THE SUNSET OF CONIBEAR oarsman, and the winner by spring was awarded a miniature oar that I had made during the winter. “The amount of interest in those point races was very gratifying.”4311 Paumgarten: “During current Harvard Coach Harry Parker’s time as an undergraduate at Penn,4312 the choosing of the boats was like a playground team – I pick, you pick and so on. Harry had taken notes and identified who the sleepers were and chose accordingly. Joe figured that out by Harry’s senior year and changed the process to total chance. “At the conclusion of the three-milers in April, after at least twenty-five races, the top three point winners (ten for first, seven for second, five for third) got a little oar that Joe had made. “By the way, Harry Parker won two oars in three years. I am the only oarsman to win three, ever! “Thank you, Joe, for retiring in 1969 so that Somerset Waters [‘70] never got a chance to equal my record.”4313 By the 1960s Joe was picking the boats by shuffling a deck of cards. Purdy: “I liked the card system because it always made things interesting. You got to row with everyone and in combinations never possible if the coach were deciding the lineups. “Many of the three-milers were very close. I remember one particular race being very close coming under the Girard Avenue Bridge with 500 meters to go. Our coxswain, Art Sculley [‘67], got a direct hit from a pigeon - caught him right on the inside of his glasses. He never missed a beat and only removed the deposit after the finish line.”4314 4311 Burk, personal correspondence, 2005 4312 1952-5 4313 Paumgarten, op. cit. 4314 Purdy, op. cit. Cadwalader: “Joe’s search for a fair selection method undoubtedly led to the now widely-used seat racing, maybe not directly, but such things often have a nurturing effect on the development of the next advance. “One wonders if seat racing actually is an advance. No one else ever tried Joe’s Point System elsewhere to see how well it worked. Probably no one else has had the strength of character nor the boldness to remove his own foibles from the boat selection to the extent that Joe did.”4315 Ted Nash With all of Joe Burk’s technical innovations, one single personnel decision that he made changed forever the face of Penn rowing. After the 1964 Olympics, Joe hired Olympic Champion Ted Nash4316 of Lake Washington Rowing Club to be his new freshman coach. Philadelphia sports columnist Frank Dolson: “In many ways they are opposites, Burk and Nash. Joe is calm, unruffled, always in charge of the situation. Ted is a bundle of nervous energy, always on the move, always stirring things up.”4317 As we have already seen, Ted Nash was a force of nature as an athlete. Joe respected Ted’s drive and his accomplishments, and Ted did not disappoint. Ted’s first contribution to Penn crew was the recruitment of athletes. He attacked the challenge with a ferocity never before seen in the gentleman’s sport of rowing. Cadwalader: “After third period classes at boarding school, we would rush downstairs to our mail boxes to see which one of us had the heaviest stack of recruiting letters from colleges. Those from Penn were guaranteed to be thick, meaty and exciting. 4315 Cadwalader, Burk Tribute 4316 See Chapters 83-85. 4317 Dolson, p. 5 1185
