Stories That Move
We've been dreaming about this for a long time... and now it's finally here!
Get a first look at DreamOn Studio's brand new podcast, Stories That Move!
When we create videos for our clients, there's often incredibly rich narrative that we can't include in the final cut. Being behind the scenes, we're fortunate to hear the depth and full context behind each story.
So in this podcast, we want to pull back the curtain and allow you to experience the extraordinary stories of extraordinary people we've been honored to connect with.
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Stories That Move
Boys in the Boat | Judy Rantz-Willman, Jennifer Huffman & Dr. David Hoffert
We're so excited for this special edition episode, live from the Warsaw Performing Arts Center!
Join us as we sit down with Judy Rantz-Willman and Jennifer Huffman, the daughter and granddaughter of Joe Rantz, the central figure of the beloved book "Boys in the Boat" by Daniel James Brown. Together, we explore the powerful legacy of Joe's 1936 Olympic gold medal-winning rowing team and the deep-rooted stories that continue to inspire generations. With Dr. David Hoffert, superintendent of Warsaw Community Schools, we uncover surprising connections between this historic story and the community of Warsaw, Indiana.
Learn how a simple history class question blossomed into an extraordinary narrative, capturing the essence of preserving memories through letters and artifacts. Jennifer Huffman shares her personal journey of piecing together her grandfather's untold story, offering insight into how small actions can lead to an enduring legacy.
We take you behind the scenes of the 1936 Olympics, where Joe Rantz and his teammates stunned the world with their achievement, and explore how their story continues to inspire new generations. From a lost gold medal discovered in a squirrel's nest to the emotional experience of watching a family member’s life unfold on film, this episode celebrates teamwork, perseverance, and the shared human experience.
Join us as we honor the stories that connect us across time and celebrate the remarkable life and legacy of Joe Rantz.
this last Olympics, when they were interviewing him about how he had gotten involved and he was telling about the fact that his mom had given him the book and that it inspired him and so forth. And she says are you telling me that you were on an Olympic crew because of a book? And he says that book is exactly the reason I was on the crew. It's amazing what you find out and what effect the book has had.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to a very special episode of Stories that Move.
Speaker 3:I'm Matt Duhl, executive producer and co-founder of Dream On Studios alongside my co-founder and friend, our CEO Mason Geiger, today we have taken the show on the road for a special broadcast from the heart of our community at the Performing Arts Center at Warsaw Community High School.
Speaker 2:So in 2023, George Clooney directed and produced the movie Boys in the Boat, inspired by the New York Times bestselling book of the same name by Daniel James Brown. Believe it or not, this incredible story of a gold medal winning rowing team at the 1936 Olympics has special roots right here in Warsaw.
Speaker 3:So cool. So to delve into this story, we're joined by Dr David Hoffert, superintendent of Warsaw Community Schools. Also, in a touching tribute to history and legacy, we are thrilled to welcome Judy Rantz-Willman and Jennifer Huffman, daughter and granddaughter of the Boys in the Boat protagonist, Joe Rantz.
Speaker 2:Today's episode revolves around resilience, trust, legacy and the power of capturing amazing stories From the halls of our schools to the Olympic waters. We'll dive into stories that have shaped lives and inspired generations.
Speaker 3:So, without further ado, let's head on over to the Warsaw Performing Arts Center for an episode you don't want to miss.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome back to Stories that Move brought to you by Dream On Studios With you, as always, I'm your host, matt Matt Duhl, and here with me is my good friend, business partner, mason Geiger. How are we doing today, everyone? We are doing really good, because today is a little bit different. We have taken stories that move on the road. We've moved away from our studio and we've come down the road to Warsaw Community High School and the Warsaw Performing Arts Center and here with us this morning, I believe we've got Edgewood Middle School, edgewood. You in the house, yes that's impressive.
Speaker 2:that's impressive I think we also have a handful of Warsaw High School students. Warsaw High School you in the house. High School you in the house. Awesome, so good, so good to be with you all this morning. We're going to have a good time. Mason, what's it feel like for you? You graduated from Warsaw. I did.
Speaker 3:This is a crazy little bit of homecoming. I was actually telling Mike before that my wife and I the first time I ever saw her was on this stage and I was walking out those doors because I was filming a coffee house here, an after-school event, and that was the first time I met my wife was in this building. So your future spouse may be in the building and you don't even know it.
Speaker 2:So that's exciting. Well, we won't encourage that too much here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you I want to introduce a special friend here today. We're excited to be here to produce this. First off, we want to give a shout out to scott green, the digital media teacher here at the high school, and some of his students who are helping us to produce this as part of our program with him called dream on academy. So, guys, thank you so much for being here and for doing that work today. And then I also have the privilege of serving on our school board here at Warsaw, and so I've had the chance to get to know really well Dr David Hoffert, who was recently voted by his peers as superintendent of the year here in District 2 in Indiana. So please give Dr Hoffert a big shout out. So, david, welcome to Stories that Move. I'm going to let you introduce our special guests here.
Speaker 4:And what incredible special guests you know I shared. Yesterday somebody asked me they said how long have you known the Rance family and have you ever met in person before? And I said you know what? I have known them now for 18 years, but yesterday was the first time that I've gotten to meet them in person and the thing that we reminded our fifth grade students yesterday as we talked to them.
Speaker 4:You never know how a small interaction can become a catalyst and change the total direction of a journey. And that's where we feel pleased as being part of Warsaw Community Schools with our guests that we have here today, because we have Mrs Judy Willman Rance, who is the daughter of Joe Rance, the main subject in Boys in the Boat and I know she'll disagree with me because she'll say it's about the team, but again her husband or her father was the main person. And then we have Jennifer, who is Judy's daughter, who also played just an integral part inside of this journey of collecting the history and the timeline of her grandfather here when he was still alive, to be able to collect the history and to collect the story.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. Well, judy, jennifer, so good to have you. Welcome to Warsaw. Thanks for joining us this morning. If you can, from your perspective, tell us how you got here, what's the connecting point that brings you here to Warsaw, indiana?
Speaker 1:Well, back in 2006, we received a letter from Warsaw community with students that were interested in finding out more about what was it like in Berlin before the war and they were looking for people who had been in the Olympics in 1936 because that seemed like the ideal ground to look for. And so when we got that letter and Dad wrote back to them about things related to that and I also had sent a query as to there's a lot of other information about this particular setup. You know, there's stuff that goes along with it, there's the depression, and there's the building, the Grand Coulee Dam, and there's how did this team come together? And just a whole series of things. And would you like to have more information? And Dr Hoffert says, just send me anything you want, which is probably a mistake on his part. So I put together a nine-page synopsis of everything about that, touching on a lot of the different parts of the story and the background and so forth.
Speaker 1:When I got through with that, I kept looking at this synopsis. I mean, I'd been collecting information from dad for quite a while trying to figure out. I didn't want his memory to just sort of fade. He died. This was in fall of 2006, and he died in fall of 2007. So there wasn't a lot of time left and I was concerned that his story and that the story of the guys and their journey were just going to fade because nobody was doing anything to preserve it. And so, when Jennifer had put together what she put together and I sent, I knew that our neighbor, daniel James Brown, had had his first book published about six months earlier, and so I'm trying to figure out okay, is this what I did? It feels to me like it could be a story, like it could be a book.
Speaker 1:But then I've got this desperate need to tell this thing and I can't tell whether it's just me wanting so desperately to preserve dad's memory and the memory of that story or whether it really is good and it's worth pursuing. And then I thought, oh well, Dan has had a book published. I will ask him whether he would be willing to read it and give me an unbiased opinion. So I asked him whether he would and he said sure. So I sent it over to him and about an hour and a half later comes back this email that was huge and long and felt like it was covered with bling all over the outside and he says this has got to be a book and I will help you in any way I can.
Speaker 1:I have resources. I will help you in any way I can. I have resources. I will show you where you can get information on weather and all kinds of different things, because you're going to want a lot of background information, and I also want you to try writing a sample chapter and see how you feel about that process. But if in the end, you decide that that's not the kind of thing that you really want to get involved in, I would like this to be my next book. So that's where we that's how the whole thing keyed.
Speaker 2:So Dr Hoffert's history class because you were a history teacher at the time writes you a letter. You create a nine page response which then inspires Dan Brown to work with you to write the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Very cool.
Speaker 2:So Dr Hoffert tell us about yeah that's, that's cool. We can clap for that. Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 5:Can I tell the other part of this, though that's really neat. Can I tell the other part of this, though that's really neat. So, building on what mom just said, the really cool part about this is that, as so I had created a scrapbook of grandpa's stuff in 2003, 2004, where, when he was too old to live in the house that my mom had grown up in, and so he moved in with my mom and we were going through the attic and we found all of the memorabilia in the attic from his rowing from the Olympics. It was pictures and articles and scrapbooks and ribbons, and everything was in the attic.
Speaker 5:Yeah, train schedules, everything was there and you know. So I'm like we have to preserve this stuff because there was water damage to some of it and it was just in this trunk. And so grandpa and I he kind of guided me through, told me a bunch of stories and we went to Conover Shell House, which is the UW Shell House, and looked through their old scrapbooks of old articles and picked out the ones that we liked the best and put together this scrapbook of his four years. And that was what mom had taken and shown people and been like, look at this thing that we made. And people were like this would just make the best book. And that's kind of where mom got the idea that you could make this into a book. So after she told Dan about it and he said, yes, I'd like to take this on, and then mom she's like, well, maybe I better read this book that he wrote to see whether I like the way that Dan writes.
Speaker 5:And so she read his first book, which was Under Flaming Sky and it was about a firestorm in Minnesota in 1894. And it's an amazing book. And if you guys have read the book most of you and you know what a good storyteller Dan is, and so mom really liked the book. And then she's like well, now I have to read it to grandpa and make sure that he likes the way that Dan writes. So she's reading this book to my grandpa and my grandpa says I know the person in that book. I know Angus Hay. I played with him in a jazz band in Squim in high school.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 5:And mom's like I don't think that probably happened because this was in 1894 and you weren't born until 1914. So you really couldn't have known this guy. And grandpa's like, no, I know Angus Hay. And so the next time mom saw Dan and she said, well, what happened to the main character in this book after this firestorm in Minnesota? And he says, well, I think they moved out to the Olympic Peninsula. So that family that was in Dan's first book moved to Squim and his son, Angus Hay Jr, played in a jazz band with my grandpa in high school. So just the chances of that happening and there being that connection is unfathomable.
Speaker 4:Very cool.
Speaker 5:So there was that piece of it too, that then grandpa wants to talk to Dan because he wants to talk about Angus Hay Jr. You know, then, then grandpa wants to talk to Dan because he wants to talk about Angus Hay Jr, and Dan wants to talk to grandpa because he wants to talk about the things that um were were a part of his life. And so when they made that first connection, which is the forward to the boys in the boat, um, that's what that meeting was.
Speaker 2:So yeah, all right. So, dr Hoffert for you, you get this letter back probably a surprise right.
Speaker 4:A surprise and, again, we love touching pieces of history, so I mean it was really cool. I remember my students looking at this and being like number one I can't believe that somebody is still here from the 1936 Olympics Because, again, your father and your grandfather I mean he was almost 90 years old at this point and so all of a sudden they are touching a piece of history and being able to dig into it a little bit deeper. So I remember them looking at it and being like this is really cool. I understand this time period now and I mean they could go home and brag to everybody and nobody would ever believe that, because I mean they were thinking no, no, no, that's in a history book. And they're like no, no, no, we corresponded with somebody that was there.
Speaker 3:Go back a little bit here. I mean one, where did the idea come from for this project? And then two, how did you even make the connection to be able to find Joe?
Speaker 4:Sure, sure, 2006,. The internet was pretty much brand new, okay, so I mean it's dial up internet that is going on, but it was a great resource that was out there. And so, um, you know, one of the things that we did, I think we just typed into and Google wasn't really around at that point, I think it was dog pile or Yahoo or one of the other search agents that were out there we typed in 1936 gold medalist and then we put something like alive or you know, still living, and and that's where we got Joe's name. And I mean, we we looked at it and we backward searched it and we were able to find his address. And then that's when that went to Judy and and absolutely I still have her note, actually, and I have Joe's letter in my office, um, hanging on my wall, um, and I just remember that, that willingness to, to open up of of what these stories were, and because my students were used to working with a lot of world war, two survivors, uh, from Pearl Harbor, from the baton death March, and so again capturing some of their histories. And you could tell right away that Judy's dream was to capture her father's history, and there are certain people that can do that and certain people that would love to be able to do that.
Speaker 4:From the moment that I got that, that letter from Judy, I knew that she was on a quest and I knew that she this was part of her dream. And I mean, when we talk about our mission statement in Wardside Community Schools, a big part of it is enriching the lives of others and pursuing dreams. And you know you could tell right away that this was Judy's dream. And then it came. Every every couple of years, I would get an email update from Judy. I remember her saying you know, dan Brown is writing this book and in about 2011,.
Speaker 4:I remember getting one of these emails because I had just come back to Warsaw community schools and it was kind of like I don't know if this email still works, but just to let you know, our neighbor, dan Brown, is writing this book about dad and I think it's going to be really good. And I remember reading that and thinking you know what? I bet Judy's going to do a great job on it. But I mean, I never considered thinking you know what this is going to become probably one of the biggest books of the century. And then I remember I was walking past a Barnes and Noble and it was actually out in California and all of a sudden I see these huge signs for boys in the boat and I'm like, wait a second, this is Judy's book and I remember emailing her and being like Judy I just saw a sign. Your book is at Barnes and Noble. And she's like duh.
Speaker 5:I told you it was going to be big. I told you this was going to be great.
Speaker 4:And then I remember reading through the book and I mean I read page by page and I just couldn't put it down because I'm like, wow, this is this story and just the storytelling that that Judy and Dan Brown and the entire family was able to to bring together. I mean it just became timeless. And remember, as the movie came out last year and I mean this brings us to the Edgewood students really being involved in this thematic unit and Mrs Hauselman stepping forward and saying we have to do something about this being a STEM Academy. We love cardboard boats. We got to put a cardboard boat regatta together. We need to put the fine arts together. We need to be playing Olympic songs. We need to be doing all of this but to see that inspiration that came out of that book. This is a timeless classic. It's not only a sports classic. It's a Great Depression classic, it's a 1936 Olympics classic and it's the heartfelt story of being able to collect your dad's history before it was too late.
Speaker 2:So for you all, this book I mean it's sold over 4 million copies. With the movie, it's jumped back up to the New York Times bestseller list. Did you ever imagine it would have this much impact?
Speaker 1:No, when we were first starting to write it, and I mean during the process of writing it. When we were first starting to write it, and I mean during the process of writing it, I knew that what was going together was creating the reality for me. I mean the way Dan writes, you can see in your mind, you can see what's happening, and it puts you right into the story and I knew that it was compelling and I thought it was a very good story.
Speaker 1:But I didn't have any feel for whether or not it would wind up just being set off on a sports shelf or whether people would see past that and realize that it was a story about the human development and about the history and about the whole series of guys that were involved in it. You know, there were so many aspects to the story and you needed to be able to sink yourself into it and feel that history and apparently that is what happened, because it just kept getting more and more popular spreading. And initially I was asking Dan about well, you know what if nobody wants to publish it? What if nobody wants to buy it? Well, if that happens, we can just go to University Press and we can have books printed up for all the family members and then at least you will have the history in print.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, okay, if that was what it had to be, that was okay. But then the whole thing just exploded. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and, you know, expanding as soon as they had sold it to a publishing company. Then they started sending their people out to various other countries and we wound up in 18 languages and countries all over the world. We have copies of it in the Ukraine. You know, you just never know where things are going to go.
Speaker 3:It's incredible, it's the power of story. Can you walk us through a little bit like the process of actually writing the book of? Like how long was it? And, jennifer, I'd love to hear from you too is like how much of your grandfather's story did you know? Going into this and that like just unlocking these different puzzle pieces, kind of from his past.
Speaker 5:Right. So I think that the thing that was most interesting for me because grandpa did not talk about, well, and none of the guys talked about any part of their history really. I mean, there were people that grandpa went to church with for years and years and years and they had no idea that he was in the Olympics. I know that Bob Mock had people that he worked with as a lawyer, very closely with, that had no idea that he went to the Olympics. So it wasn't something that they talked about at all. Really, it was their shared experience and it was something that happened to them. And when you're done, you move on with life and you have your brotherhood there, but it's not something that they touted.
Speaker 5:So, you know, as mom and Dan are writing the book and she's getting chapters to read and she um, she's kind of letting me take a peek at some of the chapters as he's reading them or as he's writing them, um, I think the thing that struck me the most was that there were, there were. So mom spent about three years, the last three years of grandpa's life, because she knew it was important and she knew that there was story that was being lost um, basically following him around with a pencil and a pad of paper and anytime he would think of something, anytime he would think of a memory, she'd be there like okay, tell me more about that, give me more information. Um, just trying to get as much detail about his, his she could, and there were bits and snippets of things from like the Golden Ruby Mine, where he had given her little pieces of information like oh, I chopped firewood for the schoolmistress and oh, I helped with the trays here, and just little bits and pieces, and she had given this information to Dan and Dan writes the chapter on the golden ruby mine and mom was kind of heartbroken. It really hit hard because when he writes that chapter and it's the chapter where he's abandoned or not abandoned, well, kicked out again and, yeah, and you know, sent to live with the school teacher and stuff there wasn't a realization on our part that that was what had happened.
Speaker 5:But when you look at all of the evidence together and all of the bits and pieces that he gave to my mom, it's very evident that that's what happened. But it's heartbreaking that he didn't ever say that he was not the kind of person that laid blame or held a grudge or anything like that. Even with this sort of thing, it was like where are the positives? Just very factual, what happened, those sorts of things. So I think that there was a lot of it. In that sense, that was very eye-opening to the family. I mean, it happened, but it wasn't something that he ever talked about.
Speaker 1:So tell about it. And I think the thing that was so not surprising exactly about that kind of situation is that we never realized, because when he was talking about any of these things like the thing with the that he was proud that he had accomplished they were stories like about well, when I was living with a school teacher, I was able to chop enough firewood, and you know, to be able to do that, or when I went down and I was helping the camp cook and I could deliver all of this food trays and stuff to all of these guys and keep up with it. There was never anything in the way he talked about his past experiences that didn't approach it with a positive story, talking about the point where he'd been sent to live with a family he didn't even know out on Hood Canal when his dad had gotten the job with the Hamahama Logging Company, and he didn't really say anything about that, except that when he was living with these people he had access to and I can't think of the name, it was like Warm Cove or something like that where he would go and swim and there was a baby seal that would come in and swim with him. I never thought anything else.
Speaker 1:I mean this was an interesting story, but obviously I mean this was a kid who'd been shoved off and left in somebody else's family that he didn't know. It was things like that that were all of a sudden hitting you All of a sudden. Oh my God, that had been happening to him his whole life. He had been being pushed off and abandoned and banished and I never knew it. I never realized it, and yet he told me the story, but because of the way he told it, you didn't stop to think about the fact that it was horrendous. It was just that, oh, there's this interesting thing that happened here.
Speaker 2:It's just a matter of fact for him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing yeah.
Speaker 3:So, jennifer, whenever you first saw the book and you got to read through it for the first time, what was that feeling like and what were some of the stories that really stood out to you?
Speaker 5:The scene that stood out the most for me in the book Um and at by that point I'd started rowing. So I started rowing about a year after grandpa passed away, so I'd had a little bit of experience and and helped a little bit with some of the um, some of the rowing stuff that went into the book Um. And I think that the scene in the book that touched me the most and like I was just in tears by the end of it, was when they're making the final selections for the boat that's going to go to the Olympics. And Joe had been kind of in and out and in and out and feeling like, you know, was he going to make it into the boat? Was he not going to make it into the boat?
Speaker 5:And the other people seemed to be, you know, his other teammates seemed to be kind of locks for it and he wasn't in there. And then they finally put him in the boat and the boat just like took off and walked away from everybody else and all of his teammates were like we got your back, joe, good to have you back, joe, and just what it must have felt like, that feeling of validation, like yes, I do belong here, I do deserve to be here and I'm going to be a member of this team. It just chokes me up even to think about it, especially after somebody who had been abandoned so many times and left out so many times. To be able to to finally have that feeling like you are really a piece of this had to have been just amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So obviously Joe was um, a humble man, you know, didn't lead with telling his story. He wasn't going around showing off his gold medal. I'm assuming wouldn't love all the fanfare of everything you know with the movie and the book today, but what do you think he would want to communicate to people today about his life, about his story?
Speaker 1:I think, probably the most important thing to him. Well, there'd be two things. One would be that whatever you do, it needs to be done what like for the benefit of others. It needs to be something useful and when you do it you need to do it to the best of your ability. That anything worth doing, I guess, is worth doing. Well, to quote an old, yeah, but he, I don't know how he would have felt about all of the chaos and recognition and, oh my God, Joe Rance is a hero.
Speaker 1:That was going on. That was never anything that he was about, but I suppose there was no stopping it. But the fact that there were things that came out of this that were things that he would have felt were important, Like, for instance, Squim, where he spent the part of his days that he really felt good about. They wanted to do something to honor or recognize him is working on getting enough money to build and put into operation the Joe Rantz Rotary Youth Fund for children who are homeless, who make the decision that they want to keep going in school. Keep going in school. They want to get enough that they have counseling and scholarship money and a house with beds in it so that they have those kinds of facilities available to assist those children. I think dad would have thought that, if nothing else came out of it, that that was an amazingly important and beautiful thing.
Speaker 4:Something hit me yesterday in the conversations that we were having and a similar question to this came up of what do you think Joe would think and I mean being family members, they might not be able to see this being somebody from the outside.
Speaker 4:I think Joe would be incredibly proud of the work, judy, that that you have done and the love, jennifer, that you have, uh, for this, because, as he pursued his dream in so many ways of being a part of the 1936 Olympics and the university of Washington rowing team, you pursued a dream to archive and memorialize his story, to impact others.
Speaker 4:And so it might not be the fanfare Again definitely that generation did not love the fanfare but I think, as he's looking down, he would be so incredibly proud of the great work that both of you have done here over this and not giving up. Not giving up, I mean a big part of the boys in the boat story is not giving up, and it's hard to write a book for six years. I can't imagine, I mean, as you're going back and forth and so many of the different stories and integral details making sure everything was correct. There aren't many people that would go through with that labor of love, for that long to be able to put something together that you didn't know whether it was going to be more than a family history.
Speaker 1:History right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well said Well said Thank you. Well, and, jennifer, you mentioned starting to row after your grandfather passed and, as we've read and seen, we're not talking like a hobby. You are a legitimate rower. I mean, many dozens of awards and medals have been won. So tell us about that, your experience and how you've connected to your grandfather and his legacy through that um.
Speaker 5:So the the way that I got into rowing was actually kind of interesting, cause, um, I was not the initial rower. Um, I tried to get my son into it. So he had, um, he had friends at his middle school, um, in jazz band with him. He was tiny, they were really tall, they were rowers and they wanted him to come and try coxing for their team and he was absolutely an indoor techie kind of kid, didn't really play any sports. And I'm thinking in my head this might be a way to get him to get outside a little bit and get involved in something. And so I played the great-grandpa card and I said great grandpa would be looking down from heaven and he would be so excited to see you trying something like this. And so he grudgingly agreed to try it. And, um, so I took him down to the lake and there were a bunch of the moms who were going to start taking a learn to row class, not soon after he started or not too long after he started. And yeah, so I took the learn to row class and just, it was just a great fit. So I kind of got started through that and for the first, I think about eight years that I rode it was small boats, so I was really rowing mostly in a single and a double and there was a lot of teamwork and camaraderie in the double and that was my favorite boat because just having somebody else to be a part of that experience and to row four was much more powerful than just rowing by yourself. But the whole time that I was rowing in the double I was thinking what would it be like to row in an eight and to have an opportunity to feel that kind of power and that kind of teamwork? Um, and I I finally did get the opportunity to experience that.
Speaker 5:Um, about nine years into my rowing career I um, through a fortuitous set of circumstances, um, on the um indoor rowing machine. Um, I met some people who also rode in Seattle and this friend was like you should come and go out with us sometime. You know, sub in for in an eight. And I'm like I don't know that, you know I've tried an eight a couple of times, just as a novice and I didn't like it and it hurt my body. And she's like no, you, you, you know you should come try it. So eventually we got to the point where I was like okay, I'll come try it.
Speaker 5:And I did not realize at the time that the people who were um, that I was going to be subbing in for um, were like collegiate athlete, ex collegiate athletes, ex-national team, ex-olympians. So being able to go out and row in this eight with these people who were just so awesome and so experienced, and then being able to race with them, it was so great. And I mean, obviously it's not the same as what grandpa did, but boy, just that feeling of being in that boat with those people where you know that everyone has so much experience and they're so strong and so good. And then it's like I gotta, I gotta try and keep up with these people. You know, I got to make sure that I don't let them down. So there's, there's that feeling, along with just the feeling of being something that's just so much bigger than just you and and being good at it.
Speaker 5:That was it's.
Speaker 3:It's very hard to describe, but it was and yeah, it was amazing For some of our listeners who maybe, like they've seen rowing on the Olympics and that may be the only like connection they have to it paint a little bit of a picture of just the physical, mental, like what is required to be a part of an eight-man crew in the boat.
Speaker 5:So when you're looking at an eight, you've got eight people in the boat. They all have one or um. And when you're racing in an eight, you're taking about a stroke every every two seconds, let's say, maybe a little bit more than that. So when you're looking at a 2K race, where for a women's team it takes somewhere right around 7, 7.20 to do that, so you're doing seven minutes of taking a stroke every two seconds and you've got to be able to do that time after time, after time after time, without hitting the water before anybody else, without getting your blade stuck, without coming up the slide, coming, you know, coming up to the catch at a different time than the rest of your teammates. Because that it's amazing when you're in a boat, how you can feel like, even just on the sliding seat when you're, when you're going back and forth and taking strokes, you can feel if somebody's coming up to the catch faster than you are or coming up slower than than you are, um, you don't even have to be hitting the water at different times for it to not feel right. Um. So to be a really good crew, it has to be so in sync that it makes it so that everybody can work to their full potential.
Speaker 5:So you've got that piece of it where it's just the technical, you know, are you catching at the right time, are you releasing the water at the right time, are you taking full advantage of the entirety of the stroke and not missing water, and all of that. And then there's the physical aspect where, when you're looking at a 2k race like that, it's been likened to um playing playing two entire basketball games in in the span of that one 2k race, less than eight minutes. Um, it's very, very hard on your body. Um, you've got the whole anaerobic piece that um that is at the um at the beginning of the race and then you're trying to trying to keep enough oxygen in your body to be able to finish it out. Um, it hurts, it's painful, um, but it's absolutely worth it, yeah it, yeah.
Speaker 3:now you see, like the end of the race isn't like this, yeah, collapse from exhaustion yeah, but it's like to be able to be at that level and be that in tune and sync with everyone around you, it's yeah um, yeah, it's incredible to watch. I want to dive back into a little bit, so joe's story. They were seen as the underdogs, um very much. I mean, they're going against teams who have been training doing this for a much longer period. What do you think it is about what? What made their team so special?
Speaker 5:I think part of what made their team so special was just the fact that they were all so humble, um, they were all kids who just came from very middle-classy or lower-class kind of backgrounds and they all needed this the majority of them needed it and the opportunity to be part of something like that and to know that everybody needed you as much as you needed them, um, and everybody was relying on each other the way that they did. I think that there's a chemistry there, um, that maybe other teams didn't have, along with the fact that they were just so fit and there's a lot to be said for the physical labor that every single one of those guys did not related to rowing, you know. I mean, they were just incredibly fit and right in their prime, along with the teamwork aspect.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think one other thing that slots into that is that, since they were all basically humble, every single one of those guys you find out later on believed that they were the weak link on the team, and so it was imperative to them, believing they were the weak link, that they not be the one to break the chain, that they not be the one to screw it up for the rest of the people, and they would not give up. And I don't, you know, that was something that I don't think that the Germans or anybody else counted on, but I think it was something that was pretty much unique to those guys was their I don't want to say inability, unwillingness to not keep going, no matter what it cost them.
Speaker 2:David, I'm going to ask you to put your history teacher hat on for us for a second. So I mean we look at the 1936 Olympics as a really big deal in terms of just the grand scope of history. What would it have been like for those guys at that time, like their, their place of life, walking into those Olympics?
Speaker 4:Wow, I can only imagine. I mean, there's so much written about the 1936 Olympics. It's probably the most famous Olympics because of all the world events that were taking place at the same time. You had Jesse Owens, you had Louie Zamperini, even of unbroken fame. You look at the different stories that came across. I mean, it's so different than our Olympians even today. I mean, today you hop on an airplane and you're over in Paris at the Olympics here in 2024, in a matter of minutes and you have this celebrity these were unknowns.
Speaker 4:This celebrity, these were, these were unknowns. Um, these were, these were individuals that that, when we're talking about stories like Joe's story, these truly are the underdogs in sports. These are the hardworking. Nobody knows your name except for right around your area and rowing, especially. Even in this time.
Speaker 4:I mean, I think it was one of the things that amazed me the most. It was like going to the Indy 500. You had hundreds of thousands of people that would show up and the majority of the great rowing teams were more of an upper class. You look at it Princeton, yale, harvard, east Coast, ivy League, and so the idea that you have a group that are coming out of the CCC camps of the Great Depression, of kids that were abandoned or, as you said, middle class or lower class that are just working to be able to go to college, to be able to live that American dream. You know, I think that's one of the biggest parts of this story. So I can only even imagine, as Joe and some of the others are on the ship, sailing over and again, what that had to be like. I mean, judy said yesterday to a group have you ever wanted to be on a time machine? And I'm like, yes, I would love to go back to the 1936 Olympics.
Speaker 4:I'd love to be on the the USS Manhattan that that was on its way over um to Berlin, germany, and be able just to hear these different conversations, the different food I mean I can't imagine that that most of them had eaten some of the food, especially as they got over into Europe and then to to see this, this spectacle that that was there, and see some of the world events that were forming right underneath them. To see those moments in history had to just be amazing for these local kids that rowing pulled them out of their local community into a bigger, broader world.
Speaker 2:So do you feel like Joe had a sense in the moment of this is a really big deal, or did it just it was just another race?
Speaker 1:No, I don't think any of them did. They were there to race and it wasn't like they spent any particular time or effort being involved in news event, you know, watching, reading newspapers or watching that kind of stuff. In fact, for a lot of stuff Al Ulbrichson didn't let them see newspapers for the entire year that they were in training. He didn't want them thinking about anything other than their studies and their training. And they went at it. I mean, they were there that you had asked any of them, they'd say no, we were there to race and that was what we were concentrating on. A couple of them would comment on the fact that it seemed a little odd that there were so many uniforms on people around, but they just sort of let that slough off.
Speaker 2:I mean, what a great lesson there. Just that kind of focus, I mean, think about our lives today and the distractions that we live in, to be able to isolate and hone in on. That's amazing.
Speaker 3:Through the process and like the book and the movie and everything, is there a story that comes to mind that it's like maybe didn't make it into the book, or something you found through scrapbooking, or like a discovery that you had, that, just like that, you'd be able to share. This it was special.
Speaker 5:I think one of the favorite pieces of my scrapbook that is kind of a kind of an interesting thing to be one of my favorite pieces of the scrapbook is that grandpa had kept the um, the train menu, from when they went to Poughkeepsie so they had a um there was, there was a menu that had their pictures on it and then it was what was going to be served at every meal. Um, every day that they were on the train on the way back to New York and you look at the menu on that and the things that they ate were so much different than the things that they eat today and I don't know why. That struck me as just so interesting.
Speaker 5:But it's like stewed figs and prunes and um, you know, like just toast and tea and milk, and it's like there's no soft drinks, there's no processed foods, there's no anything. It's like just just very um 1930s I guess. Um, but for some reason that that train menu struck me as as um just really interesting very of the day shall we say yeah, so the movie comes out, premieres.
Speaker 2:Talk about just what that has meant to you all, your first experience of seeing it. I know it's obviously different than the book, um, but what did it mean to you to see on this big screen your dad, your grandfather's life?
Speaker 1:Oh, that was an amazing experience. You're right. The first time I saw it it was like, oh my gosh, this is different and this is different. And how could they leave that out? And why don't they have more of dad's history as a little kid, and they really needed you know, and your mind is just going like this while you're watching it. And then, after I had a few days to sort of back away from it and reset myself, because I had, of course, watched the PBS documentary the Boys of 36. And that was like right down the line, absolutely Everything was historically correct and timed out correctly and everything.
Speaker 1:But then I realized that what I'd been watching was a movie and you have to give it the leeway to be a movie. It's taking a 14-hour story and moving it into two hours and it's condensing stuff and it's Hollywoodizing stuff, and you have to let it do that. And you look at, okay, is the heart of the story still there? Did they lose track of that or did they keep focus on it? And when, when people watch it, do they? Do they realize how hard it was, the work that went into trying to learn to row, and the beauty of the rowing once it's actually accomplished and do they grieve for the boy who had lost his mother when he was young and understand that he couldn't trust at this point, that he couldn't trust at this point, and a lot of different kinds of things that.
Speaker 1:Do the people who are watching it come out with an understanding of that? Do they feel inspired by the movie? Does it make them feel like they want to accept the next challenge? And if it does that for them, then it's accomplished its goal. It's accomplished the goal that we were looking at. So, yeah, that was, that was what I had to.
Speaker 5:I had to get past the documentary mode sure um, I actually want to say something about the documentary when that.
Speaker 5:PBS documentary came out, because that was insane. When that came out, so one of the women who was the historical she was working on all the historical aspect of it and finding all of the, the media and the information and she had come out to visit my mom and mom was showing her all the scrapbooks and all the things that she had from grandpa and they went to the shell house and looked around and talked about a bunch of stuff and and we were kind of having a discussion about I think it was a discussion more about the fact that nobody had been able to find the actual media broadcast, the radio broadcast from the um, from the, the race of the olympics. Okay, um, and so we were there was still um, a lot of questions about exactly how that race had played out. Um, and she looked my mom dead in the eye and she said we're going to find things that you have no idea exist because they're just so good at that research.
Speaker 5:And so when that documentary came out and there was a, there was a, there was a. Not only did they have the radio broadcast in there, but there was also a piece of it where they were on the dock at Poughkeepsie and they had just won and they were bringing the trophy out to him and it was something that we have a picture, a black and white picture of when they were standing there with that trophy. But they had movie footage of it, film footage of it, and there was something about seeing my picture that I had in my scrapbook, with all of the guys like breathing and talking to each other, come alive, right, and it was just it was the most weirdly surreal experience to be like oh my god, that, like it's not just a picture, that that legitimately happened and and it was.
Speaker 5:it was probably the coolest thing that I've ever seen, because I knew it as a picture and here it is, in movement.
Speaker 1:In movement. Yeah, and you see the guys you know like poking each other and grinning.
Speaker 5:It was just so neat and each other and grinning, it was just so neat. And then I guess, in terms of the movie, I think the thing that made me the most happy was the way that they portrayed Grandma because, she was always very, very feisty and very opinionated and I thought that she did. They did her justice and the just the. The story between grandma and grandpa I that was very touching. I really liked that piece of it. I felt like that was not not real, not realistic. I mean it wasn't, it wasn't realistic.
Speaker 5:I mean it wasn't, it wasn't realistic I mean she was never in a sorority or anything like that, but, um, but in terms of just the way that they portrayed her and the way that she was.
Speaker 2:I thought that it was yeah definitely yeah, I liked that so. Jennifer, tell us, through the scrapbooking process, what started to develop for you of just what it meant to capture the story.
Speaker 5:It was interesting in the scrapbooking process I was, as a teenager, young adult, not really very interested in older people, their histories, things like that. And this was something where, as I started working on this with Grandpa and seeing all of the stories that he had to tell and being able to kind of immerse myself in that, how important it was and how lucky I was to be able to take part in that and to learn those stories before he passed away. Part in that and to learn those stories before he passed away, because then once he passed away and I started rewiring after the fact and it was like God, I wish he was still alive and I could have talked to him about all of this stuff too, because it wasn't things that I had experienced at that point. So I think that it sparked in me the concept of how important it is to talk to the people that you love and to really listen to the stories that they have while they're still around, to tell those stories.
Speaker 5:And we've mom and I've kind of gone through that same thing now, where I have a lot of her stories that I wouldn't have had if I wouldn't have, if we wouldn't have gone through the process of looking at some of the history of her life as well. So we've already now done that and I feel very grateful that we were able to take advantage of this time that we have and get all those stories down so that they're not lost, and my guess is that mom now wishes that, the way that we told her story, that we would have had the opportunity to do that with grandpa while he was still alive.
Speaker 5:So, there's a lot of that, that if you don't get it, you lose it.
Speaker 2:And you need to take advantage of that. Okay, so part of the history. I understand there was a moment the gold medal went missing. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, Tell us about that.
Speaker 1:A long time ago, a long time. It had been missing, since I was a kid and nobody knew where it was. I think that they had kept it on the mantle, but there was a point where it was just gone and nobody really said much about it all those years, and it wasn't until early 1970s you were very young, I think, when.
Speaker 5:Well, he still didn't have it when they were inducted into the Husky Hall of Fame. Yeah, so yeah, it was a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was I think 76 maybe. Yeah, yeah, it was a long time yeah and that was, I think, 76, maybe, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then they found it when Dad was up working on the roofing and there was stuff going on in the attic and here's this squirrel's nest with some little goodies in it, including a gold medal. And so all of a sudden, you know, mom is sending me a picture holding the gold medal and you know the size of it next to a rose in her hand, and I'm like gold medal, because it was, I suppose. You know, I was aware of it, but it had never been around, wow, wow. So all of a sudden there was something that it was kind of like. It became real.
Speaker 3:If you had asked me where that story was going, I would not have predicted it, I mean could you imagine that, with today's gold medalists?
Speaker 4:Unbelievable.
Speaker 2:And just how much it tells again about who he was as a person and the character and it wasn't about the show, it wasn't about the awards, nah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That wasn't what his life was about. He had other stuff. I mean he was into square dancing. He was a square dancing caller and teacher and he was at that time in the 50s up and down the Pacific Northwest coast time in the 50s up and down the Pacific Northwest coast he was somebody that was quite famous for helping square dancing clubs get started and teaching them how to do the dancing and how to do the calling. You know, he just and he repaired cars and some of the cars he repaired I think he sold and I mean he'd get them from like sheriff's auction for 50 bucks. And since he was and that was back in the day when you could repair the cars- you know, because they weren't on computer systems.
Speaker 1:If you knew how they ran then you could get in and repair them. And there was a lot of stuff that made up his life had nothing to do with the Olympics, with the exception of when those guys would get back together, and it was almost like famine coming upstream that there was this compulsion that once or twice a year they had to, from wherever they were, get back together and be with each other.
Speaker 2:So, as we start to wrap things up here, David, future students that connect with this lesson, even our listening audience what's the lesson you feel like you want them to take away from this?
Speaker 4:It's absolutely from the Warsaw perspective. You know, take time to capture the history, take time to ask the questions and you never know what that is going to bring about. Again. Joe did all the hard work. He lived the life. Judy and Jennifer did the secondary work. They captured the story. They followed their dream to be able to do it.
Speaker 4:But sometimes just being able to be a small catalyst inside of that of encouraging a dream, whether it's something big like this or whether it's something small that never hits the print, I think that's so important for our students. I'm just so excited because, as we talked about even this visit and coming here, we kept using the term full circle and we kept saying coming back to you know, even though you've never been to Warsaw, coming back to Warsaw here just a little bit, because we hope to continue on the idea of the thematic unit where we're using boys in the boat. We think it's such an incredible book and we think it's such an incredible piece of literature that that every other year we want to use this with our middle school students as a school wide read. And Judy's conversation with me from the beginning is I'm not going to be able to come back here every year where Ray or husband said I'm retiring, you know?
Speaker 5:I'm retiring.
Speaker 4:I'm over 80 years old now and we're retiring from the book, from the story. We've accomplished so much of our goal inside of this that we're not going to be able to come back but leaving that piece of history that continues on that story. You know, I hope 20, 30 years down the road they're doing a remake of boys in the boat.
Speaker 1:It'd be interesting, it'd be interesting, it'd be interesting.
Speaker 4:Um, but again, bringing it, bringing it back around. But we're going to be able to share these stories. We're going to be able to share Judy, Jennifer and Ray with our students for many, many years to come, even though they're not physically here in Warsaw.
Speaker 1:And again, that's part of that journey that goes into this whole story is that, when you talk about what was the effect of the story and how has it affected people and has it made differences in anybody's life, and I think one of the things that happened or we found out about pretty recently was that one of the four guys who were on the eight at the Olympics and he was in fact rowing in the number seven seat- this year.
Speaker 3:This year. This Olympics, this Olympics, yeah.
Speaker 1:He was rowing in the number seven seat, which is the seat that my dad rowed in.
Speaker 1:And he was interviewing with King TV and the gal was talking to him about you know how did he come about to start rowing and so forth. And he was talking about how he had been trying to be in track and field as a high schooler and that it just wasn't working out and he had decided that he just wasn't a sports person and he was giving up on that kind of thing. And his mom got a copy of the Boys in the Boat and basically said you will read this. And the next year after he graduated, he went to the university and he turned out for crew and he stayed with the crew and won a number of national championships during the time that he was on the crew, those four years.
Speaker 1:And then this last Olympics, when they were interviewing him about how he had gotten involved and he was telling about the fact that his mom had given him the book and that it inspired him and so forth. And she says are you telling me that you were on an Olympic crew because of a book? And he says that book is exactly the reason I was on the crew. So yeah, it's amazing what you find out and what effect the book has had. You don't even stop to realize it.
Speaker 2:So, as David mentioned, the full circle moment of bringing the story back here, what has it meant to you all to be here, to be in Warsaw, to share this story in this way?
Speaker 1:Well, in an odd way it's sort of like coming home, even though we've never been here, but to have started that and to see it really spread out and become a thing that sort of now is moving on its own and get to the place where, yeah, we're back here and it's going to keep going.
Speaker 4:Jennifer had a unique conversation yesterday down in the village of Winona because she went into Cloud 9, again Keith's store and Jennifer. I'll let you share it. But again he was asking her what they were doing here in Warsun, winona Lake, and all of a sudden he's like my kids were involved in that. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, yeah, and so just there were actually both he and then there was a couple that was in there and both of their kids, or both of all of them, had kids that had been eighth graders last year and had been involved in the making the boats and all that kind of stuff, and so they were really excited about that whole piece of it and what their kids had been able to do as part of that whole book unit.
Speaker 5:So I think that that's just the concept of something that started out such a long time ago just because of the tenacity of students and their willingness to ask questions, and that, and the fact that that comes all the way around to potentially having helped determine that the book was something worth writing and give a kind of a kickstart to looking at that as a path for something, and coming all the way back here is pretty powerful.
Speaker 1:It would have taken me to get around to writing something. Yeah, it would have taken me to get around to writing something. Yeah, I was so involved in trying to find information and it really gave me something to grab onto and pull against and create something that there it was.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you all so much for your time and your willingness to come to Warsaw and share the story. It's a beautiful story that means a lot to a lot of people. It means a lot to our community. So thank you for taking the time to come and share it and allowing us to record it and preserve it for many years to come. And, david, thank you for your work and that initial spark that you had with your class. So, for all of our listeners, if you haven't read the book, please go check out Boys in the Boat, the movie as well. Such an incredible read, such a great movie, can't encourage it enough. And thank you for listening to Stories that Move. We will see you next time. It's been so good to have you all here. Can you please give our guests a big hand? Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories that Move brought to you by Dream On Studios.
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Speaker 3:Yeah, we believe every story has the potential to inspire, to move and to make a difference. Let's make yours heard.
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