THE SPORT OF ROWING 64. Rusty Callow Moves to Annapolis The Penn Years – 1951 – 1952 Olympics As an undergraduate rowing at Cornell, historian Charles von Wrangell got to know Penn Coach Rusty Callow: “After the 1946 regatta in Seattle, I had gotten a summer job on the Olympic Peninsula with the Simpson Logging Company and got stronger working for them in the beautiful fir and cedar forests. “Every time Penn and Cornell met anywhere, Rusty and my coach, Stork Sanford, would greet each other heartily, and afterward Rusty would look at me, smile and say something like, ‘Oh, there you are, you red-headed number 7, the loggerman. How are you, von Wrangell?’ “Until Rusty told me later, I didn’t know that when he was a student at Washington, he, too, had worked summers as a lumberjack, and he, too, had rowed number 7 on the Washington Varsity, and further, in his youth he had had flaming red hair like mine (hence the nickname ‘Rusty’). “I’m sure he knew by name plenty of oarsmen on other crews, but I was privileged to be one of them. “Rusty seemed to make a sort of chain out of us, or so I liked to think, he being a 7- man, Sanford, his best oarsman ever, rowing 7, then I liked to think that I kind of continued the pattern, rowing number 7 for four years, logging, and having red hair like Rusty and even Hiram Conibear before him. “It was a privilege, an honor and a pleasure to be rowing at the time these coaches were coaching and getting to know them. “Rusty had a great sense of humor and a natural, down-to-earth manner of talking. He was instantly respected, admired and liked among us at Cornell because he had been our coach’s coach, and we knew how strong the friendship was between them. “Rusty had coached a number of the men who became varsity crew coaches elsewhere in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. He was a very open, natural man, full of lots of common sense and a big heart. “After the war, a group of Eastern crews were taken to Florida during winter vacation for practice in warm weather and smooth, ice-free water. Cornell, Penn, Princeton and maybe Yale and Rutgers went down. “One Saturday night, the coaches got together for dinner and a bit of whoopee at a night club. The show at the club included some scantily-clad dancing girls asking for volunteer males from the audience to get up and ‘learn to dance’ with them. The rest of the coaches all got together in urging Rusty to volunteer. He resisted at first but finally gave in. “On stage, several girls rolled up Rusty’s trousers, so his socks and garters were showing, and had him take off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, and so forth. They were doubtless expecting to have some real fun at the expense of this old geezer. “As soon as the orchestra started up a tune, Rusty grabbed the girl nearest him, gave her a bear hug and started to twirl her around. Her legs went flying up off the floor, and Rusty kept whirling, the girl 634
