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.
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 https://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, https://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 https://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: https://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: https://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 https://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 https://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 https://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 https://seattle.mariners.mlb.com; “A Short History of Seattle Baseball,” available at https://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 https://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: https://climate.ok.gov; and Sean Potter, “Retrospect: April 14, 1935: Black Sunday,” available at https://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 H
udson 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 https://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 https://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: https://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 https://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: https://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.”
My sketch of McMillin working in the shell house is drawn primarily from Joe’s memory, along with details provided by McMillin himself in transcripts of his interview with Michael Socolow on November 2004, from the Moch family collection as well as an obituary, “Legendary U.W. Rower Jim McMillin Dies at Age 91,” August 31, 2005, available at https://www.gohuskies.com. The details of Thula’s death are from my interview with Harry Rantz Jr.; Charlie McDonald’s, from Pearlie McDonald’s e-mail, cited above. Joe’s first conversation with his father following Thula’s passing was another of these moments that stuck with Joe throughout his lifetime.
The pro-boycott demonstration in New York is described in “10,000 in Parade Against Hitlerism,” NYT, November 22, 1935. The final demise of the boycott is documented in “A.A.U. Backs Team in Berlin Olympic; Rejects Boycott,” NYT, December 9, 1935. For my discussion of the boycott movement, and particularly the forces arrayed around Avery Brundage to oppose it, I have relied on Susan D. Bachrach, The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000), 47–48; Guy Walters, Berlin Games: How the Nazis Stole the Olympic Dream (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), 24; “U.S. Olympic Chief Brands Boycotters as Communists,” PI, October 25, 1935; Stephen R. Wenn, “A Tale of Two Diplomats: George S. Messersmith and Charles H. Sherrill on Proposed American Participation in the 1936 Olympics,” Journal of Sport History 16, no. 1 (Spring 1989); “Sport: Olympic Wrath,” Time, November 4, 1935; and “Brundage Demands U.S. Entry,” ST, October 24, 1935.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The epigraph is again taken from Newell (85). Ulbrickson’s frustration is evident in his logbook, from mid-January into February. Emmett Watson quotes Ulbrickson—“George, tell them what I’m trying to teach them . . .”—in his Once Upon a Time in Seattle (Seattle: Lesser Seattle, 1992), 109. The “typical coxswain abuse” remark is from Eric Cohen, as are a number of details related to coxes in this section of the book. The Don Blessing quote is reprinted in Benjamin Ivry, Regatta: A Celebration of Oarsmanship (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 75. My biographical sketch of Bobby Moch is based on interviews with Marilynn and Michael Moch, with some additional details from Amy Jennings, “Bob Moch: Monte’s Olympian,” Vidette, January 1, 1998. Joe’s second shell house encounter with Pocock is again based on Joe’s own recollection of it.
Joe’s moment of reflection and insight as he stood on the dock in front of his father’s house was a key memory for him—a momet things began to turn around in his personal life. The details of that moment are drawn from his own telling to me and from Judy’s recollection of earlier accounts.
Some biographical facts about Gordy Adam and Don Hume are from Wayne Cody’s KIRO Radio interview with Adam, Hume, Hunt, and White, August 1, 1986. More about Gordy is from George A. Hodak’s interview with Gordon B. Adam, May 1988, published by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles and available at https://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/OralHistory/OHAdam.pdf. More about Hume is from Wallie Funk, “Hume Rowed from Guemes to Berlin in ’36,” Anacortes American, August 7, 1996, and “The Laurel Wreath to Don Hume,” WD, April 21, 1936.
Ulbrickson noted Joe’s addition to the boat and its immediate effect in his logbook on March 21, 1936. Entries over the following days confirm his growing confidence in the new arrangement. The various greetings that Joe’s new crewmates gave him meant a great deal to Joe and he delighted in recalling them after some prompting from Judy. The sauerkraut christening of the Husky Clipper is described in Newell (137). Ebright’s pulling names out of a hat is revealed in Sam Jackson, “Ky Ebright Pulls Crew Champions Out of His Hat,” Niagara Falls Gazette, February 22, 1936. Jim Lemmon discusses Ebright’s use of a training table in his Log of Rowing at the University of California Berkeley, 1870–1987 (Berkeley: Western Heritage Press, 1989), 97–98. Paul Simdars, who later rowed for Ulbrickson, described Ulbrickson’s alternative—a calcium solution and liquid gelatin. Laura Hillenbrand mentions Tom Smith’s search for high-calcium h
ay, and his awareness of the Washington crew’s supplements, in Seabiscuit: An American Legend (New York: Ballantine, 2001).
Royal Brougham asserts that the 1936 regatta drew the largest crowd ever to see a crew race in “U.W. Crews Win All Three Races: California Crushed,” PI (an undated clipping in John White’s collection of materials). Joyce recalled, in a conversation she had with Judy late in life, how nervous both she and Joe were that day as they awaited the race. My descriptions of the races that day are drawn both from that article and from the following: “75,000 Will See Crews Battle,” WD, April 17, 1936; Clarence Dirks, “U.W. Varsity Boat Wins by 3 Lengths,” PI, April 19, 1936; George Varnell, “U.W. Crews in Clean Sweep,” ST, April 19, 1936; “Coaches Happy, Proud, Says Al, Grand, Says Tom,” ST, April 19,1936; and Ulbrickson’s logbook entry for April 18, 1936.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Pocock quote is from Newell (106). An interesting and chilling contemporaneous overview of Berlin in this time frame can be found in “Changing Berlin,” National Geographic, February 1937. More about the state of affairs in Germany at this time can be found in “Hitler’s Commemorative Timepiece,” Daily Mail Reporter, March 7, 2011; Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 102; and Walters, Berlin Games (90–92). The precise mechanism by which Riefenstahl, Goebbels, and the Nazi government concealed the source of Riefenstahl’s funding for Olympia is documented at length in Bach, Leni (174–76).
The crisis over some of the boys’ eligibility is recounted in George Varnell, “Varsity Quartet to Make Up Work Before Leaving,” ST (a clipping without date in
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics Page 32