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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Harlem, Not Hudson

In your July/August issue, at the beginning of Class Notes you have a picture and you ask: Do you know the year?

No, I don’t, but they are not rowing on the Hudson River. They are on Spuyten Duyvil, which is part of the Harlem River. The bridge toward which they are rowing is the Henry Hudson Bridge, with the New York Central railroad bridge in the distance. That bridge is at the entrance to the Hudson. When the tide is running fast, it can be real fun going through.

Leonard M. Shayne ’41
Lighweight cox, 1939
New York City

Bob Prendergast ’53 told me that he and some friends painted the big blue “C” on the New York Central railroad property in spring 1953, so the photo on page 34 must have been taken after that. However, the water is the Harlem River, not the Hudson; the Hudson is beyond the bridge.

Carl Witkovitch ’53
San Mateo, Calif.

I know the photograph was later than 1952–53 because they were still painting the “C” on the rock then. I would never try such a feat, but we watched them toiling away every day as we went to crew practice. I do know, however, that they are rowing on the Harlem River, not the Hudson.

Colin Clarendon ’55
Como, Miss.

P.S.: I am sorry to hear of Harry Coleman ’46’s passing; he was a great guy and a revered lightweight crew coach.

Athletics Hall of Fame

That you apparently received no letters questioning the choice of the 1967–68 basketball team that went nowhere in the NCAA tournament as Columbia’s greatest team rather than the ’34 Rose Bowl football team is astounding. No one remembers KF–79? Or that Mayor LaGuardia and 5,000 rooters greeted the team on its return to Penn Station and that the mayor then led a caravan back to the campus where he joined President Nicholas Murray Butler [Class of 1882] in leading a monster rally for the team? Sic transit gloria mundi. One must wonder not what the selectors were thinking of, but what they were thinking with.

John McCormack ’39
Dallas

Permit me to add two nominees to Columbia’s Athletics Hall of Fame: Irv De­Koff, whose fencers consistently won numerous championships, and “patient” Gerald Sherwin ’55, who has cranked out more Class Notes than anyone else.

Alfred L. Ginepra Jr. ’55
Santa Monica, Calif.

[Editor’s note: In addition to serving as CCT class correspondent, Sherwin is among the most active alumni supporters of Columbia athletics.]

Doormen?

This article on doormen is a genuine embarrassment. This is scholarship? What’s next? Pizza delivery boys? With all the societal problems and natural mysteries in the world, it’s a shame to think that time, money and energy was devoted to something so classist and minor at Columbia.

Mitch Earleywine ’86
Albany, N.Y.

Close Finishes

I read in the July/August 2006 issue, “Columbia’s lightweight crew missed a bronze medal by little more than one-half second and finished fourth in the National Lightweight Championship, held in conjunction with the I.R.A. Regatta on the Cooper River in Camden, N.J., on June 3. Cornell won the race by eight-hundredths of a second over Harvard, with Princeton third.”

This reminded me of the lightweight freshman race between Princeton and Columbia over the Henley distance on May 3, 1947, on Lake Carnegie. They were the only crews entered in the race. It was the first race for the Columbia freshmen, who had practiced at the Spuyten Duyvil for a number of weeks. The Columbia crew had the lane further from the shore. At the finish of the race the Columbia coxswain cried out, “Let ’er run!” which we did (I rowed at the seven oar for Columbia). Then, as we sat dead in the water, we saw the Princeton shell approach from behind and then from somewhere be proclaimed as the winner. In the confusion at the boathouse after the race, I believe I was told to give my shirt to my Princeton counterpart.

I do not know how the race was judged or by whom. On page 171 of Rowing at Princeton (2002), we read of this race “down on Lake Carnegie the frosh 150’s rushed to win over Columbia by the close margin of four feet, after having caught a crab at the quarter-mile mark.” On May 4, 1947, The New York Times noted in the sports section that Princeton lightweight crews swept Lake Carnegie on May 3 “beating the Columbia freshmen 150’s to the finish by four feet.” No other information was given.

Four feet is much less than one second, less than the time it takes to snap one’s fingers. I am interested to know how the finishes were timed and judged at Lake Carnegie. The above-mentioned sources gave no times. I insist that Columbia won.

Arthur L. Thomas ’50
Greenwich, Conn.  

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