Gold medal lesson

I've been reading "The Boys on the Boat," an early birthday present from Mom. The book resonates for me because I went to the University of Washington during the years the boat in question was hung  in a commons room at the Husky Union Building.  At least two or three times a week, I'd walk past the boat and the small plaque that said something like "Gold Medal, Berlin Olympics, 1936" and feel an unspoken, surge of pride in our Husky heritage.

I had no idea of how much effort and drama went into winning that race.  Read the book, please.

The part I like best is towards the end.  The UW crew has just blown away the other crews in the US Olympic trials in Princeton NJ.  The big wheels in the Olympic committee take the UW coach aside and tell him, oh by the way our committee has no money to actually send you to Berlin.  If you can't raise $5,000 by the end of the week, we'll have no choice but to send the second place boat from the Pennsylvania Athletic Club.

Remember this as the height of the Great Depression.  Penn may have had wealthy people standing by with pockets full of money, but hardly anybody else did.

The books says the UW coach, Al Ulbrickson, didn't bat an eye.  He immediately huddled with sportswriters from the Seattle P-I and the Seattle Times, who started writing dramatic columns and headlines to be telegraphed back to Seattle overnight.  Then the book continues, "within minutes, phones began to ring in Seattle."

The director of the UW Alumni started calling prominent UW graduates.  The Seattle Chamber of Commerce sent telegrams to every chamber in "every city, town, and hamlet in the state."  UW "coeds grabbed tin cans and started going door to door."  Hometowns of the nine crew members sent what they could, $50 from Montesano, the timber town on the coast, $50 from Bellingham, and on and on.  In the first, day UW students sold $1,500 worth of lapel tags for 50 cents each.

"At the end of the second day, T.E. Davies, chairman of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce put a $5,000 certified check in an envelope and airmailed it to Al Ulbrickson."

Call me idealistic, but that's my idea of what people, especially Northwest people, can do when we work together.  Maybe someday we can do it again.