THE SPORT OF ROWING through well-chosen words quietly spoken. I don’t. I do most of my stuff through enthusiasm and rah-rah and bigger sledgehammers. I’m more emotional, but he is so subtle in the way he presents his ideas to different people, which is rare among coaches. “With his wonderfully-worded descriptions of what he sees with his very exacting eye, he is one of the most observant guys you’re ever going to find. He’d take time with a single guy about a little thing, and that taught me that if you spend more time with the individual instead of just being the tactical officer for the group, you can get athletes to change.”4497 There is a certain informality about Harry Parker. In 1968, Roger Angell wrote in The New Yorker: “Parker, a strong-jawed young man with thinning blond hair and a cheerful smile, is looked upon with awe on the banks of the Charles – or as close to awe as Harvard undergraduates permit themselves to come. One former Harvard rower told me, ‘I am moved to rise when I hear his name mentioned.’ “Parker is a precise and thoughtful man, apparently incapable of hyperbole. The only rhetoric he has been known to direct toward a Harvard crew is a quotation from Santayana that he recently tacked to the boathouse bulletin board: What is there in the universe more fascinating than running water, and the possibility of moving over it? What better image of existence and possible triumph?”4498 Harry’s voice is as deep as a well, the Voice of God, perhaps, and his words come sparingly, but there is a gravitas to his utterances when they do come. 4497 Nash, personal conversation, 2004 4498 Roger Angell, 0:00.05, The New Yorker, August 10, 1968, p. 72 “I’d go down to row the erg early in the morning or late in the afternoon after squash practice,4501 and he’d keep the door to his office open and sometimes pull a chair out and sit near the door twenty feet away from me, just sitting there reading. Not talking, just there. “Everyone liked him and respected him, but he just created the environment and didn’t join in. “You got the idea that talking wasn’t part of the program. Wino [coxswain Dave Weinberg] tells a great story about how his stroke-man hurt his back one day and had to get into the launch. Dave coxed the seven with an empty seat in front of him. “Afterwards, Harry said, “Dave, the key to authority is distance.’”4502 4499 Ed Winchester, Deconstructing Harry, Rowing News, December , 2004, p. 44 4500 To put this comment into perspective, Tiff Wood quotes Cashin’s father: “You know, Dick would talk to a dead man.” 4501 Cashin was recruited to play squash at Harvard. He had never rowed until he arrived on campus. 4502 Cashin, op. cit. Rowing News: “All portray Parker as a mythic figure: reticent and stoic, obsessively competitive and given to long, mysterious stretches of silence.”4499 Cashin: “My most vivid memory of Harry is the distance he kept. The answer to every question was, ‘We’ll see.’ “He is comfortable with silence, and I’m not.4500 You got the idea that if you did what he said, everything would be fine, but there wasn’t any discussion or explanation. “There were few real pre-race pep talks. If you complained about something, he’d listen and nod but not say much. If I complained about seat racing, being switched constantly, he’d just say that everyone rows every piece. 1244
