row2k Features
Life is a Metaphor for Rowing, by Peter Mallory: Ch. 7: Shame on Me
April 23, 2022
Peter Mallory

1965 Penn Lightweight V8, 12th Eastern Sprints: Bow Terry Carr, 2 Murray Saylor, 3 Gene Polgar, 4 Paul Garner, 5 Laird Taylor, 6 Pete Mallory, 7 Martin Dominguez, Stroke Larry Walsh, Cox Bob Nichol

Unstuck in time again.

I am back to being 20 years old, and 1965 has been pretty special for me so far. I finished my second year at Penn rowing in the 6-seat of the Lightweight Varsity Eight, quite a step up from my humble beginnings during freshman year... and my hair has grown back from my freshman buzz cut, something that in just a few years I will no longer be able to count on.

For our post-sophomore summer, most of us have migrated a couple of doors up Philadelphia's legendary Boathouse Row to the venerable Undine Barge Club, founded in 1858, following our coach, Fred Leonard, who has just completed his inaugural year at the helm of the Penn Lightweights.

Fred had done his own rowing at Undine... and Cornell. (Cornell again. Hmm! And if you owned a shell during the 1970s or '80s, you probably already know Fred Leonard. Chances are he was your boat insurance man! Is this a small world or what?)

Undine Barge Club, a jewel of a boathouse designed in 1882 by Frank Furness, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's gift to 19th Century American architecture, a jewel of a boathouse, but filled mostly with old boats and old farts in blue blazers telling us stories about how they rowed "in that very shell right over there in that rack" to some national medal or other back in the 1920s, decades before we were even born, and we were darned lucky to still have it around for a new generation to row. "Yeah, right!" we would reply... under our breaths.

Undine locker room
Undine locker room

Imagine my surprise when years later I realize that one of those old farts, Garrett Gilmore, before he was an old fart in a blue blazer, he was an Olympic Champion! Oh my! Yet another instance of stellar judgment on the part of your not-nearly-humble-enough author . . .

Garrett Gilmore 1932 Olympic Men’s Doubles Gold Medalist
Garrett Gilmore 1932 Olympic Men’s Doubles Gold Medalist

* * * * *

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. No place in the world quite like it.

"On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."
- reported epitaph of W.C. Fields

Boathouse Row, picturesque symbol of Philadelphia for more than a hundred years! The Schuylkill Navy, Philadelphia Girls Rowing Club, Undine, Penn A.C., University of Pennsylvania, Vesper, Malta, University Barge, and on and on, all in a line. Rivalries that go back a century and more. Both Undine and Vesper have summer lightweight crews this year of 1965. Lightweights weigh in before a race, average 150 pounds per man. There are no official height restrictions in rowing, but it helps your leverage to be tall, and the best lightweights are over 6'. Not me. At 5'10?" I have to make up for my shortcomings with orneriness. Which I do, oh my yes!

Undine
Undine

Vesper Boat Club is right next to Penn. We even share a dock during the school year, and we don't dislike them or anything - Hell, we know them all by name. They're family, for Heaven's sake! - but when Undine lightweights race Vesper lightweights there's a lot of razzing back and forth.

Of course, I'm in the thick of it. "Hey, Geoff! That's quite a sunburn you have. Got it at the Jersey Shore yesterday, did you? Are you sure you should be out here exerting yourself today? Oh, I see you're not pulling very hard. Very wise! I'm sure your teammates will be more than happy to pull a bit harder to make up for... "

"Mallory, will you shut the [eff] up?!"

That very well-reasoned and appropriately colorful response inevitably comes from the Vesper coxswain, John Hartigan, a fellow Quaker, but already years past graduation at Penn, a Wharton MBA, a businessman who wears business suits and has a family and everything! A real adult. A grownup. John Hartigan seems incredibly old to the lost boys of Undine, and I get such a hoot hearing an adult cuss me out.

I never got to row in a boat coxed by John Hartigan, not even once. My loss. He was destined to become an Olympian and a World Champion, for Heaven's sake! Even back then, he was that good and he knew every trick in the book... except how to shut me the you-know-what up... "Sorry, John. I see you have your hands full. But keep an eye on Paulsy in the 6-seat. He's rushing his slide."

"Malloryyyyy... "

All this during every local match race this year. Middle of the race. We never let up, as we are much faster than Vesper's lightweights. We toy with them, taunt them, pull their wings off one by one. Sweet. Juvenile, in retrospect, I must admit. Shame on us... Shame on me!

I can report today that for 42 long years after the summer of 1965, a very justifiably angry John Hartigan did not speak a single word to me, despite the fact that we were fellow Quakers and all. He pretended that I was invisible and unhearable, on the water and off.

And he paid me back seven years later... yes, indeed!

To be continued...

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