THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN ROWING crew to win the IRA Varsity Challenge Cup.”1839 Callow: “On my first squad as a coach at the University of Washington in the fall of 1922 and the spring of 1923, were men who became true leaders in many fields of en- deavor. The president of Pratt & Whitney Corporation; one of the executive heads of the Rockefeller Medical Foundation; the president of the first chartered national bank in the country; the present [1958] head coaches of rowing at the University of Washington and Cornell University, the ath- letic director at Harvard University, and oth- ers who have made outstanding contribu- tions to this country’s life and times.”1840 The Washington coach to which he was referring was Al Ulbrickson, the Cornell coach Stork Sanford, and the Harvard A.D. Tom Bolles. They rowed in the stroke-, 7- and bow-seats respectively of that year’s Washington Freshman Crew,1841 which also won at Poughkeepsie in 1923, sort of . . . 1923 Washington Freshmen Stan Pocock: “They had already taken the shirts from Cornell when, after a 2-1 vote, regatta officials announced that Cor- nell, not Washington, was the winner. Shortly thereafter, an article appeared in The Literary Digest, a leading magazine of the day, featuring a picture taken at the finish line that showed Washington clearly in the lead.”1842 Ulbrickson, Sanford and Bolles would later become part of the 2nd and 3rd Genera- tions of Conibear coaches, and after the frus- tration they must have felt at the end of their first trip to Poughkeepsie, they helped Washington win the varsity race twice more before they graduated! 1839 www.huskycrew.com 1840 Callow, p. 1 1841 See photo on the previous page. 1842 S. Pocock, p. 54 Who knows what the history of the next quarter century might have been like if they had not finished their freshman year quite so highly motivated? Rusty Callow was a thoughtful and in- telligent man, and his insight into the sport quickly became increasingly sophisticated. Stan Pocock: “Originally, an even twelve feet was the standard length of the racing oar. One year (1926?) Rusty asked that an inch be added to the handle to stop the oarsmen from pulling their buttons away from the locks at the end of the drive. “That done, they won at Poughkeepsie in June, and 12’1” became the new standard length from then on.”1843 University of Pennsylvania After Ed Leader’s 1923 Yale crew won at New London by seven lengths and Rusty’s 1923 Washington crew also won at Poughkeepsie, Harvard tried to hire Callow. Mendenhall: “Rusty, sorely tempted despite his worry over the heavy, interfering hand of the Harvard Rowing Committee, could not persuade Washington (who had agreed to make him a professor) to let him off the remaining two years of his con- tract.”1844 Four years later in 1927, Rusty took his 1st Generation Conibear Stroke with him to Penn, and there he adapted it to the new conditions. Coming from the virtually un- limited water available in Seattle, the silty Schuylkill River in Philadelphia seemed confining to Callow. He called it “much too thick to drink, much too thin to plough.”1845 Von Wrangell: “The students at Wash- ington had been, on average, not only taller 1843 S. Pocock, personal correspondence, 2005 1844 Mendenhall, Harvard-Yale, p. 339 1845 an old expression repeated by Mark Twain among others. Qtd. by Dodd, World Rowing, p. 199 495
