Washington’s almost forgotten Olympic legends

The Great Depression was very hard on most Americans. People lost their savings, jobs and homes.

Often families were separated because there simply were too many mouths to feed even when moms, dads and kids pooled their meager earnings from odd jobs.

Businesses and factories closed and our government struggled to respond. Soup kitchens fed people waiting in long unemployment lines.

It is against this setting that fascist Germany hosted the summer Olympics in 1936. It was an extravaganza that was unimaginable for Olympians traveling to Berlin that August.

The games were supposed to showcase Germany’s supremacy. The Nazi athletes came from Adolf Hitler’s “Aryan” or master race. They were government supported and trained full time with the best coaches. They were expected to dominate.

However, as it worked out the American team, composed mainly of struggling commoners from all races, religions and cultural heritages, turned the tables on the Führer in his own backyard.

Jesse Owens immediately became an Olympic legend winning four gold medals. During his career Owens, one of 18 black American athletes competing in Berlin, set world records in the long jump, 220-yard sprint and low hurdles, and long jump. He equaled the world’s best time in the 100-yard dash.

There is a correspondingly moving Olympic story, which was nearly forgotten until the daughter of a University of Washington rower contacted her neighbor, the accomplished author Daniel James Brown.

A few years ago, Brown met Joe Rantz, who was in hospice care at Judy Willman’s suburban Seattle home.

When he heard the story, he immediately wanted to write a book about Rantz, but the dying rower’s desire was to have a book written about Husky crew, which won the gold medal on blustery Lake Grunau.

“The Boys in the Boat” is more than the saga of the 1936 U.S. Olympic eight-oar rowing crew—dubbed the Miracle 9—beating the favored crews from Italy and Germany. It is the about the culturally unique American way of life based on freedom to take risks.

It is about our character – our ability to overcome adversity. It is about Americans pulling together to accomplish the impossible if we are determined and work hard.

The Husky nine came from working class sons of loggers, fishermen, farmers and shipyard workers who grew up in Washington. They were different from the Ivy League collegiate rowers who dominated competitive rowing. They weren’t the sons of people of means like the Roosevelts.

Just as Owens had no college athletic scholarship, the Husky crew members worked their way through the University of Washington paying their own tuition and supporting themselves with “buck a day” jobs. In fact, Washington’s crew house was one of few places the rowers could consistently find a square meal.

Rantz, one of the Husky’s strongest rowers, experienced gut-wrenching setbacks as a child. He watched his mother die coughing up blood when he was just four-years old and was abandoned at age 12 to subsist on his own. Rather than become a victim, he found the grit to survive.

His older brother finally took him in during his high school years and he became a star athlete at Roosevelt High School. The Huskies crew coach recruited him with just the promise of a part-time job.

The 1936 Olympic rowing champions from Washington were said to be eight hearts beating as one.

Pulling together, they overcame insurmountable odds. They never quit and overpowered opponents coming from behind to nip them at the finish line.

These are the Americans who make our country strong and the envy of the world.