THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN ROWING 58. Joe Burk, Sculler Revolutionary Technique – Legendary Career Rusty Callow’s protégé at Penn,1988 Jo- seph W. Burk (1914-2008) was the son of an apple grower in southern New Jersey near Philadelphia. His initial interest in rowing stemmed from a teenage trip to the Poughkeepsie Regatta. Burk: “I happened to read about how well California had done in crew. I had never been to Poughkeepsie, scarcely knew where it was, but I found that I could take the train to New York and get on the New York Central to Poughkeepsie. “I arrived there and didn’t have any place to stay because every good place was already filled up, so I asked some bum on the street, and he told me of an old, broken- down hotel where I could eat and sleep. “It was 1929, and California was the big-shot crew then. I wanted to see the time trials they were having, so I took the ferry boat across the river and went to the Cali- fornia boathouse. “There was nobody around except the manager, and he showed me the shells and so forth. I found it all very interesting, and when the race came off, he and I dragged a railroad tie up against the side of the build- ing, climbed up and watched the race from the roof. “Unfortunately, California didn’t win that year. “Late in the day, I went back to New York on the train. I stayed up the whole night and got home the next morning tired 1988 See Chapter 53. 1989 Burk, personal conversation, 2005 1990 Dubois, John, Joe Burk Still Pulls a Mean Oar, Main Line Times, Ardmore, PA, April 12, 1956 1991 Burk, personal conversation, 2005 1992 Palatsky, p. 1 but knowing that I wanted to go out for row- ing.”1989 When he got home, Joe had exactly two cents left in his pocket.1990 When Joe got to the University of Penn- sylvania that following fall, he almost missed his rowing destiny. “I had been captain of my high school football team, and football was the big thing. I hadn’t given any thought to the fact that they rowed in the fall as well as the spring in those days, and when I got to Penn, I found out that rowing started the same time that football practice did, so I thought that was the end of rowing for me. “Then, after football I found out that crew started in on the machines in the win- ter, and so I met Rusty Callow and gave it a try.”1991 Journalist Eugene Palatsky: “He didn’t make the first boat that year, but in the words of Callow, ‘he combined those quali- ties of size, strength, skill and spirit’ and made the Varsity boat his sophomore year.”1992 According to Allen Rosenberg, “Joe was the epitome of a sportsman at Penn. He won two letters in football and crew, two blankets with a P on them. To have excelled 545
