Golden Eight is rowing to the end

by Michael Vitez , The Philadelphia Inquirer on 22 May 2006 The team, whose average age is 77, will row in the Stotesbury Regatta.

As members of the Golden Eight were preparing to practice last week, somebody asked one of the crew - average age, 77 - 'How far will you row?'

'Until the first chest pain,' quipped Ed Pressman, 71, a crew member and physician.

This was only partly a joke. A few years ago, John Kieffer, now 85, another member of the Golden Eight, suffered a heart attack in the middle of a race.

And kept on rowing.

The coxswain was berating them all, urging them to work harder, to fend off a challenge from a boat of women trying to overtake them.

The men held on.

And Kieffer spent two weeks in the hospital.

He will be back in the boat tomorrow, when the Golden Eight rows in an exhibition at noon in the Stotesbury Cup, the oldest high school regatta in America.

The Golden Eight has won 14 gold medals in international masters rowing since 1985, more than any other boat, its members say.

The original crew came together on a whim. All of the rowers were already in Toronto, competing in the international masters championship in smaller boats, when they decided to put together an eight-man crew to compete against Canadian and German boats - each crew averaging 60 years or more.

The Americans won. Six of the eight members of that original boat belonged to Philadelphia boathouses.

After winning its third gold medal in France in 1989, the crew was dubbed the Golden Eight by US Rowing magazine.

The name stuck. As the years rolled by, their average age climbed: 65, 70 and now 77. The crew jokes that the name Golden Eight now applies more to their age than their medals.

But each time these men row together, they know it could be their last.

Nine have died. Five more have fallen to illness and frailty.

As men were lost, peers took their places, most from Boathouse Row.

But the Golden Eight is running out of men.

'This will probably be our last year,' said Jack Sholl, 81, one of two original crew members still rowing in the Golden Eight.

The other, Dave Challinor, 85, of Washington, D.C., will also row tomorrow and in the fall, when the Golden Eight will try to win its 15th international masters championship outside Princeton, likely its last race.

'I treasure these friendships, and I miss the men who've died,' Challinor said. 'We've been extremely lucky to have rowed together for as long as we have.'

In 2000, after the death of Chuck Colgan, the crew dropped tulips in the river in Galway, Ireland, and bowed their heads in silence. An Irish boat - men half their age - passed them, and one rower quipped, 'You didn't have to bring us flowers.'

When the Golden Eight explained what they were doing, the Irishmen apologized.

'What's the average age in your boat?' an Irishman asked.

'Seventy-two' came the reply.

'If you guys need a doctor, we've got one rowing in the fourth spot,' an Irishman said.

'Does he specialize in prostate problems,' said Sholl. 'Because we've got eight of them.'

After Bart McCall died in 2004, the men took a row on the Schuylkill. They left the seventh seat open - typically where McCall sat - and each rower placed a rose on it. A bagpiper played on shore as his wife, sitting in the coxswain's seat, sprinkled his ashes in the river.

Then Harry Todd, 68, another frequent crew member, broke into 'Danny Boy,' and they cried and rowed back to the dock.

The boat has been filled with rowing legends.

Harold Finigan - who competed in the first Golden Eight boat in Toronto - rowed more miles on the Schuylkill than any other person, between 500 and 1,000 miles for 64 years. He suffered a car accident along Boathouse Row in 1993, at age 84, and fell into a coma. When he awoke, according to his son, his first words were a whisper: 'I want to row.'

He did row again, but never with the Golden Eight. He died last year.

Finigan's partner in the 1949 national champion pair, Frank Shepherdson, was also in the original Golden Eight in 1985.

But Shepherdson is so hobbled now from injury and illness at 87 that he can no longer row. The surviving members of the Golden Eight try to visit him in Trevose once a month. Shep, who rowed for 67 years, can barely get out of bed, but makes a point to sit in his living room, beneath a print of rowers by Thomas Eakins, when his fellow oarsmen come to visit. 'I miss rowing more than you will ever know,' he said recently.

Sid Salomon was a superb rower, but even more famous as an American hero who led the Army Rangers up the cliffs of Normandy on D-Day. He was featured in Stephen Ambrose's book D-Day, and the fictional captain played by Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan was based on Salomon.

His rowing brothers knew him as the most gentle man, and had difficulty imagining him as war hero. When Salomon died at 90 in 2004, the Golden Eight went to his burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Tomorrow's row is just an exhibition - an example to students of this burgeoning sport of the lifelong health, joy and friendship rowing can bring.

Joe Harris, 77, fell in a parking lot last week and bruised two ribs. He wasn't supposed to row for at least a week. But he was in the boat for practice the next day.

'My crew needs me,' he said.

Many of these men row three and four days a week, year-round, usually in small boats. Rarely can they get everyone together for practice in the eight.

But during one such session last week, the eight men rowed in unison. One of the great joys of rowing in an eight is the sense of coordination, all eight men contributing to and feeling the surge of the boat.

The farther from the dock they got, the younger they looked.

Source: www.philly.com