THE SPORT OF ROWING Ted was recruiting, training and sending up to me.”4410 Indeed, the 1968 Penn squad swept the varsity, jayvee and freshman races at the IRA Regatta, only the fourth college after Washington, Navy and Cornell ever to achieve that. Even a cloudburst could only hold off the Penn onslaught for a year. The sweep also earned the Red and Blue their third consecutive Ten Eyck Trophy for the nation’s strongest team performance. They had also won the Rowe Cup, awarded for the top team performance at the Eastern Sprints. The technique of the 1968 Penn crew had changed a great deal from Joe’s 1955 Henley crew. Every member of the Varsity boat had been recruited and had rowed their freshman year for Ted. They were big, strong, supremely fit and not afraid of work. Joe had them rowing an elegant Classical Technique, concurrent Schubschlag to a very strong “Light Boat Squeeze” at the finish. The full-body commitment from the entry was reminiscent of Ted Nash’s 1964 Lake Washington Coxless-Four, but more patient, and they placed much more emphasis on acceleration to the release. Robby Meek: “Joe seemed to try something new every year. In 1968, I had graduated and was rowing at Vesper, but I would look over to see how they were doing, and Somerset Waters had the style down beautifully. He made it work for him. It involved missing very little water, getting the oar into the water pretty close to where you were all the way up and you were good and upright, good strong rowing position and you had the oar set. He just made it work perfectly. That was the stroke.”4411 4410 Burk, personal conversation, 2005 4411 Meek, personal conversation, 2008 Culture Clash During the 1960s, the entire atmosphere in the Ivy League had been shifting. Ted’s aggressive and successful recruiting was increasingly resented by many of Penn’s competitors, and murmurs had begun.4412 Quaker oarsmen were accused of being semi-pros compared to the true amateurs at other Eastern rowing colleges . . . like Harvard. In a time of tremendous unrest in the United States over the Vietnam War, over civil rights and over the Counterculture, the clean-cut young oarsmen of Penn seemed to come from a different generation from the long-haired crews from other colleges, especially Harvard. Cadwalader: “The contrasts were striking, as many have noted. Joe Burk had a haircut rule for the Penn crew. One would expect that from such a revered and disciplined man, Navy war hero, PT Boat skipper and winner of the Silver Star, but these were the ‘60s, Joe, when the rest of our friends were in a haze, our lectures were all ‘pass/fail,’ there was a military draft, and everything was, ‘Like, wow! Far out, man!’ “At the boathouse we were shipshape, so imagine our amusement when we would look over at the start of races to see the yurt- headed hairdos that we knew from all over our own campus but on the athletes from Harvard . . . except of course no smoke, no toke and no dazed look.”4413 Purdy: “The dress code of short hair and no mustaches was somewhat harsh but never a problem since Joe didn’t care what we wore for practice. I can remember numerous trips to the Army/Navy Store to buy some of the most outrageous costumes one could imagine. It seemed that Steve 4412 Roger Angell, 00:00.05, The New Yorker, August 10, 1968, p. 74 4413 Cadwalader, personal correspondence, 2007 1214
