Doctor Rowing: Joe Burk’s Character of a Champion

This autumn, Dotty Brown alerted our readers to Ed Woodhouse’s biography of Joe Burk, the great sculler who later became the head coach at the University of Pennsylvania and was so influential for generations of oarsmen.

What prompted a Harvard oarsman to write a biography of a Penn coach? Woodhouse was part of the legendary Rude and Smooth crews of the 1970s. Why had he cast his eyes away from the Charles? Had he forgotten his own coach, Harry Parker?

“I am very taken with the idea of mentors,” Woodhouse told me. Scratch any rower and he’ll tell you who helped him rise.

“I started seeing how so many of the people I learned about were connected. You can draw a line from George Pocock to Rusty Callow, Burk’s coach at Penn, to Burk to Harry Parker, my coach.”

“I think that it is so impressive that despite losing the singles trials for the 1936 Berlin Olympics to his fellow Penn AC sculler, Dan Barrow, Burk did not sulk, but instead went back to his family farm in New Jersey, got back in his single on the Rancocas Creek, and decided to do this by himself, rowing his own style with his own strategy.

“The main contact he had with the rowing world from 1937 though 1940 was his correspondence with George Pocock. Burk was a brave individual, willing to trust his own intuition and setting his own course.”

Burk rowed a short stroke, all legs and arms, and he kept pushing the rating up until he could row a race at 40 and above. Pocock offered advice about this unconventional style from afar: “If what you’re doing makes you go fast, do it.”

Burk credited Pocock with supporting his experiments with technique by suggesting, for example, that he limit his layback as part of rowing a higher cadence.

Woodhouse offers this insight into Burk’s training philosophy:

“Burk was trying to stroke more quickly not because it was harder but because it was easier. It was analogous to a runner’s shortening his stride and increasing his leg turnover instead of running with an excessively long stride.”

As we talked about Joe Burk, it became clear that while Woodhouse is impressed with Burk’s accomplishments in sculling (in 1938, Burk broke the Diamond Sculls course record at Henley with 8:02, a record that would stand for 27 years) and coaching, what really impresses him, and anyone who knew Burk, is his character. Hence the book’s subtitle: An American Ideal.

“It impressed me that after losing the chance to compete at the Olympics in 1940—they were canceled because of the impending World War—Burk served his country and joined the Navy.”

This second act of Burk’s life, that of war hero, is especially compelling. He was a decorated PT boat commander in the Pacific theater.

The latter part of the book describes the third act of Burk’s life—coach and mentor.

“In talking with men who rowed for him at Penn, time and time again they talk about Burk as a revered father figure. Even when moved from the varsity to the JV, his oarsmen mention his fairness and the care he showed them,” Woodhouse said.

When the weather was raw and cold in Philadelphia, Burk would jump off the dock into the Schuylkill to demonstrate that it was safe to go out on the water. That toughness and his war record inspired a number of his men to serve in a different, controversial type of war, Vietnam.

Woodhouse has done an impressive amount of research to track down some of the ideas that inspired Burk. In the ’60s, a New Zealand running coach named Arthur Lydiard had pushed his athletes to great heights. At the 1964 Olympics, Peter Snell had won double golds in the 800 and 1,500 meters. Lydiard advocated a regimen of high mileage at moderate pace and introduced the idea of periodization in athletic training, a cornerstone of today’s training methods.

At Penn, Burk adopted Lydiard’s approach. For anyone who is interested in the history of training and how it intersected with race results, Woodhouse has unearthed some great stuff. In the fall of 1966, Penn was rowing 18 miles every day, and 24 on Saturday.

There is also lots of great stuff about the Penn/Harvard rivalry. Harry Parker, the Harvard coach, had rowed for Burk at Penn. When Parker launched his own sculling career, he worked with Burk. The result was that Parker represented the USA at the Rome Olympics in 1960.

Their rivalry as coaches peaked at the 1968 Olympic trials when the two crews went stroke for stroke down the 2,000-meter course. In the photo finish, Harvard was proclaimed victor by five one-hundredths of a second. Ever gracious, Joe Burk congratulated his protege.

I visited Joe Burk and his wife, Kay, at their retirement cabin in Montana and can confirm that meeting them was an uplifting experience. Woodhouse quotes Nick Paumgarten, longtime head of the Friends of Pennsylvania Rowing, who summed up the modern view of Burk, calling him a total gentleman, a gracious loser, and a great winner.

It gives me great pleasure to recommend Ed Woodhouse’s book. He will be at the Heads of the Charles and Schuylkill selling, autographing, and talking about this wonderful man, Joe Burk.

Doctor Rowing, a.k.a. Andy Anderson, has been coxing, coaching, and sculling for 55 years. When not writing, coaching, or thinking about rowing, he teaches at Groton School and considers the fact that all three of his children rowed and coxed—and none played lacrosse—his single greatest success.

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