Editorial: Olympic rowers’ story reminds us of the best in us
Published 1:30 am Monday, August 1, 2016
By The Herald Editorial Board
PBS offers up a perfect appetizer on Tuesday before the banquet of Summer Olympics begins on Friday: A documentary called “The Boys of ‘36,” based on the non-fiction best-seller, “The Boys in the Boat.”
Even if you are not a sports fan, the story of the nine University of Washington students who incredibly won the gold medal in rowing at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin — and how they got there in the first place — is a truly inspiring American tale of hardship and harder work, complete with a love interest.
“From the very first day I met Joe Rantz and decided to write ‘The Boys in the Boat,’ I knew the story was really about much more than rowing and the Olympics,” author Daniel James Brown told Herald columnist Julie Muhlstein last year. “Right from the beginning, I knew it was going to have to be about the human heart.”
A bit of serendipity led to Brown meeting Joe Rantz, one of the nine UW rowers, and the center of the book, and the documentary: Judy Rantz Willman, the daughter of Joe and Joyce Rantz, is Brown’s neighbor. In 2006, she was caring for her ailing father at her home. She had been reading to her father another book by Brown when the author came to visit, Muhlstein reported. Thus began a collaboration that culminated in the book, and now the documentary. (The rights have been sold for a feature film, but one has not been made yet.)
Rantz died in 2007 at age 93. The book was published in 2013. Its popularity grew steadily by word of mouth and has remained on the New York Times best-seller non-fiction list for 113 weeks.
It’s likely the documentary will create another wave of publicity for the book, and it couldn’t come at a better time. This summer marks the 80th anniversary of those 1936 Olympics — the triumph of the American rowers, and of course, and Jesse Owens, whose four gold medals transcended sports in an Olympics designed to showcase Germany’s supposed Aryan physical superiority.
During these often divisive times, it’s good to remember moments that inspired us, moments that rise above our disagreements, and remind us of values and traits we all admire.
Joe Rantz had to fend for himself from an early age. When he made it to the University of Washington, he worked as a janitor and lived at the YMCA. He worked on the Grand Coulee Dam during the summer to earn tuition. He and most of his fellow rowers were “have nots.” They wore early “Seattle casual” because they couldn’t afford anything else. They won gold at the Olympics and then came home and finished school and/or went to work. And married their sweethearts and raised families.
The rowers, especially Joe Rantz, would be able to relate to this quote from Jesse Owens: “The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that’s what counts.”
The human heart. They break. They soar. They beat with pride. Watch “The Boys of ‘36” (9 p.m. Tuesday, PBS.) Read the book. Watch Jesse Owens’ biopic, “Race.” Be inspired. And then cheer on this year’s Olympians.
