“Rowing on the Distaff Side”: A Brief History of the National Women’s Rowing Association (Part I)
In 1963 an organization formed in California dedicated to promoting “rowing and sculling, regattas and the quality of American racing [for women] so that as a country we may better compete in the European Women's Championships and prepare for Olympic competition.”1 While still rare, the few existing rowing clubs that welcomed women came together from the East and West Coasts to increase their influence through this newly formed National Women’s Rowing Association (NWRA). The Philadelphia Girls’ Rowing Club, Lake Washington Rowing Club, and Lake Merritt Rowing Club were the charter members; Oregon State University Rowing Club, Seattle Tennis Club, Seattle Green Lake Junior Crew, Mills College, Vancouver Rowing Club, and ZLAC Rowing Club soon joined the collective. By 1965-1966 several more college clubs and the Long Beach Rowing Association has also become members.2 While women’s rowing was not yet an Olympic sport, a number of countries were already sending women competitors to international regattas and the NWRA hoped to ensure the U.S. did not get left behind.
In addition to promoting women’s competitive rowing at the international level, though, the group sought to “give direction, control, and coaching to the women involved” in member clubs. According to co-founder Joanne Wright (Iverson): “In January of 1964, our association was accepted for membership in the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen [NAAO]. This, then, gives women the right to compete for the United States in any foreign regatta and, as an association we can sponsor and run regattas for our own titles and medals.”3 The group hoped to make sure, according to co-founder and Rowing Director for Mills College Ed Lickiss, that competition for women grew and developed in the U.S. and internationally but also that “the interests of existing women’s rowing groups” would be incorporated as part of that growth.4
Wright (Iverson), then a member of the Philadelphia Girls’ Rowing Club, had provided major impetus for the new organization and seems to have been its central driving force. Her rowing career had begun just a few years prior (1959) on the Schuylkill River’s Boathouse Row through the pioneering efforts of Ernestine Bayer, who had formed a club for women rowers in 1938. Bayer, by her own account, had grown tired of waiting for her husband to finish practices and wanted to join herself. But it was not just Bayer alone; she was supported by sixteen other courageous women including Doris Starsmore Brugger, Sally Greeley Cibort, Lenore Mongan Davis, Lovey Kohut Farrell, Betty Flavin Ford, Kay McFarland Gillen, Jeannette Waetjen Hoover, Mary Prior Jonik, Helen Muldowney Kiniry, Gladys Hauser Lux, Eileen Coughlan Mockus, Lucille Browning Nino, Jeanne Murphy Quirk, Ruth Adams Robinhold, Marge Cantwell Sonzogni, and Betty McManus Wilkins.5 Just a few years before Wright (Iverson) joined, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a short feature on the club’s 15th anniversary, dubbing members “Sweet Sweepswingers.”6 Still, it was better than the “matrimonial club” label they had been given years earlier.
Despite rowing for one of the country’s oldest women’s clubs, Wright (Iverson) knew early on that much work would be required to bring the U.S. to a level with Russia, Romania or even France. She also believed the sport’s governing body bore some responsibility so in 1962 she penned an article for the NAAO Rowing Guide (Annual Yearbook) declaring that women’s rowing was not only about to become very popular globally, but that U.S. programs needed to keep pace with their European and Eastern Bloc counterparts. According to Wright Iverson, soon “women’s rowing events will be on the Olympic program. When that time comes an effort will be made to produce girls with the skill and strength to compete against those who have been rowing and training for years. It will take years to accomplish what seems impossible and we should start immediately. With help and encouragement, we will make our boys as proud of us as we are of them.”7 Later in the decade (1968) Wright (Iverson) would become better known as the first women’s rowing coach at the University of Pennsylvania and would also serve as manager of the 1976 Olympic women rowers in Montreal.8 But before that she put her energies into building more, and more competitive, rowing programs for women across the U.S.
Finding allies in Ed Lickiss (Lake Merritt / Mills College) and Aldina and Ted Nash, Wright (Iverson) pushed to form a national-level organization that would support competitive women’s rowing. According to Rachel Freedman, Aldina Nash (Hampe) was motivated similarly to Wright (Iverson) to expand the pool of women rowers. “In 1963, Aldina persuaded Ted to start a women's rowing program at LWRC [Lake Washington Rowing Club]. She recruited women from the hospital where she worked, and the inaugural women's crew consisted of occupational therapists, nurses, and physical therapists.”9 It was programs like LWRC and PGRC that were the core of the organization’s competitive drive. In the years prior both clubs, alongside LMRC had started recruiting more women and finding ways to race them, with LWRC and LMRC meeting up for scrimmages, and PGRC inviting rowers like Helga Uthgenannt (Viking Rowing Club of New York) to race in existing regattas that would allow them or travel to Florida Southern to compete with their women’s program.10
However, once the NWRA was formalized and anchored by its early members, it became clear that not all women’s groups supported their ideals. Initially Wellesley’s faculty director of crew, Linda Vaughan, declined the invitation to join despite the school being the first to offer women’s rowing in the late 1800s. Professing that rowing was merely “instructional and recreational” she wished Lickiss luck in organizing a regatta but noted that the university prohibited the group “from participating in events such as [he] proposed.”11
Wellesley was not the only program that had developed rowing programs for women that were pioneering, yet at the same time limited to recreational or intermural levels of participation. Milwaukee-Downer College (now Lawrence University) established recreational rowing in 1894 while at ZLAC, which had formed in 1892, many tea parties and social events were part of the rowing experience that members came out for on a weekly basis. A few more intramural collegiate programs developed in the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s and the encouragement from the NWRA that most of these programs began to take the prospect of racing seriously.12
The organizers of the NWRA were aware of the many challenges they faced in pushing competitive rowing for women, including fears about participants either developing “unwomanly” physiques or damaging their maternal capacity with the physical demands of the sport. In the NWRA’s first newsletter Nash (Hampe) defended the choice to support women’s competitive rowing quite simply. “Some men claim that crew just isn't a woman's sport...and I would ask, why not? Our girls look leaner and more beautiful than they ever did before...and none of them have developed bulging, unwomanly muscles as a result of it. . . We talk about elevating the physical, mental and moral outlook of our nation. What better way to do it than through active, disciplined participation in crew by our women, the future mothers of our youth. You notice I mention discipline...this is probably the most important element in organizing a women’s athletic group of any kind.”13
Nash (Hampe) went a step further in her defense of the sport for women, declaring that racing in the Lake Merritt Regatta while four months pregnant was “excellent for my health and did not hamper me one bit;” she also argued that her recovery heart rate was far better than her non-rowing peers. She continued to defend women in rowing off the water. “There are too many loosely organized women’s crews in the past history....and this is what I think some of our men resent about women’s rowing. They feel it is too hard on the expensive equipment, the gals don't take it seriously enough. Well, I claim that women can learn to handle equipment with as much and more care than men, providing stress is placed on this fact when they are being taught initially. As for keeping equipment clean and repaired, our LWRC [Lake Washington Rowing Club] women have proved astute housekeepers when it comes to grease on the riggers or dirt on the boathouse floor, and some of our gals know how to repair checks and varnish properly as well.” Using a maternal logic, Nash (Hampe) argued that women, in fact, might be better boat caretakers and boathouse stewards than men, effectively shutting down arguments that rowing made women less “womanly.”
Fighting essentially on two fronts, the NWRA was also working to convince U.S. rowing officials that supporting women’s rowing was actually a national imperative. In 1965 they reported on their activities to the Executive Committee of NAAO, encouraging them to take action on behalf of women in rowing. They argued that globally thirteen countries held championships for women rowers and nine competed internationally; such “rapidly increasing interest” should not be overlooked and added that “we should not be last again as in the twelve-year battle for women's canoeing.”14 They argued that support from the NAAO would prevent the country from being left behind, becoming “the lifeblood of the N.W.R.A. and thus lead to a stronger U.S. Team in the future.” More than making the sport stronger, building women’s rowing made the country better. As Nash (Hampe) noted, if the Olympic Committee was “truly interested in bettering the moral, mental and physical health of this country, they could do no better service than encouraging women’s rowing in this country by making it an Olympic event. This would give it the popularity it needs to get going in the colleges--and would give the impetus it properly needs to stimulate growth in already established private clubs and encourage new ones to organize.”15
As they challenged women’s rowing detractors discursively, they also worked to shore up existing programs and individuals that might support their mission. On one level that meant supporting the growth of clubs that either allowed women or were explicitly for women. Reaching out to potential clubs and programs in 1966, Secretary Marjory Pollack (Ballheim) of PGRC informed readers that their names had “been brought to my attention as possibly having women rowing. I am sincerely hoping my information is correct. If so, we would like to extend to you a warm welcome and bring to your, attention the existence of our women’s rowing organization. Perhaps you would care to hear more about it.”16 Through membership, the NWRA supported a shared knowledge pool and solidarity across clubs and programs.
Finding allies in power, though, was another important goal. According to Nash (Hampe), the early years of the organization were crucial in changing the narrative around women and rowing. As she noted in the newsletter, “there is a lot we women need to do to initiate interest and support from the men who really control the sport. Perhaps we can put our heads together and plan some strategy.”17 Certainly the men coaches of women’s programs were critical allies, but they also sought to convince officials with no real linkages to specifically inclusive clubs that growth was part of a larger nationalist project.
Finally, the NWRA sought to create real space for women’s racing. By 1963 there was increasing critical mass at both the club and collegiate levels and NWRA helped demand space for women’s entries. That year the NWRA listed six different racing opportunities with six clubs sending entries including an 8+ in the Long Beach Regatta, several fours in a San Diego race in May, six different entries in sculling and sweeping for the Lake Merritt Regatta, multiple singles and doubles entries in races in New York, Philadelphia, Laconia, NH, Seattle, and Kelowna, BC, and another 8 entries in the August Seattle Tennis Club Regatta. In 1964 there were fewer races women participated in, but larger numbers of entries and possibly more sweep rowing; seven clubs sent entries to that year’s regattas. Nash (Hampe) noted that the participation in the first annual Corvallis Invitational Regatta was particularly encouraging “for, probably at no time in this country have four womens’ eights representing four womens’ West Coast crews ever raced each other.”18
Women on the east coast, too, were joining in for racing particularly in Philadelphia where the rowers of PGRC joined the Middle States Regatta and the Independence Day Regatta in lightweight, heavyweight and mixed doubles. They also sent two fours to the first Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston in 1965. Early that same year the NWRA noted the importance of these ever-increasing numbers: “Over the last two years there have been held five U.S. Women's regattas involving 296 individual entries or 88 separate women. . . One woman sculler and one four oared crew were well within the European final times and had no hope of attending the regatta. We hope this meeting will make us all aware of the potential here and that we collectively will lend a hand and support the women's efforts to represent their country in rowing.”19
Over the next half decade, the NWRA would be instrumental in elevating women’s competitive rowing across the U.S. in both club and collegiate arenas. In addition to creating opportunities for racing and supporting clubs training women rowers, they continued to pressure NAAO to include women in national-level regattas and send them to international competitions. “Rowing on the distaff side,” as the 1962 NAAO Rowing Guide had titled Wright Iverson’s letter, was gaining undeniable momentum in the U.S. The second part of this piece will narrate the story of how that movement ultimately led to the inclusion of U.S. women in international competition, the expansion of collegiate women’s rowing programs, and the 1975 women’s participation in the Montreal Olympics.
[1] Correspondence from the Wellesley College Archives shows a letterhead (pictured) from NWRA stating: “Organized 1962 Oakland, CA.” Joanne Wright Iverson clarifies in her memoir that while the initial idea occurred in 1963 the first organizational meeting did not happen until July 1963 and that the letterhead was an error. See National Women's Rowing Association, 1964-1966, Box: 45, Folder: 2. Department of Hygiene and Physical Education records, Wellesley College Archives, Wellesley, MA [Hereafter NWRA, WCA]; Joanne Wright Iverson, An Obsession with Rings: How Rowing Became an Olympic Sport for Women in the United States, Covington, Georgia: Bookhouse Group, 2009.
[2] Vassar, Wellesley, Florida Southern College, the University of Tampa and the University of California were all listed in their early records as pending members, although it is clear (see below) that at least Wellesley took a little time to join the ranks of racing members.
[3] Joanne Wright, Letter to NWRA Members, 5 October 1964, NWRA, WCA.
[4] Ed Lickiss, Letter to Miss Linda Vaughan, 23 February 1965, NWRA, WCA.
[5] PGRC History & Highlights, https://www.philadelphiagirlsrowingclub.org/about-us/history-and-highlights. The rest of the founding group seem to be frequently omitted from the narrative.
[6] Frank Bates, “Phila. Girls Rowing Club Going Strong in 15th Year,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 July 1952, S5.
[7] Wright Iverson, An Obsession with Rings, 16-17.
[8] Born in 1939, Wright (Iverson) was not yet 30 when she took this position.
[9] Rachel Freedman, “Aldina Nash Hampe: Pioneer of Women's Rowing Reunites with 1960s 2x Partner,” RowSource, https://www.rowsource.com/cox/aldina-nash-hampe-pioneer-of-womens-rowing-reunites-with-1960s-2x-partner Obviously, the involvement of Ted Nash in this early history raises challenging and uncomfortable questions about historical credit and motivation. I leave his name here to not erase his role in early organization of the group, while also favoring the work of Aldina and recognizing that his reasons may well have been far less than benevolent.
[10] For example, the NAAO had allowed two women’s 1x entries (Aldina Nash (Hampe) and Joanne Wright (Iverson)) in their 1961 national championship regatta in Philadelphia, although Nash Hampe had taken sick and the race was cancelled.
[11] Linda Vaughan, Letter to Mr. E. E. Lickiss, February 15, 1965; NWRA, WCA.
[12] Head of the Schuylkill Regatta, https://hosr.org/womens-triumph-over-a-manly-sport
[13] Aldina Nash (Hampe), NWRA Newsletter #1, September 26, 1964; NWRA, WCA.
[14] “Memo to the Executive Committee of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen,” January 23, 1965; NWRA, WCA.
[15] Aldina Nash (Hampe), NWRA Newsletter #1, September 26, 1964; NWRA, WCA.
[16] Marjory Pollack (Ballheim), “Letter to Member Organizations,” December 5, 1966; NWRA, WCA.
[17] Aldina Nash (Hampe), NWRA Newsletter #1, September 26, 1964; NWRA, WCA.
[18] Aldina Nash (Hampe), NWRA Newsletter #1, September 26, 1964; NWRA, WCA. Error in original.
[19] Galley Proofs, NWRA Report for the 1965 NAAO Rowing Guide, 19965; NWRA, WCA.