahead of the Germans. The interminable months of

workouts and weights and worry were over in 6 minutes, 18.23 seconds,

clinching gold for the United States and Philadelphia.

Dorothy Brown is a former editor at The Inquirer, and a member of Vesper

who rows only for fun.