THE SPORT OF ROWING were too early for that idea. I ended up making most of my money spraying crops. “In ‘71 I lost two pilots. Accidents happen in threes, and I would have been next, so I got out of the business. I had been doing some farming in Florida in the Homestead area, so I continued to do that. I got down there in 1965 and was there for forty years. “My wife had always thought Saturdays were honey-do days, so she didn’t want me to row. When she passed away a few years ago, I went back to rowing. I got three Golds and one Bronze in four races in the 2008 Masters’ Nationals and four Golds in four races in 2009.”3333 Price: “Right after the ‘52 Olympics, I went into the Navy. I was in for five to six years, and then I went back and finished up at Rutgers, graduating in 1961. “After I graduated, I was postmaster of Eatontown, New Jersey for approximately thirty years and finally retired from there to a small town in Virginia where I am right now. I raised beef cattle for a few years, but then I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had to give that up. After an operation, I was talked into becoming a substitute teacher at the high school in Charlotte County, and I’ve been doing that for the last ten years. It’s quite a rural area here, and I’ve talked to a lot of my students about the benefits of going into the service and being able to continue to expand their opportunities that way. Quite a few of them have done that. “Chuck and I kept in contact for a number of years, but moving around and going through different things, we just sort of lost touch.”3334 In the late 1950s, Duvall Hecht started a rowing team at Menlo College in Atherton, California while teaching there 3333 Logg, op. cit. 3334 Price, op. cit. and working toward a master’s degree at Stanford. William Butler, ucirowing.org: “In 1959, Hecht’s Menlo College crew, composed of seven novice rowers and one sophomore with a year of experience, traveled to Philadelphia and placed second in the varsity eights event at the Dad Vail Regatta.”3335 A year later, four members of that boat made the final of the Olympic Trials in the coxless-fours. Phil Durbrow, later a member of the 1964 U.S. Olympic Coxless- Four from Lake Washington Rowing Club,3336 got his start rowing in that Menlo College crew. In 1965, Hecht started the rowing program at the newly opened campus of the University of California Irvine. He was their first coach, and in their first four years UCI crews defeated crews from Cal, UCLA, Stanford and Washington, among others. He would return to the UCI coach’s launch periodically over the next forty-plus years. He’s there today. Bob Ernst, Head Coach at the University of Washington, got his rowing and coaching start under Duvall Hecht. In business, Duvall distinguished himself as the originator of Books on Tape®. When he retired from active participation in the business after the age of 70, he went to truckers’ school, bought an eighteen-wheeler and now spends weeks at a time during the summer months cruising the great expanses of the American West . . . listening to Books on Tape! He never had the time before. As coach of the Penn Freshmen, Jimmy Beggs seemed well matched with his Head Coach, Joe Burk. Both were true gentlemen, 3335 William Butler, ucirowing.org 3336 See Chapter 85. 924
