For much more on Joseph Goebbels’s family life, see Anja Klabunde, Magda Goebbels (London: Time Warner, 2003). The additional facts presented here about the Reichssportfeld are drawn from The XIth Olympic Games: Official Report; Duff Hart-Davis, Hitler’s Games (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 49; and Christopher Hilton, Hitler’s Olympics (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2006), 17. The torch-relay idea is often credited to Dr. Carl Diem, chief organizer of the 1936 Olympics, but according to The XIth Olympic Games: Official Report (58), the proposal originally came from within the Ministry of Propaganda.
For an up-to-date assessment of Leni Riefenstahl’s relationship with Nazi Party leaders, I highly recommend Steven Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl (New York: Abacus, 2007). See also Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels (New York: Harvest, 1994), 194; and Jurgen Trimborn, Leni Riefenstahl: A Life (New York: Faber and Faber, 2002). After the war, Riefenstahl would deny that she had been on social terms with the Goebbels family and other top Nazis, but Goebbels’s diary from 1933 and other documents that have come to light since make clear that she was, in fact, very much a part of their social circle.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Pocock quote that opens this chapter is, interestingly, from a note he sent wrapped around an oar to a Washington crew rowing at Henley in 1958; see Newell (81). My account of the 1934 varsity race here is, like the freshman race, based largely on Gorrie, “Husky Shell Triumphs by ¼ Length,” and Brougham, “U.W. Varsity and Freshmen Defeat California Crews,” cited above, as well as Ulbrickson’s logbook.
Joe’s unease mixed with excitement as he boarded the train to Poughkeepsie for the first time was one of the things he often brought up with Judy, as were other details of the trip east, particularly his moment of humiliation when he began to sing.
For much more about the history of the Poughkeepsie Regatta, see the many resources available at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association’s Poughkeepsie Regatta website, at http://library.marist.edu/archives/regatta/index.html. The account of Washington’s first win at Poughkeepsie is based on my interviews with Stan Pocock; George Pocock, quoted in “One-Man Navy Yard” (49); “From Puget Sound,” Time, July 9, 1923; Saint Sing, Wonder Crew (228); and Newell (73). The mention of Ulbrickson’s injury in the 1926 regatta is from “Unstarred Rowing Crew Champions: They Require Weak But Intelligent Minds, Plus Strong Backs,” Literary Digest 122:33–34. For more on the East versus West theme, see Saint Sing (232–34).
Many elements of my description of Poughkeepsie on the day of the 1934 regatta are drawn from a wonderful piece by Robert F. Kelley, “75,000 See California Win Classic on Hudson,” NYT, June 17, 1934. The reference to Jim Ten Eyck having rowed in 1863 comes from Brougham, “The Morning After,” PI, May 27, 1937. In that piece Ten Eyck also proclaimed the 1936–37 University of Washington varsity crew the greatest he ever saw.
My description of the 1934 Poughkeepsie races is based on the Robert F. Kelley piece cited above, as well as “Washington Crew Beats California,” NYT, April 13, 1934; “Ebright Praises Washington Eight,” NYT, June 17, 1934; George Varnell, “Bolles’ Boys Happy,” ST (a clipping in Joe Rantz’s scrapbook with no date); “U.W. Frosh Win” (no date, Joe Rantz’s scrapbook); and “Syracuse Jayvees Win Exciting Race,” NYT, June 17, 1934.
Weather data for the spring and summer of 1934 is, in part, from Joe Sheehan, “May 1934: The Hottest May on Record,” available at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office website, http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/?n=joe_may1934; W. R. Gregg and Henry A. Wallace, Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau, 1934 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1935); “Summer 1934: Statewide Heat Wave,” available at http://www.ohiohistory.org; and “Grass from Gobi,” Time, August 20, 1934. For more on the dust storms that year, see Egan, Worst Hard Time (particularly 5 and 152).
A great deal more information about the 1934 West Coast labor disputes is available on Rod Palmquist’s Waterfront Workers’ History Project website: http://depts.washington.edu/dock. A small sampling of the rhetorical assaults on Roosevelt can be found in “New Deal Declared 3-Ring Circus by Chairman of Republican Party,” PI, July 3, 1934; and “American Liberty Threatened by New Deal, Borah Warns,” PI, July 5, 1934. The full text of Roosevelt’s remarks at Ephrata are recorded in “Remarks at the Site of the Grand Coulee Dam, Washington,” August 4, 1934, on the American Presidency Project website: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Pocock quote is from Newell (156). My description of working with a mallet and froe to split cedar is based in part on lessons given to me by Joe’s daughter Judy, to whom he taught the skills. Ulbrickson’s speech to the boys on the shell house ramp is derived from assorted press accounts of it as well as his own description of such speeches as told to Clarence Dirks in Esquire a few months earlier. The boat assignments in this section are taken from Al Ulbrickson’s logbook for the spring of 1935 and from articles in the WD.
Details of the Rantz family’s years in Seattle are drawn primarily from my interview with Harry Rantz Jr. and from his unpublished typescript, “Memories of My Mother.” For more on the commissaries and the socialist movement in Seattle, see “Communism in Washington State,” at http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/cpproject. For more about the Golden Rule labor dispute, see The Great Depression in Washington State website, “Labor Events Yearbook: 1936,” at http://depts.washington.edu/depress/yearbook1936.shtml. Joe’s encounter with Thula at her house on Bagley was seared in his memory, as it was in Joyce’s, and both of them recalled it and their conversation in the car afterward in considerable detail. The respect that was paid to Pocock, especially when he was at work in his shop, was made emphatically clear to me in a discussion I had with Jim Ojala, February 22, 2011. I am indebted to Jim—author, publisher, oarsman, and friend of the Pococks—for a number of other insights into what Pocock’s shop was like, as well as for his help in obtaining some of the photographs in this book. The correspondence between Pocock and Ebright quoted here took place between September 1 and October 30, 1934.
I learned much about how Pocock crafted his shells from the following: Stan Pocock’s Way Enough! (Seattle: Blabla, 2000); my own interviews with Stan; Newell (95–97, 149); “George Pocock: A Washington Tradition,” WD, May 6, 1937; and George Pocock’s “Memories.”
My account of the great windstorm of 1934 is based largely on “15 Killed, 3 Ships Wrecked As 70-Mile Hurricane Hits Seattle,” PI, October 22, 1934. Some figures from this source, such as the ultimate death toll, were later updated. Some facts are from Wolf Read, “The Major Windstorm of October 21, 1934,” available at http://www.climate.washington.edu/stormking/October1934.html, and from the WD for October 23, 1934. I am indebted to Bob Ernst, director of rowing at the University of Washington, for his colorful description of the rowing tanks used by eastern schools.
My discussion of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will is based on Trimborn, Bach, and Brendon, cited above, but also in part on Riefenstahl’s own autobiography, Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir (New York: St. Martins Press, 1993). One has to be very cautious in relying on Riefenstahl’s own account of many of these events. I have tried to point out areas where she may be unreliable.
Joe kept the “Senior Men Face Life with Debts” clipping in his scrapbook and still recalled near the end of his life the feelings that reading it had provoked in him.
CHAPTER NINE
The epigraph is from a letter Pocock wrote to the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen, reprinted in the Rowing News Bulletin for 1944. I have reassembled Ulbrickson’s remarks based on the press coverage in Clarence Dirks, “Husky Mentor Sees New Era for Oarsmen: Crews Adopt ‘On to Olympics’ Program as They Launch 1935 Campaign,” PI, January 15, 1935, and “Husky Crew Can Be Best Husky Oarsmen,” WD, January 15, 1935. For more on Broussais Beck Sr., see the “Broussais C. Beck labor spy reports and ephemera” in the Beck Papers at the University
of Washington Library’s Special Collections, accession number 0155-001. The unusually cold weather that January is documented in a series of articles in the Seattle press. See my online notes for full citations. The anecdote about the interaction between Moch and Green is based in part on my interview with Marilynn Moch and in part on Moch himself in his interview with Michael J. Socolow, November 2004, as recorded in a transcript from the Moch family collection. The attendees at Ulbrickson’s “chat” with the sophomore boys are listed in his logbook entry for February 13, 1935.
Some of the details of my sketch of Shorty Hunt are based on my interview with his daughters, Kristin Cheney and Kathy Grogan. The character sketch of Don Hume is drawn in part from Royal Brougham, “Varsity Crew to Poughkeepsie,” ST, June 1936. The brief characterization of Chuck Day is based in part on my interview with Kris Day.
Ulbrickson’s experimentations with different boatings are chronicled in his logbook as well as in coverage by the ST and PI. Their canoe ride on the first warm day that spring was something that stuck in the minds of both Joe and Joyce and they often shared details of it fondly with Judy. Joe’s conversation with his father in the car at the Golden Rule bakery was another of those key moments that he shared in detail with me as he had with Judy over a lifetime. My description of “the swing” is based on conversations with a number of oarsmen; however, Eric Cohen’s input on this question was particularly valuable. Ulbrickson’s equivocations over who should row as varsity against California are documented in a series of articles in the ST, PI, and NYT throughout April 1935, all cited in my online notes. Some facts are from Ulbrickson’s logbook for that month. Bob Moch, as quoted in Michael Socolow’s 2004 interview with him, is the source of Ulbrickson’s “I’m sorry” comment on April 12, 1935. My account of the races on the Oakland Estuary is based on Bill Leiser, “Who Won?” San Francisco Chronicle, April 14, 1935; “Husky Crews Make Clean Sweep,” ST, April 14, 1935; Bruce Helberg, “Second Guesses,” WD (no date, clipping from Bob Moch’s scrapbook); “Husky Crews Win Three Races,” ST, April 14, 1935; and “Washington Sweeps Regatta with Bears: Husky Varsity Crew Spurts to Turn Back U.C. Shell by 6 Feet,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 14, 1935.
The homecoming parade in Seattle is documented in George Varnell, “Crew, Swim Team Welcomed Home,” ST, April 19, 1935, and “City Greets Champions,” PI, April 19, 1935. Jack Medica was himself destined for the 1936 Olympics, where he would earn a gold medal in the four-hundred-meter freestyle, as well as two silver medals. Joe’s moment of surprise and pride as he basked in applause still brought tears to his eyes as he talked about it with me years later.
CHAPTER TEN
The Pocock quote is from Newell (85). The iron shoulder pads incident is mentioned in Pocock, Way Enough (51). My brief overview of early sports in Seattle is based on the following: Dan Raley, “From Reds to Ruth to Rainiers: City’s History Has Its Hits, Misses,” PI, June 13, 2011; C. J. Bowles, “Baseball Has a Long History in Seattle,” available on MLB.com at http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com; “A Short History of Seattle Baseball,” available at http://seattlepilots.com/history1.html; Dan Raley, “Edo Vanni, 1918–2007: As player, manager, promoter, he was ‘100 percent baseball,’” PI, April 30, 2007; “Seattle Indians: A Forgotten Chapter in Seattle Baseball,” available at Historylink.org; and Jeff Obermeyer, “Seattle Metropolitans,” at http://www.seattlehockey.net/Seattle_Hockey_Homepage/Metropolitans.html. It wasn’t until 1969—with the arrival of the Seattle Pilots—that Seattle finally got a major-league baseball team. And they went bankrupt within a year.
My discussion of Black Sunday is based on Egan, Worst Hard Time (8); “Black Sunday Remembered,” April 13, 2010, on the Oklahoma Climatological Survey website: http://climate.ok.gov; and Sean Potter, “Retrospect: April 14, 1935: Black Sunday,” available at http://www.weatherwise.org. The effect on Seattle of the subsequent exodus from the Plains states is based, in part, on “Great Migration Westward About to Begin,” PI, May 4, 1935. The anonymous “Rowing is like a beautiful duck . . .” has been floating around for years, though no one seems to know its source. Al Ulbrickson discussed the complexities caused by oarsmen with different physical abilities rowing together in the International Olympic Committee’s Olympische Rundschau (Olympic Review) 7 (October 1939). I am indebted to Bob Ernst for the essential idea that great crews require a blend of both physical abilities and personality types.
The continuing struggle between Joe’s all-sophomore boat and the JV boat ultimately chosen as varsity for the Poughkeepsie Regatta is chronicled in a series of articles in the PI, ST, NYT, and New York American between early May and early June 1935. See full notes online for specific references. I found Bobby Moch’s table of codes in his scrapbook, kindly made available by Marilynn Moch.
Descriptive details in my account of the 1935 Poughkeepsie Regatta are drawn largely from the following: “Huge Throng Will See Regatta,” ST, June 17, 1935; “California Varsity Wins, U.W. Gets Third,” PI, June 19, 1935; “Western Crews Supreme Today,” ST, June 19, 1935; Robert F. Kelley, “California Varsity Crew Victor on Hudson for 3rd Successive Time,” NYT, June 19, 1935; “Sport: Crews,” Time, July 1, 1935; Hugh Bradley, “Bradley Says: ‘Keepsie’s Regatta Society Fete, With Dash of Coney, Too,’” New York Post, June 25, 1935; and Brougham, “The Morning After,” PI, June 20, 1935.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Pocock quote is from Newell (85–87). Joe’s trip out to Grand Coulee and his subsequent experiences there were favorite topics of conversation for him, and he shared countless details with Judy, Joyce, and later me. In places here I have supplemented his description of the physical environment with my own observations, drawn while driving his route and exploring the site myself; however, the specifics of his experiences and his feelings during that summer are all his as conveyed directly to me or conveyed to me through Judy. For more about Lake Missoula and the epic prehistoric floods, see “Ice Age Floods: Study of Alternatives,” section D: “Background,” available at http://www.nps.gov/iceagefloods/d.htm; William Dietrich, “Trailing an Apocalypse,” ST, September 30, 2007; and “Description: Glacial Lake Missoula and the Missoula Floods,” available on the USGS website at http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/Glaciers/IceSheets/description_lake_missoula.html.
Facts pertaining to the two-thousand-meter race at Long Beach are from “Crew Goes West,” ST, June 20, 1935, and Theon Wright, “Four Boats Beat Olympic Record,” United Press, June 30, 1935.
The statistics regarding food consumption at Mason City are from “Here’s Where Some Surplus Food Goes,” Washington Farm News, November 29, 1935. For much more about Grand Coulee and B Street, see Roy Bottenberg, Grand Coulee Dam (Charleston: Arcadia Press, 2008), and Lawney L. Reyes, B Street: The Notorious Playground of Coulee Dam (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008).
Many details of the biographical sketch of Johnny White are from my interview with his sister, Mary Helen Tarbox. Others are from her unpublished typescript, “Mary Helen Tarbox, Born November 11, 1918 in Seattle, Washington.” Aspects of my characterization of Chuck Day are based on my conversation with his daughter, Kris Day.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The epigraph is from Newell (78). Some of the details about construction of the Olympic Stadium are from Berlin Olympic Stadium website: http://www.olympiastadion-berlin.de. Others are from Dana Rice, “Germany’s Olympic Plans,” NYT, November 24, 1935, and from The XIth Olympic Games: Official Report. The reference to Nazi officers executing German boys is from David Large, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 324. My discussion of the history of rowing at Grünau is drawn in part from a translation, helpfully provided by Isabell Schober, of “Geschichte des Wassersports” on the website of the Wassersportmuseum at Grünau, available at http://www.wassersportmuseum-gruenau.de. Other facts about the facility are from my interview with Werner Phillip at the museum.
Much of the information about Harry and Thula Rantz?
??s excursions to eastern Washington comes from my interviews with Harry Rantz Jr. The anecdote regarding Ulbrickson’s determination to win gold at Berlin is based in large part on a video interview with Hazel Ulbrickson, “U of W Crew—The Early Years,” produced by American Motion Pictures Video Laboratory, Seattle, 1987. Joe only learned about the conversation between Ulbrickson and Pocock, and Pocock’s mission to “fix” him, years later. Pocock’s several subsequent talks with him left an enormous impression on Joe, and he recounted them in vivid detail to me as he had earlier to Judy. Pocock took “only God can make a tree” from Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” in Trees and Other Poems (New York: George H. Doran, 1914). An English translation of the Nuremberg Laws is available on the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s website: http://www.ushmm.org. I also consulted Tom Kuntz, “Word for Word/The Nuremberg Laws: On Display in Los Angeles: Legal Foreshadowing of Nazi Horror,” NYT, July 4, 1999. For more on their immediate effect in Germany, see William Shirer’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 233–34. The banning of the Jewish Helvetia Rowing Club in 1933 is mentioned in “Geschichte des Wassersports.”