• • •
Few things offer so much opportunity for common effort as the making of a book. With that in mind, I want to convey my very deep appreciation to the following people in addition to Judy who contributed to the making of this one.
First, Ray Willman, “Mr. Judy,” who has been indispensable to the project in countless ways, large and small, from day one.
In the publishing world: At WME, my stunningly brilliant and delightfully gutsy agent, Dorian Karchmar, the wonderfully capable Anna DeRoy, Raffaella De Angelis, Rayhané Sanders, and Simone Blaser. At the Viking Press, my sterling editor, Wendy Wolf, who wields the scalpel so expertly that one hardly feels the pain and is ever so grateful for the cure. Also Josh Kendall, who acquired the book and edited the initial draft, assistant editor Maggie Riggs, and the whole team of clever, resourceful professionals at Viking. And far from Manhattan, Jennifer Pooley, who has helped me along the road in so many ways.
Among those who call the 1936 crew family or close friends, many of whom generously shared their recollections and made their private collections of documents and memorabilia—scrapbooks, letters, and journals—available to me: Kristin Cheney, Jeff Day, Kris Day, Kathleen Grogan, Susan Hanshaw, Tim Hume, Jennifer Huffman, Josh Huffman, Rose Kennebeck, Marilynn Moch, Michael Moch, Pearlie Moulden, Joan Mullen, Jenny Murdaugh, Pat Sabin, Paul Simdars, Ken Tarbox, Mary Helen Tarbox, Harry Rantz Jr., Polly Rantz, Jerry Rantz, Heather White, and Sally White.
At the University of Washington’s shell house: Eric Cohen, Bob Ernst, and Luke McGee, all of whom reviewed the manuscript and offered many fine suggestions and essential corrections. Also Michael Callahan and Katie Gardner for help tracking down photographs. I’d like to call particular attention to Eric’s excellent website, www.huskycrew.com. It is by far the single best source for anyone who wants to know more about the long, illustrious history of rowing at Washington.
In the wider world of rowers and crew coaches: Bob Gotshall, John Halberg, Al Mackenize, Jim Ojala, and Stan Pocock.
In the world of libraries and dusty archives: Bruce Brown, Greg Lange, Eleanor Toews, and Suz Babayan.
For help with things German: Werner Phillip at the Wassersportmuseum in Grünau and, closer to home, Isabell Schober.
Finally, this is, in many ways, a book about a young man’s long journey back to a place he can call home. Writing his story has reminded me again and again that no one is more blessed by his home life than I am. I want to thank the three lovely and intelligent women who make it so: my daughters, Emi and Bobi—each of whom has lent her own unique talents to the making of this book—and my wife, Sharon. Her thoughtful reading of the manuscript, her many conversations with me about it, and her deeply insightful comments and suggestions have vastly improved it on every conceivable level. Her love, her confidence, and her continual support have made writing it possible in the first place. Without her, there would be no books.
NOTES
The original manuscript for this book contained well over a thousand endnotes. What follows is a much condensed and incomplete version of those notes. The full notes can be found at www.danieljamesbrown.com. In this condensed version, I use the following abbreviations: ST (Seattle Times), PI (Seattle Post-Intelligencer), WD (University of Washington Daily), NYT (New York Times), DH (New York Daily Herald), HT (New York Herald Tribune), and NYP (New York Post).
FRONT MATTER AND PROLOGUE
The Pocock quote is from Gordon Newell’s excellent biography, Ready All!: George Yeoman Pocock and Crew Racing (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), 159. The Pocock quotes taken from Newell, throughout the book, are used with permission of the University of Washington Press. The Greek epigraph is from Homer’s Odyssey, 5.219–20 and 5.223–24. The translation is by Emi C. Brown.
The Pocock quote serving as an epigraph to the prologue is from Newell (154).
CHAPTER ONE
The chapter epigraph here is from a letter Pocock wrote to C. Leverich Brett, printed in the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen’s Rowing News Bulletin, no. 3 (Season 1944), printed in Philadelphia, June 15, 1944. My descriptions of weather conditions in the Seattle area, throughout the book, are drawn from daily Cooperative Observers meteorological records taken at various stations around Seattle and reported to the U.S. Weather Bureau. For more statistics on the effects of the Depression, see Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (New York: Vintage, 2002), p. 86, and Joyce Bryant’s “The Great Depression and New Deal” in American Political Thought, vol. 4 (New Haven: Yale–New Haven Teachers’ Institute, 1998). Interestingly, according to Erik Larson, in his excellent book In the Garden of Beasts (New York: Crown, 2012), 375, King Kong was also a particular favorite of Adolf Hitler. More on the performance of the stock market through this period can be found in the Wall Street Journal’s table of “Dow Jones Industrial Average All-Time Largest One-Day Gains and Losses,” which is available at http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3024-djia_alltime.html. The Dow next passed 381 on November 23, 1954. At its low in 1932, the Dow had lost 89.19 percent of its value. See Harold Bierman, The Causes of the 1929 Stock Market Crash (Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood Publishing, 1998). Hoover’s full remarks are available in U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing Company, 2004), 211.
Descriptions of the students’ appearance and mode of dress are derived from photographs taken on the Washington campus that fall. My account of Joe’s and Roger’s first day at the shell house is based in part on my interview with Roger Morris on October 2, 2008. For more about Royal Brougham, see Dan Raley, “The Life and Times of Royal Brougham,” PI, October 29, 2003. The description of the shell house is based partly on my own observations and partly on Al Ulbrickson’s description in “Row, Damit, Row,” Esquire, April 1934. Facts and figures on the boys assembled on the dock that day are from WD, “New Crew Men Board Old Nero,” October 12, 1933. Years later, Ulbrickson would turn out to be one of three men on the shell house dock that afternoon—along with Royal Brougham and Johnny White—to be inducted into Franklin High’s Hall of Fame.
An enormous amount of information about the construction of the Olympic facilities in Berlin can be found in Organisationskomitee für die XI Olympiade Berlin 1936, The XIth Olympic Games Berlin, 1936: Official Report, vol. 1 (Berlin: Wilhelm Limpert, 1937). For more about Hitler’s initial attitude regarding the Olympics, see Paul Taylor, Jews and the Olympic Games: The Clash Between Sport and Politics (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2004), 51. The Dodd family’s impressions of Goebbels are documented in Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts. See “Foreign News: Consecrated Press,” in Time, October 16, 1933, for a telling story about Goebbels and the press.
Astronomical data—references to sunrise, sunset, moonrise, etc.—throughout are drawn from the U.S. Naval Observatory’s website. The best single source of information about the history of the Washington crew program is Eric Cohen’s marvelous online compendium, “Washington Rowing: 100+ Year History,” available at http://www.huskycrew.com. Among the eight Yale oarsmen who crewed the gold-medal-winning shell in 1924 was the future Dr. Benjamin Spock.
CHAPTER TWO
The epigraph is from Pocock, quoted in Newell (94–95). The facts regarding the Wright brothers’ flight are derived from “A Century of Flight,” Atlantic Monthly, December 17, 2003. For more about George Wyman’s motorcycle odyssey, see the entry on him at the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame website: http://motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame. More interesting facts and figures about the rather remarkable year of 1903 can be found in Kevin Maney’s article “1903 Exploded with Tech Innovation, Social Change,” USA Today, May 1, 2003. Confusingly, the first Model A was an entirely different automobile from the well-known Model A of 1927–31, which followed the wildly successful Model T.
Some of the details of this phase of Joe’s life are derived from an unpublished typescript, “Autobiography of Fred Rantz.” The
names and dates of Thula LaFollette’s parents are from monument inscriptions at the LaFollette Cemetery in Lincoln County, Washington. I gleaned many facts about Thula’s life from my interview with Harry Rantz Jr. on July 11, 2009. For an overview of the history of the Gold and Ruby mine, I consulted “It’s No Longer Riches That Draw Folks to Boulder City,” in the Spokane Spokesman-Review, September 28, 1990, and “John M. Schnatterly” in N. N. Durham, Spokane and the Inland Empire, vol. 3 (Spokane, WA: S. J. Clarke, 1912), 566. The anecdote regarding Thula’s “second sight” is drawn from an unpublished monograph, “Remembrance,” authored by one of Thula’s daughters, Rose Kennebeck.
CHAPTER THREE
The Pocock epigraph is quoted in Newell (144). Royal Brougham’s colorful description of the rigors of rowing is from “The Morning After: Toughest Grind of Them All?” PI, May 32, 1934. My discussion of the physiology of rowing and rowing injuries is drawn in part from the following sources: “Rowing Quick Facts” at the U.S. Rowing website: http://www.usrowing.org/About/Rowing101; Alison McConnell, Breathe Strong, Perform Better (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2011), 10; and J. S. Rumball, C. M. Lebrun, S. R. Di Ciacca, and K. Orlando, “Rowing Injuries,” Sports Medicine 35, no. 6 (2005): 537–55.
Pocock studied and emulated the rowing style of one of the greatest of the Thames watermen, Ernest Barry, who won the Doggett’s Coat and Badge in 1903 and was the world’s sculling champion in 1912, 1913, 1914, and 1920. For much more on the history of the Pocock family, see Newell, on whom I have relied heavily here, though many details also come from my two interviews with Stan Pocock and some from Clarence Dirks, “One-Man Navy Yard,” Saturday Evening Post, June 25, 1938, 16, as well as an unpublished typescript, “Memories,” written by Pocock himself in 1972. Many years later Rusty Callow, who coached at Washington before Ulbrickson, would say of Pocock, “Honesty of effort and pride in his work are a religion with him.”
Much of the information regarding Hiram Conibear is derived from an unpublished 1923 typescript by Broussais C. Beck, “Rowing at Washington,” available in the Beck Papers in the University of Washington Archives, accession number 0155-003. Additional information is from “Compton Cup and Conibear,” Time, May 3, 1937; David Eskenazi, “Wayback Machine: Hiram Conibear’s Rowing Legacy,” Sports Press Northwest, May 6, 2011, available at http://sportspressnw.com/2011/05/wayback-machine-hiram-conibears-rowing-legacy/; and Eric Cohen’s website cited above. Bob Moch’s remark about the reverence with which oarsmen regarded Pocock can be found in Christopher Dodd, The Story of World Rowing (London: Stanley Paul, 1992).
Apparently there was an earlier version of Old Nero, with seats for only ten oarsmen, as described by Beck. Al Ulbrickson refers to sixteen seats in “Row, Damit, Row.” Some details of Roger Morris’s early life are drawn from my interview with him. My description of the basic stroke taught by Ulbrickson in the 1930s is based on his own description of it in “Row, Damit, Row.” Over time the stroke used at the University of Washington has continued to evolve in various ways. The golf ball analogy is from Pocock himself, in his “Memories” (110).
CHAPTER FOUR
The epigraph is from the already cited letter Pocock wrote to C. Leverich Brett, printed in the Rowing News Bulletin. Many of the details of life in Sequim are from Joe Rantz’s memory, some from Harry Rantz Jr.’s recollection, and some from Doug McInnes, Sequim Yesterday: Local History Through the Eyes of Sequim Old-Timers, self-published in May 2005. A few additional facts are from Michael Dashiell, “An Olympic Hero,” Sequim Gazette, January 18, 2006. A discussion of the role farm prices played in the Depression can be found in Piers Brendon’s The Dark Valley (87) and also in Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time (Boston: Mariner, 2006), 79. Joe recounted his abandonment in Sequim and his subsequent efforts to survive in great detail many times over his lifetime, and my account is based on his own telling to me as well as on details gleaned from my interviews with Judy Willman and with Harry Rantz Junior. Some of the facts concerning Charlie McDonald and his horses, as well as other details about the McDonald household, were outlined in an e-mail from Pearlie McDonald to Judy Willman, June 1, 2009.
The biographical material on Joyce Simdars, here and throughout, is drawn from my interviews with Judy Willman, Joyce’s daughter, as well as from photos and documents that Judy shared with me. Ulbrickson’s discovery of Joe in the gym at Roosevelt High School was one of the first things that Joe talked about when I began to interview him.
CHAPTER FIVE
The epigraph is Pocock, quoted in Newell (144). The biographical information about Roger Morris is largely from my interview with him on October 2, 2008. For more on home foreclosures early in the Depression, see David C. Wheelock, “The Federal Response to Home Mortgage Distress: Lessons from the Great Depression,” Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis Review, available online at http://research.stlouisfed.org/. See also Brian Albrecht, “Cleveland Eviction Riot of 1933 Bears Similarities to Current Woes,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 8, 2009.
A scrapbook that Joe kept for much of his rowing career is the source of many of the small details of his life at the shell house, his job, his living conditions, and the things he and Joyce did together throughout their college years. The sketch of life on the UW campus in the fall of 1933 is drawn from various issues of WD from that fall.
My account of the dust storms of 1933 is derived largely from “Dust Storm at Albany,” NYT, November 14, 1933. Facts pertaining to the state of affairs in Germany that fall are from Edwin L. James, “Germany Quits League; Hitler Asks ‘Plebiscite,’” NYT, October 15, 1933; “Peace Periled When Germany Quits League,” ST, October 14, 1933; Larson, Garden of Beasts (152); Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., The Panzer Legions: A Guide to the German Army Tank Divisions of World War II and Their Commanders (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2006), 8; and “U.S. Warns Germany,” ST, October 12, 1933. The reference to nitrates passing through the Panama Canal is from “Munitions Men,” Time, March 5, 1934. The Will Rogers quote is from “Mr. Rogers Takes a Stand on New European Dispute,” in Will Rogers’ Daily Telegrams, vol. 4, The Roosevelt Years, edited by James M. Smallwood and Steven K. Gragert (Stillwater: Oklahoma State University Press), 1997.
Some meteorologists argue that November 2006 eclipsed the December 1933 record, but the official rainfall measurements in 2006 were taken at Sea-Tac Airport, eight miles south of Seattle, where rainfall tends to be higher. See Sandi Doughton, “Weather Watchdogs Track Every Drop,” ST, December 3, 2006. Also Melanie Connor, “City That Takes Rain in Stride Puts on Hip Boots,” NYT, November 27, 2006.
CHAPTER SIX
The epigraph appears in Newell (88). The freshmen can be seen rowing under the bowsprits of an old schooner in a photograph from the ST, February 18, 1934. “Tolo” refers, in western Washington and British Columbia, to what most of the country knows as a Sadie Hawkins dance—one in which the girl asks the boy to the event. The term apparently derives from tulu (to win) in Chinook, the jargon spoken in the nineteenth century by many Northwest Indians.
Ulbrickson’s running commentary on the performance of different boys and different crews, here and throughout, is taken from his “Daily Turnout Log of University of Washington Crew,” vol. 4 (1926; 1931–43), housed in the Alvin Edmund Ulbrickson Papers in the University of Washington’s Special Collections, accession number 2941-001. Hereafter referred to as “Ulbrickson’s logbook.”
One of Ebright’s later oarsmen and devoted disciples was Gregory Peck. The Buzz Schulte quote is from Gary Fishgall, Gregory Peck: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 2001), 41. The Don Blessing quote is from a newspaper clipping, “Ebright: Friend, Tough Coach,” Daily Californian, November 3, 1999. Much of the information on Ebright’s early years at Cal and the rivalry with Washington—including the “vicious and bloody” quote—comes from an interview with Ebright conducted by Arthur M. Arlett in 1968, housed in the Regional Oral History office of the Bancroft Library at the University of California
, Berkeley. The testy exchange of letters between Ebright and Pocock took place between October 1931 and February 1933. The letters are also housed in the Bancroft Library. Pocock states in “Memories” (63) that it was he who first suggested Ebright for the job at Cal.
The principal sources of my account of the lead-up to the 1934 Cal-Washington race are “Freshmen Win, Bear Navy Here,” ST, April 1934; “Bear Oarsmen Set for Test with Huskies,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 5, 1934; “Bear Oarsmen to Invade North,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1934; “Huskies Have Won Four Out of Six Races,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1934; and “California Oarsmen in Washington Race Today,” Associated Press, April 13, 1934.
Joyce’s experience watching from the ferry as Joe raced for the first time was something she remembered well, and my account of her feelings and thoughts comes from her many conversations with her daughter Judy. The reference to John Dillinger is from “John Dillinger Sends U.S. Agents to San Jose Area,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1936. The estimate of 300-plus strokes in two miles is based on Susan Saint Sing’s figure of 200 strokes in 2,000 meters, or one stroke every 10 meters, in her The Wonder Crew (New York: St Martin’s, 2008), 88. Two miles is 3,218 meters, which would yield a result of 321 strokes; however, the stroke rate is inevitably lower in a two-mile race than in a 2,000-meter sprint. My account of the 1934 Cal-Washington freshman races is based primarily on Frank G. Gorrie, “Husky Shell Triumphs by ¼ Length,” Associated Press, April 13, 1934; and Royal Brougham, “U.W. Varsity and Freshmen Defeat California Crews,” PI, April 14, 1934.