Columbia College Today

In spring 1964, Columbia’s freshman lightweight crew knew no peer, winning every race in a perfect season

By Martin M. Goldstein ’67

The Columbia freshman lightweight crew of the Class of ’67 had a perfect season, winning all five of its regular season races, then finishing up in dramatic fashion by taking first place in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) Sprints on Lake Quinsigamond, Worcester, Mass., by two-tenths of a second.

The last time any Columbia crew had gone undefeated was in 1929, and since then, no other Columbia crew has been as successful. It was a magical season.

That day of the sprints, May 16, 1964, was the last day some of the team ever rowed, the last day their coach ever coached, and for some, the last time they were in contact for more than 40 years. For others, it was the beginning of a lifelong brotherhood.

I knew most of them back then; I was a frosh lightweight coxswain in the second boat that fall, and a JV lightweight cox for three years after, winning my letter the hard way, through sheer perseverance rather than any discernable athletic talent. I’d kept in touch with some, lost touch with most; as our 40th class reunion approached, I felt compelled to find out what had happened to them. What had that perfect season meant in their lives? Where — and who — were they now?

“I was both impressed and overwhelmed by Columbia when I arrived. I came from a relatively sheltered background, in the East Texas Bible Belt, and Columbia was an adventure, a mystery to be solved, an introduction to the world of ideas that was new to me.

“I got involved in crew because I was tired of football, and they told us at orientation that you didn’t need any experience to row. Hasso [Molineus, the coach] was gentle, intelligent, soft-spoken and encouraging, a far cry from my tobacco-chewing, hard-bitten football coach in Tyler, Texas. We were all amazed by our success and never took anything for granted. We had some great jokers in the boat, but we were serious and dedicated and devoted to Hasso and each other when we were on the water.

“After graduating, I took an M.A. in sociology from Brown in 1969, went to California to visit Marty Goldstein in San Francisco, stayed and worked in North Beach for a year, met my former wife and spent the winter in Mexico before heading to Vermont in 1971, buying land, developing a pottery studio and raising three children.

“After my marriage ended in 1988, I continued running the pottery studio and my children stayed with me. After the youngsters were fledged, I went back to teaching, and I love it.

“In 1995, I married Eve Pranis, an educational curriculum writer. I’m director of special services at Champlain Valley Union H.S. Eve and I want to travel and volunteer, and I’m sure I’ll continue to work with kids with disabilities in some fashion, either by working part-time or volunteering, for as long as I’m able to.”

Dannemann’s father, Henry Dannemann ’29, ’31E, ’32E, rowed at Columbia, and the younger Dannemann became captain of the lightweight crew, receiving the “Straight Arrow” Award at one of our “Buffoon’s Banquets,” in the form of a liberated New York City “One-Way” street sign. He joined the Navy after graduation and served as an officer on a destroyer, after which he returned to Columbia to get an M.B.A.

“After business school, I started out at Textron in investor relations, then went to Bell Helicopter. After a few years, I left to buy a chocolate company, Brigham’s Candies, in Connecticut. I sold that and took a job as marketing director at Godiva Chocolate, which was part of the Pepperidge Farm/Campbell’s Soup conglomerate, where I worked on other food products, then back to chocolate, this time importing it from Holland.

“Then, 18 years ago, I took a job with a little art company, Chalk & Vermillion, and I have been there since. I love it. It was also just about 18 years ago that I met and married Peggy Jackson, and she in fact is the reason that I settled down. I finally found what my heart was looking for.

“The summer of 1999, after graduating with honors from Maryland, my eldest daughter, Jaime, died, and there now is a Jaime Dannemann Foundation that has given about 20 scholarships to Maryland students. My second daughter, Jill, is a St. Lawrence grad, and our two youngest, William (15) and Clara (12) are at home.

“For much of this time, I have been enjoying rowing, though each year I get a little slower. We have a beautiful river to row on [in Connecticut], and I recommend it. And, yes, it is like riding a bike.”

“My father was a Foreign Service officer from South Africa, and I grew up all over the world, finishing high school in London, where I rowed for Westminster School.

“When my dad was appointed as South African ambassador to the United Nations, my family moved to New York, and I enrolled at Columbia.

“We had great good fortune with the freshman lightweight boat, and shortly thereafter my decision to come to Columbia turned out to be brilliant, as I met my future wife, Susan, at The Gold Rail.

“After graduating from Columbia with a master’s in mechanical engineering, I worked for five different multinational companies. As a result, our little family moved a lot — New York, London, Boston (where I earned my M.B.A. in the same class as George W. Bush; never saw him in class), Chicago, Morgantown (W. Va.), Los Gatos (Calif.), Edinburgh and Setauket (Long Island).

“Susan and I live in Vermont. We have been married for 36 years and have two children, James (34), an architect in New York, and Sarah ’03L (31), who works in D.C. I feel exhilarated to reach a point in my life where I can become a contributing member of a community. Susan will work for the next few years as a middle school special education teacher, but we look forward to the future, when we shall divide our time between Vermont and an apartment we have in Edinburgh.

“What astounds me more than anything, at this point in my life, is the strength of the friendships that developed as a result of crew, both in London and New York. Those friendships are the connections I value most today, despite of a peripatetic lifestyle that my parents initiated, and I continued. Thank heavens for e-mail and cheap airfares!”

Miller entered the Engineering School in 1963. He lived at home on 113th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue and walked to school through Morningside Park. Miller’s father belonged to the National Maritime Union, which awarded college scholarships each year to members’ children, and that allowed him to pay his own way.

He went on academic probation in the spring semester of his sophomore year, and by the end of his junior year, he dropped out and took a job with the New York Telephone Co. The next year, 1967, he joined the Air Force, trained at Lackland AFB and was sent to Vietnam from 1967–68, where he served in Cam Ran Bay during the Tet offensive in a cryptographic unit.

Miller stayed in the Air Force until 1971, returned to New York and again worked for the phone company. He joined the New York Air National Guard and went to night school at Pace, attaining a college equivalency degree. This, along with Officer Candidate School, allowed him to move up into the officer ranks as a communications officer, and all told, he served 39 years, retiring in 2005 as a lieutenant colonel. Miller’s decorations include the NATO Medal, the Joint Service Achievement Medal, the Air Reserve Forces Meritorious Service Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal and Vietnam Service Medal.

Miller married in 1971 and divorced in 1980 with no kids. In 1984, he transferred to AT&T and moved to Denver, where he met and married Kathy, taking on her three children and settling in Phoenix in 1995, where the couple lives in a retirement community. The kids are grown and gone, his wife plays golf and Mah-Jongg and he will be at the 40th reunion May 31–June 3 because, as he freely says, he has plenty of time on his hands and nothing particular to do with it.

Vaughn was the missing man for more than 40 years; he dropped out after our sophomore year, and records show he graduated in 1972, but otherwise, nobody knew what had become of him until, instigated by this story, Gerry Botha tracked him down. Vaughn was alive and well in Winthrop, Wash., and was delighted to hear from everybody.

After leaving Columbia, he spent four years in the Army as a linguist in Germany, then returned to graduate. By 1978, he settled in Seattle and held a series of manual labor jobs (brick-layer, truck driver, mover, etc.). There was a marriage that didn’t work out, no kids, then a marriage that did work out, to Elizabeth. She had two daughters from a prior marriage, now grown and gone. The couple are owner-operators of a long-haul trucking line they founded and that they ran until 1999, when they retired to their current residence, about 250 miles east of Seattle, a mountainous region near the Canadian border. It’s very isolated, and they like it that way.

During all this time, Vaughn kept a small “ego archive,” portions of which he sent to me, mementoes of that perfect season — a picture of the crew on the dock after a win, the dates and times of all the races, smudged copies of New York Times articles on the season … things to remind him of a time in his life when all things were possible and miracles happened.

Vaughn never expected to live past 50, he told me, and had no plan of what he would be doing after, but now, in his 60s, he and his wife feel quite content with their lives. “We relate to the turning of the seasons, not the passing of the years,” he says.

“Being on the crew, and that boat in particular, remains the most vivid and best part of my Columbia experience. I didn’t find myself intellectually at the College, but after school, I got a job as a lab tech at Rockefeller University, studying basic phenomena in molecular biology and genetics using bacterial viruses, and it took me about a week there to know that it was for me. It wasn’t just the science, it was the people and their styles that attracted me. You could spend your time among folks who were scientists and bohemians, too!

”After a year-and-a-half at Rockefeller, I applied to grad school, and off I went to MIT — another great five years. Those were heady days in molecular biology and genetics, and I was in the middle of it all. I then did a two-year post-doc at Yale, got a faculty position at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and have been there since.

“In the 1990s, I changed my research focus again, this time to biotechnology and applications to human cells and human disease, and eventually founded a commercial company, SpectraGenetics, which is developing means to genotype tumor DNA.

“On the personal side — and this is more important to me than everything above — I’ve been fortunate to have and raise three sons. Two are out of college: Nick works in Toronto in a biotechnology lab at the University of Toronto, and Evan works at SpectraGenetics. Freddy is in college. My wife, Mary Anne, worked at the university for years in administration and now is president of our company.”

And yes, Jarvik’s brother is Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart, and his uncle, Murray Jarvik, invented the nicotine patch.

“When I entered my freshman year at Columbia, I was familiar with the campus because my father was a faculty member (Alexander Kouzmanoff, professor of architecture), but I was in no way prepared for the intellectual challenges of the school, in particular, the demands of the Core Curriculum. The first two years at the College remain the greatest intellectual experience of my life, and literally established habits of mind for which I will always be grateful.

“My memories of rowing are bittersweet. I loved being on the water and enjoyed being with my teammates during our miracle season. My problems with the sport had to due with the extreme weight loss needed to meet lightweight standards, weight loss that required not just aerobic and strength conditioning, which I love, but extreme dieting, which I found difficult, given my love of food. By the end of the season, I wasn’t just thin, I was emaciated and run down.

“During graduate school [Harvard School of Architecture] and before getting married at 37, I spent most of my free time outdoors, surfing, hiking and climbing. I have been married for 24 wonderful years to Alison, and have a daughter, Anne, who recently graduated from University of Michigan. My wife and I hope to move to the country and are planning to build a cabin in upstate New York so that we can spend more time gardening, our favorite activity.

“I am in practice with a fellow Columbian (Kenneth Bainton ’78, ’82 Arch.) at Kouzmanoff-Bainton, working on projects for university, government and commercial clients. I have no plans for retiring. There is a saying in the profession that architecture begins at 50. However, I wish that I was less busy with my small practice and had more time for community service.”

Born and raised in Lewiston, Maine, DuMais was recruited to Columbia by head crew coach Carl Ulrich, but it was coach Hasso Molineus ’63, ’65 Business who made the right connection with him. “He had the right temperament and approach to make it all work. I really think that without him it would never have happened. I was rather a loose cannon and today marvel at how he kept me from going completely overboard [with one exception — see sidebar]. We were all lucky to be part of it, and it has certainly been a memory to cherish for the rest of our lives,” DuMais says.

DuMais quit the crew his junior year to concentrate on what became a lifelong passion, rock climbing. After graduation, he worked for the NYC Welfare Department as his conscientious objector service during the Vietnam War. He got married and the couple moved to upstate New York after DuMais’ service was over, then split up around 1973. DuMais moved to Boulder, Colo., mostly for the climbing, and stayed there for 16 years. In 1989, looking for both climbing and snow opportunities, he moved to Jackson, Wyo., where he has been for the past 17 years, and intends to stay.

As he was summarizing his life of living for his vacations, his climbs and trips and such, and modifying his life to suit those pleasures by moving west, then north, to where he could climb and ski most easily, then spending his time doing just that, DuMais said that essentially, looking back on it at 60, he had wasted his life having fun.

“Wasted it, or spent it?” I asked, both kind and curious. “We tend to absorb society’s values and judgments as our own, even if we don’t really agree with them.”

“I came from the village of Liverpool, which is in central New York State. I always had dreamed of living in New York City, and that was really the primary reason for my choosing to go to Columbia. Following college, I entered the Graduate School of Architecture, and the following spring I found myself in the middle of the 1968 riots. With that experience, and the following summer, I became politically conscious of the oppressed.

“After spending more than 10 years in Manhattan, I first went to Europe in 1974. About a month or so into my overseas travels, I was in the Alps, witnessing my first mountains. I had never felt anything so overwhelming.

“So I gave up whatever I had in the States and stayed in Europe from 1975–82, primarily making southern Germany my home base. I panhandled at Fussgaenger Zones; I was an au pair; I sold hi-fi systems and camera equipment to the American Army; and, during my last three years in Europe, I taught college classes to American troops and their dependents.

“In 1988, I settled down outside of Washington, D.C., and started working at various things. I obtained an M.S. in computer science, and I recently completed my 15th year working at the NIH. If I can hang in there another 10 years, I can then think about retirement.

“I have always remained legally single, and I have neither family nor commitments, other than to my various causes, which include a health clinic in war-torn Karabagh, the Tree Project in Armenia, Heat for Schools in Armenia and removing today’s religious fundamentalists from the government.”

Molineus was born in Germany and moved to New York when he was 12 to live with family. He rowed as a heavyweight for four years and was a first-year student in the Business School in 1963–64. This was his first time coaching; it helped pay his tuition.

Molineus recalls clearly the moment the freshman lightweights realized what they had. They were practicing in the Hudson, came upon the frosh heavyweights and got into a bit of a race. The lightweights pulled away from them and stayed away from them, rowing gracefully, forcefully, with confidence. Nobody told them to do it, it wasn’t etiquette, but they did it anyway. They had little experience but a lot of guts and no fear, and in that mix of personalities and bodies, something unified emerged. The boat. The crew.

It swung, and when it did it was a place, a rhythm, a self-fulfilling prophecy, its own reward and encouragement. A boat going well flows and leaps, muscular yet graceful, powerful and delicate at the same time. It’s magic, really. You can’t make it happen. It just does, or does not, and if you are a good coach, you appreciate it and nurture it, as Molineus did.

After that magical season, Molineus got a scholarship for his second year at the Business School, and knowing he couldn’t top what had just been achieved, he didn’t coach that second year, and never coached again. He retired, as CCT noted at the time, as “Columbia athletics’ only undefeated coach.”

After graduation, he returned to Germany, found his fraulein Birgit, married, worked for 28 years at the World Bank and then for five years with the European Commission in Belgrade. He has two children and three grandchildren. His son works in Cairo for the IFC, a World Bank organization, and his daughter is an architect in London.

As I talked with Molineus, I realized again what a warm, nurturing and decent man he is, and I suspect it was this most of all that made it possible for the freshman lightweights to have that perfect season in spring ’64. Molineus is the kind of man whose caring is genuine, whose decency is real. The guys in the boat knew it, felt it and behaved accordingly, giving their best to him and to each other, and in so doing creating memories that have lasted over more than four decades.

We were kids then, it’s important to note, growing up at Columbia during those years. I guess that’s why we remember them so warmly and so well.

Two-Tenths of a Second

They’d won every race that season by open water and were seeded first out of nine boats in the EARC Sprints, so winning wasn’t a hope but an expectation. However, there was a problem.

“The evening before race day,” recalls Jan Kouzmanoff ’67, “we went out for a final practice session. I felt a severe sore throat coming on. Hoping to fight it off and protect myself for the races, I may have subconsciously eased off during the workout. This did not go unnoticed by [coxswain] Jimmy [Menasian ’67] . On shore, he came up to me and hinted that I was not pulling as hard as usual. He had never criticized me before and it came as a shock, and also served to motivate me. I was determined not to let the crew down during the races.”

Yet sometimes, as coach Hasso Molineus ’63, ’65 Business well knew, willpower is not enough. At the Blackwell Cup during his senior year on a very successful Columbia heavyweight boat, one of his crewmates who’d been sick fainted about 300 meters from the finish, ending their race. So it wasn’t a choice Kouzmanoff or even the rest of the boat could make. It was Molineus’ choice, as coach, and he decided to stick with Kouzmanoff.

The next day, Kouzmanoff’s sore throat was replaced by a high fever. In fact, he was coming down with German measles. But he felt better — maybe it was the adrenaline.

“We probably would have not have won,” recalls Dick DuMais ’67, “had Jan not rowed. No reflection on whoever might have replaced him, it just would have upset the chemistry, broken the spell, as it were.”

“In the morning heats,” remembers Eric Dannemann ’67, ’72 Business, “it was deathly still, and chilly. We were shivering. Nerves were on edge. Then, out of the silence, echoing over the water, came the voice of Dick DuMais ’67, proclaiming in his best Down East Maine accent: ‘The last time I saw the sky like this was just before the hurricane of ’38 …’ With that, we all relaxed.”

“The morning heat was a dream, calm, perfect conditions. We breezed through it,” DuMais remembers. Between races, they experimented with the vibrating beds in the hotel. “Jon Jarvik ’67 and I thought it was great, and when we were all supposed to be resting between races, all we did was keep jumping on the bed that vibrated — which kept poor Kouzmanoff from getting any rest, which he really needed.”

“In the afternoon, we got off to a good start,” recalls Dannemann. “Within 10 strokes, Cornell to our right crabbed. I remember instantly saying to David Blanchard ’67, ‘It’s Princeton,’ to our left. And indeed it was.”

“The final was a dramatic contrast to the calm of the morning heats,” recalls DuMais. “We had a bad headwind and rough water. Princeton was way over by the shore, in the lee, in calmer water. Harvard was the one boat we were worried about, and we moved right out on them. I recall thinking we were winning just fine. But with about one-quarter mile to go, we looked over and saw Princeton had a sizeable lead. My reaction was shock and kind of a sick feeling.

“Then they came out from behind the protection of a small point, hitting the headwind and rough water we’d been rowing in the whole time, and it was like they stopped dead. So we all just pulled as hard as you can imagine. It was like the whole boat and crew were one unit and you could feel the boat shudder and strain at each stroke. And with each one, we were moving on them. We knew we could out-row those guys, but it was a question of whether there was enough time/distance left before the finish.”

“I remember Jimmy screaming ‘Damn it, gentlemen, row!’ and being spurred on, and pulling my heart out,” recalls Dannemann. “If I did not give it every bit I had in me,” Blanchard says, “I wouldn’t have been able to respect myself, because I knew the guys in back of me were giving it everything they had.”

“I was convinced we had lost,” recalls Menasian. “The race was that close. I remember not stopping the crew after we crossed the finish line. I did not want the race to end ... if we had lost.”

Charlie Miller ‘67E looked over at Kouzmanoff after they stopped rowing. “At the end of the race, he was spent. I always wished I could have achieved that same level of giving.”

“How about DuMais laying out some choice words at that point,” Jarvik remembers, “and then jumping out of the boat and swimming to shore after we heard voices across the water saying that we’d lost?”

But they had won, by two-tenths of a second, by one seat, by whoever got their oars in the water last. It could have gone either way. But it went their way. And the perfect season was complete.

“On the bus ride back to Columbia,” recalls Dannemann, “Art Delmhorst ’60, ’64 Business, the lightweight varsity coach, said that those two-tenths of a second would stay with us for a long time. He was right.”

“I’ve used those two-tenths of a second and our undefeated season as a motivator many times in my life,” recalls Blanchard. “Those micro-seconds were defining moments for me. To go from being a third-string high school football player in Texas to winning the Eastern Sprints, even in a freshman boat, was a tremendous validation for me as an athlete and a team member. Sweet memories.”

Sweet memories, indeed.

M.M.G

Martin M. Goldstein ’67 is a Santa Monica, Calif.–based writer and teacher.

FIRST PERSON

A Season to Remember

By Martin M. Goldstein ’67

Two-Tenths of a Second