Somewhere along the way, the oak tree that Joe brought home from the Olympics died after being transplanted several times on the university campus. That had bothered Joe in his last years. So on a winter day in 2008 a small group gathered near Conibear Shellhouse. At Judy’s urging, the university had secured a new oak tree. Bob Ernst, director of rowing at Washington, made a brief speech, and then Judy slowly and reverently placed nine shovelfuls of soil at the base of the tree—one for each of the boys.
Roger Morris, the first of Joe’s friends on crew, was the last man standing. Roger died on July 22, 2009. At his memorial service, Judy rose and recalled how in their last few years Joe and Roger would often get together—in person or on the phone—and do nothing at all, hardly speaking, just sitting quietly, needing only to be in each other’s company.
• • •
And so they passed away, loved and remembered for all that they were—not just Olympic oarsmen but good men, one and all.
In August of 2011, I traveled to Berlin to see the place where the boys had won gold seventy-five years earlier. I visited the Olympic Stadium and then took the S-Bahn out to Köpenick, in what used to be Soviet-occupied East Berlin. There I wandered through cobblestone streets, among ancient buildings left mostly undamaged by the war, except for occasional brick facades scarred by shrapnel. I walked past the vacant lot on Freiheit where Köpenick’s synagogue stood until the night of November 9, 1938, and I thought of the Hirschhahn family.
In Grünau I found the regatta grounds little changed from 1936. A large electronic readerboard now dominates the area near the finish line, but otherwise the place looks much as it does in the old newsreels and photographs. The neighborhood is still lovely—green and leafy. The covered grandstands still rise near the finish line. The Langer See is still placid and tranquil. Earnest young men and women in racing shells still ply its waters in racing lanes laid out just as they were in 1936.
I visited the Wassersportmuseum in Grünau, where late in the afternoon Werner Phillip, the director, kindly led me up a set of stairs to the balcony of Haus West. I stood there for a long, quiet minute, near where Hitler stood seventy-five years before, gazing out over the Langer See, seeing it much as he saw it.
Down below me young men were unloading a shell from a truck, singing something softly in German, and preparing for an evening row. Out on the water, a single sculler, his blades glinting, worked his way down one of the lanes toward the large “Ziel” sign at the end of the course. Closer to me, swallows flew low over the water on silent wings, silhouetted against the declining sun, touching the water from time to time, dimpling the silver surface.
Standing there, watching them, it occurred to me that when Hitler watched Joe and the boys fight their way back from the rear of the field to sweep ahead of Italy and Germany seventy-five years ago, he saw, but did not recognize, heralds of his doom. He could not have known that one day hundreds of thousands of boys just like them, boys who shared their essential natures—decent and unassuming, not privileged or favored by anything in particular, just loyal, committed, and perseverant—would return to Germany dressed in olive drab, hunting him down.
They are almost all gone now—the legions of young men who saved the world in the years just before I was born. But that afternoon, standing on the balcony of Haus West, I was swept with gratitude for their goodness and their grace, their humility and their honor, their simple civility and all the things they taught us before they flitted across the evening water and finally vanished into the night.
• • •
One survivor of the 1936 gold medal race is still with us today, though—the Husky Clipper. For many years, she resided at the old shell house, mostly unused except on the occasions of the boys’ ten-year anniversary rows. For a number of years in the 1960s, she was on loan to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. In 1967, Washington asked for her return, restored her, and put her on display in the student union. Later she was displayed at the George Pocock Memorial Rowing Center in Seattle.
Today she is in Washington’s Conibear Shellhouse, a spacious open building built in 1949 and recently renovated. She hangs in the light, airy dining commons, suspended from the ceiling, a graceful needle of cedar and spruce, her red and yellow woodwork gleaming under small spotlights. Beyond her, on the eastern side of the building, Lake Washington spreads out behind a wall of glass. From time to time, people wander in and admire her. They snap photos of her and tell one another what they know about her and the boys who rowed her in Berlin.
Joe in the woods
But she is there for more than decoration and admiration. She is there for inspiration. Every fall several hundred freshmen—men one day, women another day, most of them tall, a few of them notably short—assemble beneath her on early October afternoons. They fill out registration cards and anxiously look around the room, sizing one another up and chatting nervously until the freshman coach steps in front of them and calls for quiet in a loud, no-nonsense voice. As they settle down, he begins to talk to them about what they can expect if they seek a spot on his crew. Mostly, at first, he talks about how hard it will be, how long the hours will be, how cold and wet and miserable it will be. He points out that Washington’s crew typically has the highest GPA of any athletic team on campus, and that that’s no accident. They will be expected to perform in the classroom as well as in the boats. Then he shifts his tone a bit and begins to talk about the glory of earning a chance to pull one of the white blades of Washington. He talks about recent regional victories, about the now age-old rivalry with California, about the program’s national and international reputation, about the many championships that Washington men and women have won, the dozens of Olympians, male and female, that the program has spawned.
Finally he pauses, clears his throat, raises his hand, and points up at the Husky Clipper. Several hundred necks crane. Earnest young eyes gaze upward. A new, deeper level of quiet settles over the room. And then he begins to tell the story.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
If books can be said to have hearts and souls—and I believe they can—this book owes its heart and soul to one person above all others: Joe Rantz’s daughter Judy Willman. I could not have begun to tell Joe’s story, and the larger story of the 1936 Olympic crew, if it had not been for Judy’s deep collaboration with me at every stage of the project. Her contributions are too many to catalog here, but they range from sharing her vast collection of documents and photographs, to connecting me to members of the crew and their families, to reviewing and commenting on many drafts of the book at all stages of development. All of this, however, pales in comparison with one contribution in particular: the countless hours she spent sitting with me in her living room, telling me her father’s story, sometimes tearfully, sometimes joyfully, but always with unbounded pride and love.
Judy grew up absorbing the details of her father’s accomplishments as well as the hardships he endured and the psychological impact that both had on him. She spent untold hours as a child listening to his stories. She learned about her mother’s role in Joe’s early life as she worked side by side with her in the kitchen. Over the years and at frequent get-togethers, she came to know the other eight oarsmen well and to regard them almost as members of the family. She heard Joe’s father—by then reconciled with family and known affectionately as “Pop”—tell his version of the story. She learned Thula’s side of things from her uncle—Thula’s son Harry Junior. And over nearly sixty years she asked countless questions, collected clippings and memorabilia, and documented every detail. In essence, she became the keeper of her family’s story.
In several places in this book I quote bits of conversation or delve into the thinking to which only Joe or Joyce were privy. Though no one was there to record these conversations, and no one made transcripts of Joe’s and Joyce’s thoughts, Joe and Joyce were the key witnesses to their own lives, and they are the ultimate sources of these pieces of the story. In the several months during which I was a
ble to interview Joe before he passed away, he shared not only the fundamental facts of their story but also, sometimes in exquisite detail, many of his specific feelings and thoughts at key junctures of the tale. He was able, for instance, to recount his shell house conversations with George Pocock, his emotional devastation upon being abandoned in Sequim, his journey out to Grand Coulee, and his troubled relationship with his father and Thula. Later, after Joe was gone, as Judy and I sat together for all those many hours poring over photographs and letters and scrapbooks, she was able to help me fill in the gaps, particularly at those key points in the story, many of which her father or her mother had narrated to her over and over again during the course of a lifetime. These conversations and recollections are documented most fully in the complete notes for this book online.
• • •
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 https://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 https://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: https://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: https://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 https://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 https://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 Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics Page 31