Let’s go back to the very beginning. Where are you from and you arrived at Cal in 1974 from where?
I consider most of my growing up years to be Ann Arbor, Michigan. My dad taught at the University of Michigan, and so I lived there from third grade through my first year in college.
I started U of M. So when I showed up at Cal that fall I had actually gone a year and a half to U. of M. So I was in the middle of my sophomore year, really.
Had you been an athlete in high school or at university?
Yeah, I was always very active with my body and had taken all kinds of various classes and stuff. You know, gymnastics and swimming, blah, blah, blah. But I was lucky to be in Ann Arbor and my dad connected with the university, and I got to participate in a summer fitness program where college instructors instructed us. And I had an hour of gymnastics, an hour of swimming, and an hour of track and field. And it was doing track and field that a man who taught in the Physical Education Department at University of Michigan saw me running and thought I would be a good member of his girl's track team so contacted my parents, and I was 12. They thought I was too young to specialize in anything. And you know my parents were of the generation when girls were cheerleaders, but not too much else. So I was kind of odd to them, and I was the oldest, so I was blazing trails for my sisters and brothers behind me. But the next year the coach asked again. And my parents at that time said, it's up to you. If you want to specialize in track and field, whatever that means, go ahead.
So I did. From 13 through 15 I was on this track team, the “Michigammes.” And we had a girl who went to the ‘ 68 Olympics, and I was doing all the indoor summer track and cross country, and also the coach thought I would be good for the Heptathlon so I was doing shot put and javelin and the jumps and the hurdles and stuff like that, and enjoyed it a lot.
In the winters, we trained at an indoor track, and that's where I first met Andy. So he was in Ann Arbor getting his bachelors and master’s degree, and he was paddling in the summers, but then working out in the gyms and stuff in the winter. And he and the guys would tease us, of course, as we ran around this track, and they said “Well, when spring comes, why don't you girls come down and try kayaking?” So several of us did the summer that I was 15, and I loved it. It was down at the Huron River.
I loved being on the water, and I have a strong, naturally strong upper body. And so it seemed to be something that I was good at. So I switched from track and field to kayaking at that point, and I got very good very quickly. That summer I was national champion in my age group. So that was very encouraging to be that good so quickly.
And so I continued to paddle and graduated from high school early and went to train down in Southern California, to compete in the Olympic Trials in 72.
So I went to the Trials in kayaking. I made the finals, but I did not make the 72 Olympic team. But Andy and a couple of the other guys that I had trained with did make the team.
And then in ‘72, I started college and did a year and a half. I was still paddling.
But then when Andy and I decided to get married, he came out here and got a job, and I transferred to Cal. You got a book at that time from that had all the courses and activities on campus.
So I got that book and I saw there was Crew. And I contacted Steve Gladstone, I think with a letter, and said I’m coming to Cal and I would love to try Crew, not knowing that there were just men rowing. So I went to his office when I arrived on campus And he says, “Well hi, you know you could try out to be a coxswain. Or I hear there's a women's team just forming, you might go check that out up at the women's Gym.”
So I went up and saw the sign that said we're going to have a first meeting for Cal women's crew, and went to that meeting, and there was Daig, and maybe 30 other women I'm not sure exactly the number but there was there was some interest and that's where I met women that I’m still friends with today.
So that's kind of my sports background. Also, I have to say I was the indoor state champion for Shot Put, for my age group again.
I stay in touch with Jane Ward Waller. She was at that first meeting, and Jean Hayward. She was at that first meeting. Other women that I stay in touch with, are, they weren't at that meeting, but came onto Crew later, but from that first meeting it was those 2 women in particular, and Katie Sherwood who sadly has passed away.
So you’re starting at Cal in the fall of 1974. Is that right? What were you studying?
At school? My intention was to become a botanical illustrator.
I really like doing very detailed pen and ink drawings, but there was no course program for that. You could be a medical illustrator, or you could be a fine artist, but there wasn't a botanical illustrator path. So I was flipping through the course catalog again, and I saw oh, landscape architecture! There's plants, and I can use my drawing skills. So I came to Cal and entered the school of environmental design in landscape architecture.
Did you know about Title IX?
I don't think I really knew too much about Title 9, because I hadn't come up against any walls that said no, from the interest that I had, I’d been able to participate in the track and field, I’d been able to do kayaking and I don't think I was very aware of Title 9.
And what was it like at Cal? I mean Gladstone obviously was receptive. Were men receptive to you guys being down and around? Or you just didn’t even see them?
I didn’t even see them. You know, I was married, so I did not live on campus. I lived in the house I still live in. So you know I would leave campus, and I would ride my bike home, and I had a house and a husband and a yard. I didn't participate a whole lot in social life at Cal besides with the women, at dinner before the race, or whatever.
I was a little bit out of touch with the social scene and what the men's crew was doing.
So you guys, you and Andy got married in 1974? And how old were you?
I was 20.
Was his Olympic Medal in 1964? The bronze?
His Olympic medal was for 60. In the 2-man flat water high-kneel canoe. And then that was for Hungary, and then he went to the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo also with the Hungarian team, and he was paddling in a single, and he had made up his mind that if he did not medal, he was going to defect. And I was able to go back with him to the Tokyo Olympic site where he paddled, and he was able to point out onto the water and say it was right about there that I realized I was not going to medal. You know he was in fourth place, and he just knew he didn't have it in him to pass anybody. So it was kind of like that place on that body of water in Tokyo was where his life made a huge 90-degree 180 turn, and in effect, my life did, too. You know if he hadn't defected, I wouldn't have met him, and have had all the experiences that I've had with him related to the Olympics etc.
So he defected from Tokyo, came to the States, went to Ann Arbor. The people who sponsored him were U of M grads, so he went there and that's where I met him, and he got his citizenship, and he participated in the ‘72 and the ‘76 Olympics for the United States, but he only got a medal, and that was back in 1960.
So what do you remember about your first time out in a boat?
The Cal women started at the Berkeley Aquatic park in the Kenneth B. Hayes boat house, that’s down there. That was put up about in 1967 we think.
It consists of a couple old school portables, and when we started down there most of the interior was full of 8’s and 4’s, because Berkeley High was there. St. Mary's High, Freshmen men started there. So that's where Daig had us start. And on the shore was this barge made out of plywood, maybe. Or other heavy woods that never could be like hauled up a little ways into the shore because it was so heavy. And it was wide enough that the coach can walk up and down in the middle. And you have ports and starboards, and the coach could be right there standing next to you. So it went very, very slowly of course. I don't remember too much of that. I remember Daig also had us come to the women's gym, where he set up a one little rowing platform on a reflecting pool kind of thing, and he helped help people with their strokes there.
Then pretty quickly, it seemed to me he got the Miss Italy and we got into an actual boat and took off.
I loved it right away. It really connected with me, you know I got to use my legs and my arms and be on the water, and it was fantastic.
Were you starboard or port?
I was a port, but I was a switch hitter. He could move me to the other side if he had to.
Did it feel like the first year of a program, or did it feel like they sort of almost landed running in a way? They knew what they wanted to do.
I think I was more aware maybe than some that it, was the first year of a program because Andy came to a lot of the practices, and especially on the weekend and consulted a lot with Daig. And so I kind of was hearing the background on what was needing to be done to procure this and procure that. And so, I think I was fairly aware that this was new, and I think to me that was super exciting, that we were the first to do this and that only two people of that first group had ever rowed before, as far as I know.
One was Jane Ward-Waller, and the other was Nancy Turner, who was very instrumental in in getting this whole thing off the ground.
So, it was neat to have most everybody in the same boat so to speak. We didn't know how to row and so we were learning from the very beginning, and everyone was super enthusiastic.
So a lot of really good vibes and enthusiasm.
Nancy Turner wrote explaining her involvement in getting everything started. And so, it was her, her dad, who was 1936 Olympian or ‘42 Olympian, gold medalist, with his twin brother. And Peter (Lippett). But you'll need to read that if you haven't already because it's an in-depth story from Nancy's point of view of getting the crew started and from her from her story. From her story it sounded like she had rowed with Oakland Strokes or Lake Merritt, and really wanted to row at Cal, and was really disappointed to get to Cal and find that there was no women's rowing. So she got together with people that she knew were shakers and movers, and they helped create the first framework for that, starting the Crew.
You get in there. You guys are getting started. When do you go to Briones? Does that happen in the first year?
No, the first year we spent the whole year at Aquatic Park. But it was the summer between the first and second year that, sometime in there, Daig got permission from East Bay Mud, and then I was gone a lot of the summer, I believe, because I don't remember the building of it, but Andy was quite involved in actually going out there with some of the women and Daig, and actually hammering the walls together. Andy has the funniest story of, they left with the walls propped up, and came the next day to find the walls had fallen down. He’d woken up in the night thinking we didn’t do that adequately.
So it was built during the summer, between the first and second year, and so the whole second year we were at Briones full time. But actually that's not quite true. I think Daig still came to Aquatic Park with the brand new people who showed up to use the barge, which was still on the shores of Aquatic Park, which was a good learning tool.
What do you remember about that first year? Did you guys race at Regionals, San Diego?
What I remember about the first year was that Daig was pretty cautious about getting our hopes up, or our expectations, because he knew besides the two, nobody had rowed so he said you know maybe this first year, we're just going to learn how to row well. That may be all we do this year. So there were no expectations through the fall and into the winter that we would race at all.
But sometime in the spring, early spring, Daig could see that we were doing pretty well, and he decided, since we weren't on anybody's schedule, he had to arrange individual dual meets with people but he started out with Long Beach I believe it was and invited them to come up to Aquatic Park and to race us.
And actually I’m going to backtrack. I think before that he gave us a time trial, and I remember Andy, and Peter, and Daig were standing on the dock, and we had started somewhere down in Aquatic Park and we were racing back toward the dock, and they timed us, and then they were all just staring at the watch like - they really - they did it that fast?
And so that's when I think he decided we should try racing somebody else and see what happens. So he invited Long Beach and what we remember about Long Beach is they got their boat off the trailer, and they put it into the water, and girls were starting to get into it, and they flipped the whole 8 right at the dock, and that gave us a lot of confidence that I think we might be able to beat these girls. And we did. We beat them, and then I don't remember the order of the of the subsequent races, but Daig kept arranging dual meets, and we kept beating, and beating, and beating. Beat Washington, beat everybody on the West Coast. And so, then Peter and Daig, I believe, went to Dr. Hoepener, and said, “Look, we're the West Coast Champions. We should go to the Nationals and represent the West Coast.” And so, she was able to find, there was no budget for us, but she was able to pull money out of other places, and she got a budget together. And I have a feeling Peter Lippett might have supplemented that budget substantially. They flew us all to Princeton in June for the national championships, and that was super, super exciting.
We were so thrilled and had a wonderful time staying in the dorms and walking around this really beautiful historic campus. And you could walk right down to the body of water where they raced from the dorms, and Peter took us all out to a movie the night before. It was a wonderful time. And then, but we were also seeing other women around campus, and we realized that there was a whole other breed of woman that were 6 feet tall and higher. The Wisconsin women who really stood out to us at the time, Carie Graves and her cohort. And half of our boat that Daig had to deal with were lightweights. The bow four were, you know, 5 foot 6, 5 foot 7, and 125 pounds.
And so we came up against boats that were filled with really big, all big women, and so we were in the finals, but we did come in 6th out of 6. We came to Princeton pretty puffed up that we were West Coast champions, and had beaten everyone we encountered, but we were kind of knocked down a few pegs by a whole other level of rowing on the East Coast and Midwest.
Well and back then, of course, the colleges also raced against clubs. So it wasn't like a collegiate championship. So when you're raising it nationals you're racing against Vesper, you're racing against, people that are you raced against the Red Rose Crew ostensibly. And so, who are the standouts on the team and what seat did you row?
I was in 2 usually, and Katie, Katie was the stroke. And Nancy Turner was 7, and then I think it was Barb McCutchen was the next port on 6, and then Dana Whittaker was the starboard in 5. They had really impressed me, I mean, I have to say, when I first saw them at that first meeting, they were all girls from sororities, and I thought, “Oh, you know, they have never sweated. They have never worked hard.” But they were super tough. They really impressed me and were great athletes and fun teammates. So then there was Lee Wilder and Jean Hayward and myself, and then Jane Ward was in bow, usually.
Wow, and was that the team that raced in Princeton?
Yeah.
Were you guys aware of these women that had rowed in the 60’s at all?
Not at all. Not at all. It wasn't until a year or two ago that that Carl Drlica down at the club showed up, joined our club, and I said something about oh yeah, Jean and I still rowed together, so I said “Oh yeah this is Jean we rowed together on the first crew at Cal”, and he said, ‘Oh, when was that?’
I said, 74, and he said, ‘No. I coached a crew back in the 60’s.’ So that was the first time I'd heard about it, and then he shared with me the chapter of his book that details his experiences during those mid 60 years with the women he coached.
Actually tell me a little something about Katie since that was her one year. What was she like as a teammate? I was wondering what you thought about Katie (Sherwood).
Oh. I can't say enough good things about her. She was steady. She was dependable. She was not, you know, emotional, up and down. She was just always even keel, had a beautiful stroke, so that following her was just a dream. She kept the boat really smooth, and a lot of fun, you know. Ready for extracurricular activities. Went skiing. We went hiking. And I was really fascinated by her background. I think that her probably great-grandfather, had been a friend of John Muir, and I knew that she had done the John Muir Trail when she was still in high school. And that would have been back in the late 60’s.
So you know the John Muir Trail was not the super popular trail that it is today, and doing something like that without the lightweight equipment we have today, etc., was a pretty big feat. And she was a horse woman. I believe she had a lot of experience with that. She was a wonderful skier, just a wonderful person.
Did you guys run stadium stairs or the fire trail?
We did. We started that. that we had a spring training camp that first year in the spring. And yeah, I remember those stadium stairs. We had to do 10, and we had to start on the minute. And you know the first couple, yeah, you could get back down and turn around and go back up. But by the last few you are just in agony and dragging, and actually scared that you were going to fall and roll down because your legs are so quivery that to walk down the stairs was actually kind of treacherous. And I remember, just in that 10 minutes that it took, my legs were so sore immediately that I didn't know if I could walk down to the women's gym. Like I had to walk with locked knees because my quads wouldn't hold me up and that kind of ruined me for the rest of the training camp. You know you're sore for days after that.
And then, I forget when he had us start running the fire trail. But definitely, that was a big activity.
So that was 74’, 75’, and then the next year was 75’, 76’, and I had some kayaking teammates
say, Hey, look! Candy Woz (Wozniak), Candy Clark, who became Candy Woz (married Steve Wozniak) said let's try making the Olympic team in the K2.
So, the fall of 75’, I was not rowing. I was back to Kayaking and I regret that very much, because when I decided that it's not going to work, and I went back to Cal, went back to rowing, I never got back in the varsity boat. I was in the J.V. boat, and then I was in the lightweight boat that raced in San Diego, and I think we got second in the lightweight division in San Diego. So, I really regret that I didn't have two full years of crew, because it was by far my favorite sport. Sorry that I took that fall off and tried kayaking again.
What were the racing uniforms like that you guys wore back then? Do you remember? You were like little bumblebees, didn’t you have yellow and blue?
We had yellow and blue stripes socks that went up to our knees and then we had, like little yellow nylon, like track shorts. Little ones, and then we had a blue cotton tank top that said Cal or Cal Women’s Crew or something across the front. But yeah, it was a cotton top and a nylon pair of pants, and then knee socks.
Clothing in sports has evolved so much it's like I think it's important for people to know.
When I still started doing track which would have been in like 66’, 67’. I don't think girls today, or kids today at all understand that you could not just walk into a store and buy sports clothes. You could go to J.C. Penny’s, and you could get Keds (sneakers). You could get a white t-shirt. You could get ankle socks and you know shorts, but they would be like shorts that you would wear around in the summer.
But there weren't athletic clothes. You couldn't just go get athletic clothes.
So, I ran in hand-me-down spikes, and I remember begging my parents when it came time to compete for me like, “Can we please order me a track uniform?” And it had to come all the way from a company in Seattle. It's amazing today how you can walk into any store and get stuff that's very high-tech sporting equipment to wear, and you couldn't find any of that in the 60’s.
So how'd you guys do in that second season, even though you didn't get into the varsity? I'm trying to think where nationals was in '76.
It was Long Beach.
It was Long Beach?
Yeah.
When you said Long Beach flipped at the dock by the way, that wasn’t LBRA, it was Long Beach State?
Yeah, yeah. Not LBRA. I do not remember how the Cal varsity did. I have, I uploaded a picture of them getting an award I believe.
But I don't remember what they did. I was so bummed not to be with them.
In, in terms of getting this thing off the ground. Are there any other key people?
I think Andy was key in being a support to Daig. He drove trailer with Daig up to Seattle, and maybe to some other races. Just kind of consulted with him on training stuff, I believe, and was just, yeah, I think, a lot of moral support and encouragement from Andy helping with building the boat house. After I graduated, they were doing the fundraising rows down the Sacramento River, and Andy and I took the girls from Redding in the shallow water in canoes. We taught them what we could about canoeing and led the group until we got to deep enough water that they could get into the rowing shells. So, we did that with them for a couple, a couple of years.
What's your fondest memory of rowing at Cal?
I loved practices. I’m someone who gets very nervous about racing. Not so much I guess in an eight. Since then I've been rowing masters and doing singles and doubles and masters. I don't like that very much at all. But I enjoyed just practicing. I just like working out. And so I think some of my fondest memories are the next year at Briones. Just that beautiful water, and when the boat’s running and the sun's coming up. And yeah, just loved some of those practices.
You might have been told the story of one of the funniest practices at Aquatic Park the year before, was Daig would be, you know it's kind of dark often in the morning when
you're rowing, and Daig would be working the motorboat with one hand, and he'd have his head cocked to the side watching us row, and he steered the motorboat right up the water ski ski jump.
Did he go off of it?
No, he got stuck before it went much farther, but he went right into it, right up it. That was pretty funny for the rest of us. He was pretty mad. And I forget how that all ended, he clearly got it off and that might have been when one of the times the motor came off the back of the boat and sunk to the bottom. And he had to deal with getting another motor, which was a big expense to the group at that time.
Of all your attributes and qualities as an athlete, as a person. What attribute would you say was directly developed from being on the Cal Women's crew team?
Persevering through hard times. When it hurts, and when the practices seem endless, just keeping going. Just keep going through it, and knowing the pain will end, there is an end to it. But you gotta just keep working through it. And yeah, not being afraid of hard work.
Did rowing have an impact on your life overall?
Definitely. I mean it's been a lifetime sport. I’m still doing it. I’m going to be 68 this year, and plan to do it for many years to come. And lifelong friendships. And it is, of all the sports I’ve done, it is just the most, all body, beautiful, sport to do. And yeah, between just the wonderful physical exercise and the people I’ve met through it, yeah - it had a big part of my life.
Tell me briefly what you’ve done since you’ve rowed. I mean, you still compete and stuff, but what did you do with your life?
Well, I did graduate with a degree in the landscape architecture department, although I had kind of gravitated to city planning. And so, my first job was with a city planner in San Francisco, and then I was doing mostly drafting for him. And then a job opened up in the same office building as Andy’s, and so I transferred to that job as a draftsman for a geothermal exploration company. Then I stayed home with our two kids that we had, and then I taught quilt making, made a lot of quilts to sell, taught quilt making, and then I had my own bakery, and baked bread for five years and delivered it to people and stores around the Bay Area. I rented a commercial kitchen for that, so I didn't have a storefront. I just rented a commercial kitchen, and did the baking, and delivered the bread out and then I thought, you know I’m tired of having like my own business and worrying about it all the time. I just want a job where I go and do it and come home. So, I started working as an aide in a school, a kind of child wellness program. And then I got to thinking, you know, I think I could be a teacher. So, I got a teaching credential in ‘96, and I taught kindergarten and first grade for eighteen years after that. And retired when I was 60 and I've been playing ever since. I discovered backpacking, so now that's my passion is planning backpacking trips and doing backpacking, and I'm doing it with Jean Hayward, my wing man in the, in the eight, and we row doubles together a couple times a week, 2 or 3 times a week. Still. Jean was a freshman that fall of ‘74, so she had a full four years ahead of her. I only had another like year and a half with the crew team.
I guess one thing I feel sorry for are some of the girls who came later who had coaches that had issues, and maybe they didn't have as good a time as I think we had that first year with Daig, and during Daig’s years. I’m sure there were people who didn't get along with Daig, but I did and it seems like most of the girls that I was rowing with did, and it was fun, it was a lot of fun.
I guess what struck me is, with those 8 girls in the boat that I raced in that varsity boat the first year, you know I didn't know too much about their background stories and like I said I left campus and came home to my house. I didn’t have much of a social life at Cal, but you feel after all the blood, sweat, and tears that you go through together training, you feel that you know something really deeply about their core of those people and that you can depend on them, and that you know they've got your back, etc.
So, I found that really interesting. How close you get even though I didn't know details about them, and had only known them for that year. You feel so close and you've gone through so much together. I don't know where else you get that kind of bonding that's so strong. About the deep values that the people have, that you feel like you know them.
I feel badly for if there were other years where the coaches yelled, or where there were lots of conflicts, and people didn't have a good time on Crew, I feel badly for that, those generations, for those girls. Because you know it was such a great experience for me, and it's interesting how that was just really a year and a half of my life.
But it has impacted me so much.
At a big university like Cal, or where Tom went, you can get kind of lost in this sea of people, but you had this family that you saw every day, and that coach saw you every day. You have this family within this huge institution that gives you a grounding and gives you, there are people who know if you're doing okay, or know if you need to be bolstered up, whereas if you were just drifting in and out of classes and never had that closeness.
One characteristic I think that Cal rowing did for me was, as a rower, you had to go to bed early and you had to get up early, and so you had to make the minutes of your day count. You couldn't just kind of waste time and I was in a field where there was a lot of studio time. So, people were at their drafting tables, and they were doing all-nighters, and, you know, sleeping on their drafting table and drinking quantities of coffee. I couldn't do that. I would get my assignments done, and I’d go to bed at 9, you know, and it taught me to be efficient with my time.