Old friends

I just sent an email to an old friend. A great swimmer in my books, Carl Wooley. He sure could swim. I have a list of about 200 or more that I remember. I first met him in New Haven at the YMCA championships. I have not seen him since the 1960s George: I saw Carl at a meet about 6 weeks ago. He is back swimming and will probably be at our Michigan State Championship in about a month. When I see him I will tell him that you are still swimming which he probably already knows. Another swimmer I know you would be interested in is Clark Scholes. He is still in the lower Michigan area. We tried to get him to swim over 10 years ago when we had the Nationals at the University of Michigan but were unsuccessful. He was playing Water Basketball a lot and played at the DAC a lot. When I ran into him about 10 years ago, I told him that his 1952 Olympic teamate, Yoshi Oyakawa was swimming masters and still setting records. He was impressed but still is more interested in Water Basketball. I bring him up because I know he was Gold, you were Silver, and Carl was Bronze in the 100 Meter Free at the 1955 Pan American Games.

George, I know the importance of these friends. I have finally found my coach, Don Easterling, and even though he is in his late 80s now, I found he is living in Texas and hope to contact him when I go back for a visit in late April. Donna

Along these same lines, I recently attended my alma-mater's conference swimming championships (My alma mater being Missouri State).....The coach has been there for around 24 years or so...I was part of the first class of incoming freshman for him when he first took over the job in 1983. I had not seen him in over 20 years and so I wasn't even sure how much he would remember about me (and what he would remember I thought wouldn't be all that positive...and I will just leave it at that). Well I e-mailed him ahead of time to tell him about my plans to come to the meet ...and he e-mailed me back with this wonderful e-mail about how excited he was to hear from me again ...and how much he was looking forward to seeing me again...etc... Well I went to the meet and had a total blast. Yesterday he called me out of the blue just to tell me how much he enjoyed having me at the meet....This guy is such a classy guy!! Compared to the kind of remarks I've heard about Skip Kenny for example (although I have never met him and so I'm not judging him or anything)...I can only say that my old coach Jack Steck from Missouri State is perhaps the classiest guy I've ever met. I hope that most of you guys can say the same about some of your old coaches. I can't tell you how much I appreciated that phone call. Not all coaches would go out of thier way to make such a call....and I was a real hoolligan pain in the buttox sometimes back in college....If anyone had a reason to snub me it was definitely Coach Steck! Newmastersswimmer

Clarke and I have a little history together it is a story that I cannot tell on this forum. Nothing bad or illegal. However I can tell you he was mad at me the last time I saw him.