Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 6 - The Poem

Here is part 6 and the final ‘chapter’ of Ben Spock’s letter to Rusty Wailes. I am uncertain if Spock is the actual author of the poem, or if that was someone else in the crew. After the poem, you will find all the previous installments, which form Spock’s 9-page letter.

ON THE OLD SEINE YESTERDAY
The Stars and Strips still swept the sky,
How could the old flag fail?
When far away there came the cry,
“Costello and Kelly and Yale!”

There came the dip of mighty oars,
And then with conquering hail
The shout goes up from well-lined shores,
“Costello and Kelly and Yale!”

When great Olympic heroes meet
To find the Holy Grail,
Let all the booming sagas greet
Costello and Kelly and Yale.

See also:
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 1 – Prelude”
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 2 – Comparisons”
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 3 – The Trials”
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 4 – In France”
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 5 – The Race”

Ben Spock’s letter is posted on HTBS with the permission of the NRF, which is the owner of the letter. Thank you NRF for making this letter available to the HTBS’s readers!

Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 5 - The Race

Here follows part 5 of Ben Spock’s letter to Rusty Wailes, from one ‘7’ to another. Spock, seven-seat in the Yale’s eight which took a gold medal at the Olympic rowing regatta in Paris, wrote to Wailes, the seven-seat man in the Yale crew, who was on their way to the Olympic of 1956. The bold text parts are Spock’s text, while the italicized text parts are my comments.

12. Race – The actual place for the race was some miles away from where we practiced. It was a very hot spell of weather in Paris that year and where the race was rowed the sewers emptied out and it was unpleasant. The other countries represented were Canada (whom we beat in the first heat and then qualified for the finals), Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, Argentina, Italy, Spain, France and Australia. At the time of the first heat we had good weather and established what was then a new Olympic record, the 5:51 and rowed part of the race at 29. On the day of the finals there was a hard headwind and our time was somewhat slower. The U.S.A. won the rowing events with a score of 33 and Switzerland was second with a score of 32. Among those participating in the race were Jack Kelly in the singles and Kelly and [his cousin Paul] Costello in the doubles. [Thereby, Kelly and Costello repeated their Olympic victory in the doubles from 1920; see below.]

13. General – Due to our separate locations we really had no chance to see anything of those from other countries. The French were annoyed because they asked us down for a champagne party two days before the race and we refused. For the three days that we were staying outside the stadium we had some interesting times. On one of the hottest days I can remember I saw Nurmi, the Finn [Paavo Nurmi was called 'the Flying Finn'], establish two world’s records in the 1,500 and 5,000 meter races within twenty-five minutes of each other. It was very interesting to watch the training for the various events. There was much more newspaper publicity over rowing than there is today. Both the New York Times and Herald-Tribune carried front page articles – and some poetry.

14. Schedules – We had quite a hectic time meeting the Olympic trials and we lost out on the trip with the Olympic teams and our training in Europe was very much like a continuation of Gales Ferry. On the other hand, the timing insofar as the actual Olympics was concerned worked out superbly with just the right amount of rest and change on the boat and just the right amount of time in Europe. While it had made a long season it was all concentrated and then over with. We were an extremely congenial group and although we broke up into various sized units there had been no difficulty whatever. For those of us who were seniors it had been a wonderful climax to college rowing because our sophomore year the Yale varsity was unquestionably the second slowest varsity eight in the east, the slowest being Harvard. Your difficulties of the long summer layoff and the interference with your plans for this year are very substantial. Your financing I am sure will be easier and fairer. I am sure the long summer layoff will be a difficulty. It is probably one which some of the European crews will not have faced.

15. Speed – Undoubtedly, there have been crews in the intervening 32 years which were faster than ours. This, however, cannot be proven. I must admit that our competition was not as keen in 1924 as it was in some subsequent Olympic years. In this intervening time there have been no substantial improvements in shell design, oars, riggers (except in rough water), etc. Unless my memory plays me false, this year’s Cornell crew had a style very much like ours and, of course, they showed themselves to be pretty competition on occasion. Having seen your crew a week ago, however, it does not disturb me in the least to say that you must be a faster crew. This enters the realm of axiomatic argument. You may not have 32 years at your disposal before you have to admit the same but I would think you would have a good many years when you could all secretly think it.

Let me urge all of you to extent that time permits to make a hobby of rowing.

See also:
"Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 1 - Prelude"
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 2 – Comparisons”
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 3 – The Trials”
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 4 – In France”

Spock’s letter is posted on HTBS with the permission of the NRF, which is the owner of the letter! Ben Spock’s letter, Part 6, will continue tomorrow with the final part, a poem, “On the Old Seine Yesterday”.

Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 4 - In France

Here follows part 4 in the story about the letter by Ben Spock, seven-seat in Yale’s eight, which took a gold medal at the Olympic rowing regatta in Paris. The letter recipient was Richard Rusty‘ Wailes, the seven-seat man in Yale’s Olympic eight of 1956. The bold text parts are Spock’s text, while the italicized text parts are my comments.

10. Living in France – On arrival in France the Olympic village in which the Americans were housed was filled and there was no room for us. The only place we could get in were some huts right near the track and field stadium where we were with the extras of the various teams who had come in late. They were miserable quarters. Our nearest and dearest neighbors were Esthonian weight lifters. The beds were uncomfortable and the mosquitoes terrific. The representative of the Yale Rowing Committee, however, was very nearly murdered in trying to make us feel better by referring to the noise of the taxi horns outside his accommodations at the Ritz Hotel. The boat landed on June 28th and we were in these quarters for four nights. We then moved to some quarters in the suburb of Paris where we were superbly housed and fed and where we went by motorbus to the boathouse where our shells were kept and two workouts a day except on Sundays.

11. Rowing in France – Our shells were late in getting to Paris and our first turnout in our own craft was on the 30th. A Yale graduate in Paris (first owner of Handsome Dan [probably the Englishman Andrew Graves] ) had actually bought a coaching launch. It was a good deal like a cabin cruiser and could not keep up to a crew rowing at about 20. Leader’s frustration at this was beautiful to behold. They then acquired a “glisseur” which was a little flat scow with seats across for six people and driven by an aircraft propeller about five feet in the air with a radial engine and no muffler. It made an ungodly noise but went plenty fast enough. The coach couldn’t hear what we said even had he wanted to. Of course, it had no reverse and no way of slowing down except by stopping the motor.

Our substitute four rowed in a borrowed shell and I think might well have won their event in the Olympics had they been permitted to compete. The only time there was any question of substitution was the first day on the boat going abroad when one of the regular crew had some food poisoning.

See also:
"Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 1 - Prelude"
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 2 – Comparisons”
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 3 – The Trials”

Spock’s letter is posted on HTBS with the permission of the NRF, which is the owner of the letter! Ben Spock’s letter, Part 5, will continue tomorrow.

Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 3 - The Trials

Here follows part 3 in the story about the letter by Ben Spock, seven-seat in Yale’s eight which took a gold medal at the Olympic rowing regatta in Paris, to the seven-seat man in Yale’s Olympic eight of 1956, Richard ‘Rusty’ Wailes. The bold text parts are Spock’s text, while the italicized text parts are my comments.

6. The Trials – We went to Philadelphia and stayed in a big house in the country owned by a Yale graduate. In the first heat on the 13th on the first turn at Philadelphia we were very nearly put out of the race by the Navy junior varsity which pushed us against the shore and for two or three strokes our oars overlapped. In that heat we beat the Navy varsity, the Navy junior varsity and the Undine boat club. The other heat consisted of M.I.T., Pennsylvania, New York A.C. and the Navy graduates – the 1920 Olympic Crew. The race of the second boats was Saturday morning and the race of the finals was Saturday afternoon which we won by 4/5th of a second in 5:51 1/5.

7. Harvard race – On Monday and Tuesday the week of the Harvard race we had our first four-mile time trials, rowing upstream at 26 or 28 on successive days and on one of them beating the then existing upstream race record. The race on Friday, the 20th, was downstream and we won by several lengths.

8. Strokes – For the four-mile race we rowed about 34 the first minute and dropped more slowly than you do today and rowed the balance of the race at 28 or 29 although we were prepared to row at 30 if we had to. In the Olympic distance we rowed about 39 or 40 for the first full minute and dropped down slowly and rowed about a full minute in the middle of the race at about 35 and then worked on up. This was true both in this country and abroad.

The only change in our style was that after we got abroad we had ideal rowing conditions and we were able to get in some very valuable additional practice and during that time considerably strengthened our finish and speeded up our recovery.

White Star Line's RMS Homeric

9. Transportation – A special train was at the siding at Gales Ferry Friday night and out shell put aboard a baggage car along with a spare shell. The other car on the train was a sleeper which took our party to Grand Central, arriving at about 2:00 o’clock in the morning. At that time the shell was carried through Grand Central waiting room and put on a truck and taken directly to the ship’s side of the Homeric and swung on board and lashed down in the bow of the ship covered only with canvas. The Party making the trip consisted of one Rowing Committee member who held the letter of credit, [Yale rowing coach] Ed Leader, [boat builder] Dick Pocock, [assistant coach] Sid Coe, the nine of the crew, a substitute coxswain and four substitute oarsmen, the manager and an assistant manager. Our accommodations were scattered through the first-class of the Homeric. Four rowing machines were screwed into the boat deck where one of the life boats was swung over the side and we had two hard workouts a day on the rowing machines in addition to doing calisthenics. Gloria Swanson [seen on the left] was on board but was not in our party.# Our captain [James Rockefeller, who made the cover of the Time Magazine on 7 July 1924, seen on top!] met his wife on the boat and between these two extremes various other possibilities were considered.

#[Although none of the crew might have met the famous movie star Gloria Swanson on board the ship, it seems Ed Leader did, if one is to believe Thomas Mendenhall, who in his excellent book The Harvard-Yale Boat Race 1852-1924, writes, that on the Homeric “Dancing every evening had a Cinderella quality /…/ the stag line persuaded Ed Leader to cut in on Gloria Swanson…”]

See also:
"Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 1 - Prelude"
“Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 2 – Comparisons”

Ben Spock's letter is posted on HTBS with the permission of the NRF, which is the owner of this letter! Ben Spock’s letter, Part 4, will continue tomorrow.

Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 2 - Comparisons

Here continues the story about the letter by Ben Spock, seven-seat in Yale’s eight which took a gold medal at the Olympic rowing regatta in Paris, to the seven-seat man in Yale’s Olympic eight of 1956, Richard ‘Rusty’ Wailes.

Here is the 1924 Yale crew: Laurence Stoddard, coxswain; Alfred Lindley, stroke; Benjamin Spock, 7-seat; Frederick Sheffield, 6-seat; James Rockefeller, 5-seat, Captain; John Miller, 4-seat; Alfred Wilson, 3-seat; Howard Kingsbury, 2-seat; and Leonard Carpenter, bow.

The bold text parts are Spock’s letter, while the italicized text parts are my comments. The letter, which has fifteen ‘chapters’ marked 1 to 15, and ends with a poem, is written 22 October 1956 with a header reading “1924-1956 Comparisons”.

1. The actual Olympic races were scheduled from July 15th to July 17th on the Seine in Paris and the Olympic trials in this country were scheduled for June 13th and 14th. With the Harvard race on Friday, June 2oth, and the Poughkeepsie race on Saturday, June 21st, most college crews decided not to try for the Olympics. At that time Olympic rowing was dominated by the rowing clubs and the Navy had announced that its 1920 Olympic crew would come back into competition.
In the 1920 Olympic rowing event on the Grand Willebroek Canal outside of Brussels, the American eight from Navy became Olympic champions (as told in Susan Saint Sing's The Wonder Crew; 2008).

2. The last chance in the Yale boating was made late in April – the chance which I above all others should remember!
(See John Cooke's comments in Part 1 - Prelude.)

3. Make-up – We had four seniors as compared with your three. We had three juniors as compared with your two and we had one sophomore as compared with your three. Our coxswain was a junior and yours was a sophomore. Our average age was twenty and a half and yours twenty and a quarter. Our average weight was 180 and yours 186 1/4. Our coxswain only weighed 108 as compared to yours showing a weight of 125. The average height of our crew was 6’ 1 1/4” as compared with your 6’ 3 1/8”. Our shortest man is listed at 5’ 11” but I must confess he never grew that much. Your shortest man is similarly listed.

4. Our season – We had two races. On May 5th in the Blackwell Cup at Derby, we beat Pennsylvania and Columbia quite easily. On May 17th at Princeton in the Carnegie Cup we beat Princeton and Cornell quite easily. Thereafter there was a good deal of newspapers publicity urging on Yale the authorities that we try out for the Olympics. However, after the Carnegie Cup race we went right into training for the four-mile at Derby and gave up short sprints.

5. Olympic decision – On Sunday, June 1st, we were to go to Gales Ferry. That day we met with the Rowing Committee and individually and collectively said we wanted to try for the Olympics. That gave us less than two weeks and of that two-week period we had examinations on 9 days. One of the complications was that if we should win the Olympics we could not go abroad with the Olympic team because the Harvard race was after the American boat sailed, so on Monday, June 2nd, the Yale Rowing Committee raised $10,000 in five minutes to send us abroad, should we win, and first-class accommodations were arranged for us on the Homeric, sailing Saturday, the 21st, at noon, less than twenty-four hours after the Harvard race. As I remember, our training, we had a time trial over what we guessed was the Olympic distance every day in the morning and then took a long paddle in the afternoon. During this period we never paddled at less than 24.

The Prelude to this letter was posted yesterday, "Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 1 - Prelude".

This letter is posted on HTBS with the permission of the NRF, which is the owner of this letter! Ben Spock’s letter will continue tomorrow.

Ben Spock On 1924 Olympic Eight: Part 1 - Prelude

The National Rowing Foundation’s (NRF) National Rowing Hall of Fame at Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut, holds an amazing collection of rowing memorabilia. The other day, doing some small research, I stumbled over a remarkable letter in the archives. The letter, which is a real jewel, is written on 22 October 1956, almost exactly a month before the start of the Olympic rowing on Lake Wendouree, Ballarat in Australia, on 23 November.

The letter-writer is Benjamin Spock, the seven-seat, in the Yale eight that represented the USA in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games, which took a gold medal. Spock, who by 1956 had become the famous pediatrician who had published Baby and Child Care in 1946, wrote to the seven-seat-man in the Yale Olympic eight of 1956, ‘Rusty’ Wailes. In his nine-page letter with fifteen ‘chapters’, Spock starts out by comparing the two eights of 1924 and 1956.

Again, I found this a wonderful letter, which I was afraid would get lost in the ‘back-stacks’ of the National Rowing Hall of Fame. Not only has the letter a value to the history of rowing in America, but also the history of Olympic rowing. Therefore, I sought the NRF’s permission to ‘publish’ Spock’s letter in different installments on HTBS. Three gentlemen came back to me with positive answers, rowing historians Tom Weil and Bill Miller, both being the ‘Visiting Rowing Curators’ at Mystic Seaport and the Curators of the National Rowing Hall of Fame, and Dave Vogel, Director of Developing at NRF.

Spock’s letter to Wailes was probably donated by Rusty Wailes’s family to The National Rowing Hall of Fame in 2010. In another letter of 25 March, 2005, also held in the NRF's archives, Rusty Wailes’s fellow crew member John Cooke, on the three-seat in Yale’s 1956 Olympic eight, writes about the background of Spock’s letter:

“[Spock] was the last man to make the ’24 boat, when T.F. Davis Haines (called Fred by friends – or Tom) fell shortly before the Olympic trials and bruised his ass. Obviously, he could not sit in the boat and Spock was substituted. Haines had been solidly in the 7-seat for three (3) years! What a shame he missed out, not to take anything away from Spock.”

Tomorrow, Monday, 2 May, you can read the first part of Ben Spock’s letter to Rusty Wailes!

My warmest thanks to NRF for allowing me to post this letter on HTBS.