HISTORY

Manacled by Mother Mildred, made by crew

Words: Chris Dodd

Ben Spock the medical student won Olympic gold on the Seine a century ago before Spock the radicalized shrink campaigned against the Vietnam War to save lives among the generation that his baby book helped to raise.

My acquaintance with Dr Benjamin Spock probably began unconsciously beside my mother’s bedside table where very likely lay an open copy of Baby and Child Care.

It certainly began consciously when I read a quote attributed to the doctor that said, “Crew made me”. Such a direct, succinct statement intrigued me and gave me an excuse to telephone him to inquire how it came to pass.

This was in the early 1990s, and as far as I recall Dr Spock said that he couldn’t recall saying it. But as he unfolded the story of his upbringing in New Haven,

Connecticut, it was soon apparent that crew did make him, or at least enabled him to make his great escape.

Rowing on the harbour of the Housatonic released him from the apron strings of Mildred, his disciplinarian and domineering mother whom he once described as the Supreme Court after she had sentenced him to a week’s house arrest for attending a party where evil alcohol was served. The boat club opened the way for a miracle on his road to Damascus some years hence. From the freedom of the river he observed that the effect of his mother’s zeal brought unhappiness on her head, not happiness.

Benjamin McLane Spock was born in 1903 and grew up in New Haven, home to Yale University, wearing short pants at Mildred’s insistence, and she also insisted that he stayed at home and continued to wear shorts when he entered Yale as a freshman. But the 6 feet 4 inches lanky lad found a way out. Membership of the boat club gave him an excuse to move into a dorm and dine at the crew table every evening. Short pants were restricted to the boat from then on.

Thus the youth who was to become both father and grandfather to the new-borns of half a century began a journey on which he would encounter ethical challenges to his impressive tally of towering achievements. He was to mentor parents by listening to their worries and preaching reassurance in books on childcare. His best sellers would challenge the Bible for sales during the twentieth century.

But this was to come later. So far as politics were concerned the young Spock was an unquestioning Republican like his railroad executive father. He followed his father’s footsteps through Phillips Andover Academy and Yale, where he studied literature and history and was elected to Scroll and Key, the university’s famous senior society. He also showed himself to be a natural oarsman.

During the rowing season in 1924, his year of graduation, his crew was involved in two races before the annual fixture against Harvard. On 5 May they beat Pennsylvania and Columbia quite easily at Derby. On 17 May they beat Princeton and Cornell easily in Princeton’s Carnegie Cup race, after which they went right into training for the four-mile annual fixture against Harvard.

Meanwhile, newspapers urged Yale to try out for the Olympics that were soon to take place in Paris. Yale heeded their word on 1 June, requesting to join the US trials. They had less than two weeks, including nine days of examinations, to practise before the showdown.

One complication in the event of Yale winning the trial was that they would be unable to sail to Europe with the American team because departure was scheduled before the Harvard race. On Monday, June 2nd, it reportedly took the Yale Rowing Committee only five minutes to raise $10,000 to send the crew to Paris in first class accommodation aboard the liner Homeric.

The trials took place in Philadelphia. In the first heat Yale met Undine Boat Club and the Navy’s Varsity and Junior Varsity. The latter knitted blades with Yale and almost put them out of the race, but the men from the Housatonic crossed the line first. MIT, Penn and New York Athletic Club were also at the trials as well as the Navy graduate crew who were the Olym-pic champions from the Antwerp Games in 1920. On Saturday morning Yale won the final trial by 4/5 second in 5:51.20.