Introduction

Dedication

To all the men - and the women - who have built the Georgetown Crew,

and to those who will come after us to earn their seats in the boat.

And to my sons,

Christopher and Michael

who never rowed:

that they might understand.

_______________________________

Frontispiece

“Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING – absolutely nothing –half so much worth doing as simplymessing about in boats.”

From THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

By Kenneth Grahame

______________________________________

We believed what was being done at Georgetown

was the most important thing we could do.

It was almost religious.

Thank God we were naïve enough to believe

it could be, and was worth being done.

Fifty years later the result in terms of lives and people– more than wins and losses –speaks for itself.

---Frank Barrett ‘61

___________________________________

So the first thing to remember is that we were young friends,

mere college boys “messing about in boats.”

But it was absolutely “worth doing.”

___________________________________

Foreward:

Memories

Old men forget, but all shall be forgot

Yet he’ll remember with advantages what feats he did that day!

In fifty years boys become men, men mature, age and remember their youth. Our memories tell us about both our past and present. The past provides the material, but the present the form. Rowing is an apt metaphor for this process: we go into the future looking backward at our wake. For those who come after, let these memories be our wake.

Some who lived these events may read this narrative out of nostalgia for their youth. Others who did not share in them will only be able to imagine those days though the words on the page. In either case, the historian can only write and then rest his pen. The reader will make of his work what he will. In writing and reading about the past we hope to revive an experience with whatever wisdom maturity has brought us: to see and understand ourselves as we were and as we have become, or as we might be. The writer’s task is to mediate reveries of the past and spin that gossamer into such words and lines and stories as will conjure events for readers through the poetic magic of language. This is a delicate art that may not bear the burden of its hope; but no matter. When scanning his lines it will be enough if the reader feels the stirring of his own recollections in the now of later life, to feel young again, but knowing.

Yet memory is a personal process, and story-telling a creative art. Though ideal, strict accuracy is not always possible and in the end, may even be somewhat beside the point. Did this or that event really happen that way, or was it only the narrator’s imagination at work where memory fails? Who can say? The “truth” of these events is often moot, and surely imagination has a Truth all its own. This is one of the deeper losses we feel at the passing of friends who shared those days with us; they take with them their own memories and the keys to much that we would like to share. Thus questions about our common past echo in their absence, and leave us with uncertainty and ambiguity at the core of our history.

So we must tell these stories about our past while we can, to celebrate our legacy to our heirs for whatever it may be worth. Suffice it that our memoirs are the best we can offer from the autumn of our lives.

“And so we beat on, boats against the current,

borne back ceaselessly into the past.” [1]

____________________________

Introduction

Of Time and The River

The river where you set your foot just now is gone,

those waters giving way to this,

now this.

In the Spring of 1958 the “Star-spangled Banner” had only forty-eight stars, President “Ike” Eisenhower was in the middle of his second term, and Cardinal Pacelli was in the last year of his papacy as Pius XII. Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, also in his last year of power, ordered a large scale offensive against rebels led by Fidel Castro. The junior Senator from Massachusetts, Jack Kennedy and his wife Jackie were living on N St. in Georgetown with their first born child, Caroline; it was Jack who described Washington as “a city of southern efficiency and northern charm.”

Politically, the country was engaged in the “Cold War;” and given the ominous military implications of “Sputnik,” Premier of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev was TIME’s “Man of the Year.” Fearful of the international tensions between the nuclear adversaries some American families were even building bomb shelters in their cellars, and school children learned to “duck and cover” in the event of a nuclear attack.

A lively sense of patriotism pervaded the culture. It is notable that the Spring of ‘58 arrived only twelve and a half years after V-J Day and only five years after the truce that ended the fighting in Korea. Despite the personal disruptions posed by the draft, young men still felt the legitimacy of serving their country. Men in uniform were respected and admired for their service. In schools every morning, children pledged allegiance to the flag and sang patriotic songs. In towns across the country Memorial Day marked the unofficial start of Summer, and was celebrated enthusiastically; virtually everybody went out to march in local parades or to applaud those who did. And in 1958 Vietnam was just a small country somewhere in Southeast Asia.

In the fifties, before Pope John and Vatican-II, Catholicism was a culture of muscular faith and parochial schooling that inculcated a lively sense of sin and personal culpability. There was confession on Saturday afternoon, and the traditional Tridentine Latin mass and communion every Sunday morning. During mass the whole congregation joined in singing old familiar hymns accompanied by an organ; communicants knelt at the altar rail, and at the conclusion, everyone prayed for the conversion of Russia. Nuns were strict disciplinarians who wore black habits with long rosary beads, and priests were respected “Fathers” who wore birettas and cassocks, and faced the altar during mass. But even more than the shared theology and liturgy, Catholicism instilled the moral virtue of self-restraint (or guilt) that sustained us through the long years before the wedding day.

Family prays the rosary along with radio show, 1950's

In 1958, the economy was in a recession. Since there were no computers, no internet, no credit cards, and no ATMs, money meant cash, cash meant “silver certificates” [2] and silver coins actually did contain silver. When you bought something you either paid cash, or wrote a check against actual cash on deposit. A gallon of milk cost four times more than a gallon of gasoline, the minimum wage was a dollar an hour, and fifteen cents would get you a cup of coffee or a ride on the NYC subway.

The Ford Motor Co. was going into full scale production with their new car, the Edsel, named for the son of Henry Ford himself. National Airlines introduced the Boeing 707 jetliner. Television was black and white, telephones were all black, had dials and wires that plugged into the wall. Music was recorded on vinyl discs. Rock ’n roll was in its heyday, Ricky Nelson became a teen-idol, and Elvis Presley was inducted into the US Army. Robert Travers’ novel ANATOMY OF A MURDER was on the top of the NY Times best seller list. The film version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s SOUTH PACIFIC was released, and BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI won the Academy Award for best picture of 1957.

Elvis was inducted in 1958,

promoted to sergeant in 1960

In sports, Adolph Rupp’s all white Kentucky Wildcats won the NCAA Basketball Championship defeating the Seattle team led by MVP Elgin Baylor. The Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup over the Boston Bruins for the second year in a row. The New York Yankees launched their nineteenth World Series season. In the Triple Crown races, Tim Tam, with Milo Valenzuela up, won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, but sadly came in second in the Belmont due to a fractured bone in his foreleg.

Arnold Palmer dons a Masters

Green Jacket the first of 4 times

Arnold Palmer won his first Green Jacket at the PGA Masters Tournament. Floyd Paterson reigned as the youngest heavyweight champ, and Sugar Ray Robinson regained his Middleweight title in a bloody bout with perennial contender Carmine Basilio. That Summer, after a twenty year hiatus, the NY Yacht Club chose Columbia (designed by Olin Stephens) to defend the America’s Cup in the new 12 meter class, and in late September off Newport, Columbia easily swept four races against the British challenger Scepter in the seventeenth successful defense of the “auld mug.” In the NFL, the Detroit Lions were still champs, but the era’s two great pro quarterbacks were the NY Giants’ Chuck Conerly and the Baltimore Colts’ Johnny Unitas. In the off-season that spring, “Johnny U” was working out with his favorite receiver, Raymond Berry; their diligence would make the difference nine months later in an epic confrontation with Conerly’s Giants, the NFL’s first “sudden death” overtime championship, the game reputed to be “the best ever played.” [3]

And in rowing, Cambridge was 3½ lengths faster than Oxford on the Thames in England, while Yale again bested Harvard in their annual 4 mile race on the Thames in Connecticut. Yale then went on to take the Eastern Sprints, Cornell won the IRA, while on the Schuylkill, LaSalle won the Dad Vail in 6:52.2 by a scant .6 of a second over Fordham.

The River

Throned on hills beside the river,

Georgetown sees its flow forever,

Sees the ripples shine and shiver,

Watching night and day.

And each tender breeze upspringing

Rarest woodland perfumes bringing

All its fold to fullness flinging

Flaunts the Blue and Gray!

Let’s imagine ourselves standing on the eastern pedestrian walk of Key Bridge in the early Spring of 1958. From this vantage point the Potomac and environs presented some sharp contrasts. Swirling around the abutments directly below, the river itself was turbid with sediment and debris washed down by the spring rains, the current flowing fast and unimpeded all the way to the Lincoln Memorial Bridge.[4] Looking downstream to the east, the Virginia river bank on the right appeared very much as it is now, the virtually uninterrupted green nature preserve of Roosevelt Island stretching east and curving south-east. To the left, on the Georgetown side, there was the gritty industrial waterfront that bounded the river with a concrete bulkhead stretching from Key Bridge more than a half mile east, almost to the mouth of Rock Creek.

This strip between the river and K St. under the Whitehurst Freeway was occupied by a number of gritty businesses that included a malodorous rendering plant, a workmen’s luncheonette, a defunct electric power plant, Super Concrete Co., Potomac Sand and Gravel Co., and Capital Building Supply Co.

Along K Street, under Whitehurst

ca. 1967, Library of Congress

Potomoc waterfront view to Key Bridge and Georgetown

ca. 1950, Library of Congress collection

Of particular note on this strip were P.S. & G’s wharves, derricks, and conveyor belts that dominated the waterfront and skyline looking northeast from Key Bridge. The central feature of this skyline was a six story concrete cube that contained nine silos. Tug boats regularly delivered barges filled with sand and gravel from dredges downriver, and wharf-side derricks off-loaded the materials to a system of conveyors that would sort and grade the gravel and drop it into these silos. There were also silos for cement so that Super Concrete’s cement-mixer trucks could drive under and through this huge cubical facility and receive the ingredients of their namesake product, all in one continuous process. This was a dirty, dusty, and sometimes dangerous place to work.[5]

Farther east, beyond the leafy margins of Rock Creek, the DC riverbank was a greensward that stretched southeast all the way to the steps of the “Watergate” [6] and the Lincoln Memorial Bridge. Not until August ‘63 was ground broken for the famous Watergate Hotel & Apartment complex and later the Kennedy Center that now dominate that stretch of the Potomac.

Potomac Boat Club

Turning about and crossing the lanes of traffic to look upstream from Key Bridge, the view was virtually the same as it is today with the Three Sisters in the middle of the river; but looking straight down from this western side of the bridge we’d see that the abutments of the old aqueduct[7] were still dividing and obstructing the river. Over on the Georgetown side to the north, there was “Jack’s,” a small boathouse and dock that rented row-boats to fishermen and canoes to couples wishing to take a romantic afternoon or evening paddle.

Georgetown above, Washington Canoe Club below

Next to Jack’s was the venerable green and white Potomac Boat Club, then home to the crew of Washington & Lee High School, the perennial scholastic crew champions, and in this Spring of 1958, host to the nascent Hoya crew. Another boathouse, Dempsey’s, stood just upriver from Potomac BC, but eventually burned down[8]. Several hundred feet further west stood the rambling and, even then somewhat dilapidated, Washington Canoe Club where canoeists and kayakers kept their boats. Beyond the Canoe Club, the northern riverbank was two miles of undeveloped woodland that ran all the way up to Fletcher’s Boat House about a mile south-east of Chain Bridge.

Turning to the Virginia side on our left we’d notice that the hill rising at the southern end of Key Bridge was virtually vacant except for a pawn shop, a few discount liquor stores, and on its crest the Tom Sarris’ “Orleans House,” one of the few reasons anyone would visit this neighborhood in those days. Construction of the landmark Key Bridge Marriott Motel would not begin until the following Spring of 1959. In the late fifties Rosslyn might well have been described by Gertrude Stein’s comment that “There’s no there there.” It was only later, in the mid-sixties that the area underwent the building boom that transformed this barren hill into the upscale neighborhood of multistory office towers and high-rise apartments we see from Georgetown today.

Georgetown Trolley Car Barn

Finally, turning north, we would see the M Street store fronts, Eagle Liquor, Dixie Liquor, the DC Transit Trolley Barn,[9] and the infamous 74 “Exorcist” steps” [10] up to Prospect St. Then, looking up to the northwestern skyline, we’d see the spires of Healy Building, and the long horizontal lines of the New South dorm.

Let’s climb those steps and visit the campus.

The Campus

Healy Hall, a National Historic

Landmark, built 1877-1909

Not counting the downtown Law School, the Georgetown campus was divided into the “Main Campus” up on the hilltop which was home to the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, and Nursing over on Reservoir Road, and the flagship College of Arts and Sciences centered around the iconic Healy Building; and the “East Campus” just down O St. between 36th and 35th Streets, where clustered the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, the McDonough School of Business, and in those days, the Institute of Language & Linguistics.

Climbing up the stone steps from M St. we are now approaching the corner of 36th & Prospect Streets, the heart and soul of the “East Campus.” No, not the schools, but rather the two public houses, the Hilltop and Tehaan’s,[11] that served the students and faculty of all the GU schools. To call these two establishments mere “bars” would be a serious understatement of their role in promoting the social life and collegiate atmosphere of the university campus. These were the prime resorts for a quick meal or snack, but more often served as places for lingering with friends over a draft or two, or three, or more. I recall that one Friday afternoon in October ’63, the freshman class was sent on a weekend retreat and someone arranged for the buses to depart from 36th St. right in front of Tehaan’s. Needless to say, hardly anyone boarded the bus without first downing a few pints. Since the drive to the retreat house out in the Virginia countryside took a couple of hours, those beers soon became an insistent burden and then a fierce penance enforced by the sadistic bus driver who refused to stop for roadside relief.

In the late fifties, Georgetown was a school where Catholic families of means sent their sons (and some of their daughters) to get a good Jesuit education and to benefit from the social and cultural amenities afforded by the capital city of the “free world.” Truth be told, there were other Catholic colleges that might provide as good an education, Notre Dame perhaps, or Holy Cross, but neither South Bend nor Worcester could rival Washington’s critical mass of political, social, and cultural opportunities, and so Georgetown had a certain cachet that attracted young gentlemen of “great expectations.”

The social life of Washington’s collegians reflected the disparity between the sexes in the local population generally, and among the local campuses in particular. In DC, women (“girls”) outnumbered men by reason of the large number of female government workers. And the residential women’s colleges (the four year schools, Trinity and Dunbarton, and the junior colleges, Mount Vernon, Immaculata, Marymount, and Marjorie Webster,) all contributed to this gender imbalance. Since the other universities, George Washington, American, Catholic U, and Howard were all coed, and thus had their own intramural social calendars Georgetown was the exception to the rule of female preponderance. GU’s undergraduate professional schools, Foreign Service, Business, and the Institute, had begun admitting women in 1952, although only “on a limited basis,” of course. By contrast, the College remained a bastion of male exclusivity until 1970 when it finally broke with tradition and admitted “girls.” In this era before the Civil Rights Acts of the sixties made diversity a legal mandate rather than simply a moral desideratum, Georgetown was pretty homogenous racially, religiously, and socially: virtually all white, all Catholic, and all middle and upper middle class.

President Eisenhower at the 1958 dedication of

the Edmund A. Walsh Memorial Building

at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service

So the men of Georgetown enjoyed a “buyer’s market” when it came to dating and mating. Besides the romantic opportunities available on the GU campus itself, there were the parties, mixers, dances, balls, cotillions, etc. sponsored by the other schools of the District. There were few weekends without some such events, and for those who preferred the more casual opportunistic approach, there were the various watering holes along M St. and up Wisconsin Ave. where Hoyas could “see and be seen.” In short, a young gentleman from Georgetown who desired female companionship had no difficulty finding it wherever he went.

Having toured the campus environs and described something of the social ambience of the University in the Spring of 1958, we now begin our story of the founding of the Crew.

[1] Heraclitus, fragment #41. (From FRAGMENTS: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, translated by Brooks Haxton.)

[2] A dollar bill certified that “there is on deposit in the Treasury of the United States of America one dollar in silver payable to the bearer on demand.”

[3] Mark Bowden,THE BEST GAME EVER PLAYED: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and The Birth of The Modern NFL, 2008

[4];The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge was not yet built; it opened only in 1964.

[5]I know because I worked for PS&G during the Summers of ’65 and ’66; it was the best summer job I ever had, working as a deck hand on a raft prospecting for that sand and gravel by taking core samples of the river bed down by Ft. Belvoir, Maryland.

[6] Originally, the Watergate was a floating stage moored at the river steps directly behind the Lincoln Memorial on the north side of the Memorial Bridge. On summer evenings performers entertained audiences before the noise of commercial jetliners from National Airport forced it to shut down.

[7] All but one of these stone abutments was removed by blasting but because of its proximity to the first concrete pier of Key Bridge (on the Rosslyn side) the last was deemed too risky to remove and so still remains.

[8] Built in 1903 by Patrick Dempsey, the Georgetown Crew Coach from 1900 to 1908, this boathouse was located about seventy-five feet west of Potomac BC. It was destroyed in in “a spectacular fountain of flames” on May 3^rd, 1961. Sadly, it had been abandoned the previous October due to the opening of the new Thompson Water Sports Center downstream by Rock Greek. (Washington Post, 5/4/1961)

[9] In 1958 this handsome brick building, distinguished by a pair of large high-arched doorways that formerly served the district’s trolley cars, was auxiliary office space for the US State Department and the workplace for Fred Maletz.

[10] So-called by reason of the 1973 horror movie of that name which featured these steps in its climatic scene. Among rowers the steps were infamous for “running circuits” up and down them after workouts on the river.

[11] Tehaan’s (yes, this is the correct spelling) occupied the spot now held by F. Scott’s. The Hilltop was on the corner where the 1789 now stands. According to Frank Barrett and Al DiFiore, Tehaan’s was favored by the East Campus people for a quick snack between classes, while the Hilltop was more of a bar and restaurant, catering to the College guys after class hours. Al recalls that St. Patrick’s Day at the Hilltop was “wild” with green beer, (Up the Irish!) while Jim Fitzgerald adds the details about pinball machines and pitchers of beer, and that below the Hilltop where the Tombs is now located, there was a Chinese laundry. (10/11/12)

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