THE SUNSET OF CONIBEAR Today, as I recount this event of forty years ago, I still get goose bumps. “Robby Meek covered my back all season at 7, but because we were pretty bummed out with the race, there wasn’t much conversation afterward. Being the last race of the season and since we seniors had already graduated, we all went our separate ways after the event, many of us not to meet again for years, if ever. “I miss Robby most of all.”4391 Meek: “When we didn’t win that race, I just cried like a baby. The poor Navy guy was ashamed to take my shirt, but I gave it to him anyway. “Later that summer I won the PanAms in a coxed-pair, and of course that was wonderful, but you know, the most exciting win I ever had was not that race, winning that Gold Medal. Matter of fact, the most exciting rowing that I ever did was not even when I was rowing Varsity for Joe in ‘66. It was that Junior Varsity boat in 1967. “What I think explains the terrible pain at losing at Syracuse that year was the camaraderie that we built up during all the twenty-four-mile workouts that we had done that year.”4392 The Varsity Race Sports Illustrated: “At the starting line, the Brown Varsity had come to grief during the brief storm, and along with thirteen other crews rowed to shore in order to bail out and mop up. “Because Washington and Northeastern had cannily returned to the boathouse, the big race was delayed an hour. Sculley: “As we left the boat dock, I was confident that this was OUR race and we just needed to be focused and execute well. We heard that the Freshmen boat had 4391 Steiner, op. cit. 4392 Meek, op. cit. won their race handily, and our undefeated Jayvees were already up the three-mile course nearing the starting line. In our time- trial practices, there had been very little difference between the Jayvees and us, and we felt they were the second fastest boat on the lake behind us. “The sky grew very dark, and it looked like we were going to have a shower as we paddled up to the start. We were about half a mile from the starting line when we saw the fourteen jayvee boats go by, but we were very focused on our warm-up exercises and did not pay attention to them. Several minutes later, the heavens broke, with lighting followed by a severe downpour. We were drenched in minutes, and all I could think about was to get us as close as possible to shore before we swamped.”4393 Hap Allen: “As I remember, it was sunny on the way up to the start, but then the squall blew in, and in a short time our shell was nearly swamped. For our Jayvee crew, this turned out to be a catastrophe, but for us, in a way it was a blessing. “Our coxswain, Art Sculley, steered us over toward the shore. We pulled our feet from our stretchers and stepped onto the muddy bottom of Lake Onondaga. “In those days, the milky green Onondaga water had a somewhat viscous quality, the result, I believe, of industrial effluents from soda ash plants. Joe was certainly aware that the water we would be racing in was ‘different.’ “In another display of Joe’s inventiveness, back in May, he had mixed up a batch of frozen orange juice, not for the Minute Maid™, but for the can! Having already cut out the top, he also cut out the bottom of the can and wired it to the back of our shell. During workouts in the weeks before the race, our crew had the pleasure of dragging this cylindrical sea anchor through the ‘finer’ waters of the Schuylkill River. 4393 Sculley, op. cit. 1205
