The Boys in the Boat

EPILOGUE

The epigraph is once again Pocock, this time from a speech he gave to the University of Washington Varsity Boat Club in 1965. Audio is available on the Husky Crew website at http://www.huskycrew.org/audio-video/Pocock65mp3.mp3. McMillin mentions stopping to visit relatives in New York in his 2004 interview with Socolow. Johnny White’s journey home was explained to me in my interview with Mary Helen Tarbox. Shorty Hunt’s arrival home is celebrated in “When Olympic Athletes Were Honored by Valley,” Puyallup Valley Tribune, September 29, 1936. Pocock’s side trip to England is discussed in “One-Man Navy Yard” (49) and Newell (111). Bobby Moch’s post-Olympics experiences were explained to me in my interviews with Marilynn Moch, with some details also from the Montesano Vidette, November 11, 1999.

The boys’ extraordinary accomplishment in the 1937 Poughkeepsie Regatta is best chronicled in “Washington Crews Again Sweep Hudson Regatta,” NYT, June 23, 1937. Royal Brougham describes the evening the boys parted ways in “Ulbrickson Plans Arrival on July 5,” PI, June 23, 1937.

G?ring’s “All that is lacking” proclamation can be found in Shirer, Rise and Fall (300). The unidentified American’s comment is from a chilling piece of prewar propaganda, Stanley McClatchie, Look to Germany: The Heart of Europe (Berlin: Heinrich Hoffmann, 1936). For much more on the reception Riefenstahl’s Olympia received, see Bach, Leni (196–213).

Many details of the boys’ subsequent lives are drawn from a series of obituaries. See the online notes for individual citations. Ulbrickson’s clear recollection of the day he first put Joe in the 1936 varsity boat is recounted in George Varnell, “Memories of Crew: Al Recalls the Highlights of a Long, Honored Career,” ST (no date, a clipping in Joe Rantz’s scrapbook). Some details of Ebright’s later career are from Arthur M. Arlett’s 1968 interview with him. The ten-year anniversary rows are chronicled in a series of news articles and local television broadcasts through these years.

It is a small but noteworthy irony that among the first Allied troops who crossed the Elbe River and met up with Russian troops in April of 1945—encircling Berlin and sealing Hitler’s fate—was a small band of resourceful American boys, rowing a captured German racing shell.