Tradition on the Charles

Temperatures in Boston were in the low 60s on Oct. 16, 1965, when more than 250 oarsmen in nearly 100 boats gathered at Boston University’s DeWolfe Boathouse on the Charles River.

Coached by 29-year-old Harry Parker, crews from Harvard were set to compete against boats from MIT, Penn, Northeastern, and Dartmouth as well as the Vesper and Potomac Boat Clubs in the first-ever Head of the Charles Regatta.

At 1:30, the event was underway amidst a light rain, and would be over within three-and-a-half hours.

“Nobody quite knew what to expect,” recalls Parker, who had represented the United States in the single sculls at the Rome Summer Olympics five years prior. “There weren’t a lot of participants.”

That was something that would change very quickly.

Fast-forward 48 years, and Parker, now just over a week away from his 77th birthday, is still heading the Crimson men’s crew program.

But other than that constant, one would find few similarities between today’s event and that of nearly a half-century ago.

The Head of the Charles is now the largest two-day regatta in the world. One weekend every October, nearly 9,000 athletes from all around the globe race more than 1,900 boats in 55 events as approximately 300,000 people look on.

“It’s a great kind of reunion for all kinds of competitors, from various high school programs to college programs to club programs,” says Elizabeth Diamond, Director of Operations for the Regatta. “[That’s what] brings everyone back every year.”

IN THE BEGINNING

In 1964, Harvard sculling instructor Ernest Arlett proposed an idea for a “head of the river” race. Such time-trial competitions were traditional in Arlett’s native England, where London’s own head race was held annually in early March.

At that point, crew was not considered a fall sport in the United States. But Cambridge Boat Club members D’Arcy MacMahon, Howard McIntyre, and Jack Vincent liked Arlett’s idea and decided to organize such an event—one that would combine high school, collegiate, and club rowing—to complement their training.

“We had wound up our rowing careers in college and wanted to give something back to the sport that had given us so much,” MacMahon recalls. “So we decided to start a little informal regatta—where emphasis would be on fun, and there wouldn't be too much emphasis on who was winning and who was losing.”

MacMahon thus approached Parker about having his rowers compete, allowing the coach to waive all entry fees.

“I think their primary interest was in masters sculling,” Parker says. “There weren’t any races for master scullers in those days, but they had a number of them at the boat club.”

Like most English rivers, the Charles was too narrow for all competitors to begin at the same time, leading organizers to structure the races so that rowers would start at intervals of approximately 10 seconds and race against the clock.

“We were reasonably sure that it wouldn't work, that it wouldn't appeal to anybody because it was the wrong time of year, but we set up and decided to try it out,” MacMahon says.

Following the first-ever Regatta—which covered 3.2 miles and passed under six bridges—an IBM computer cataloged the boats’ times into 12 racing divisions.

In the featured “four with cox” race, the Harvard boat of Paul Gunderson, Geoff Picard, Harry Pollock, and Bill Weber—which had represented the United States at the Tokyo Olympics during the summer of 1964—finished second after covering the tricky course in 19:14, 10 seconds behind the winning Penn boat.

“Harry Parker always liked to do long rows,” says Gunderson, who now works as a surgeon in Enumclaw, Wash. “So doing the Head of the Charles was pretty routine for us.”

In the individual races, two rowers representing Eliot House—senior Paul Wilson and junior Larry Fogelberg—won the college singles competition and the 155-pound senior singles division, respectively. (Initially, Harvard houses would enter their own teams because the Ivy League refused to allow its rowers to participate, fearing this would set a dangerous precedent for offseason competition.) Wilson would go on to win the championship singles race in every year from 1967 to 1970.

“[The first Regatta] was pretty low key,” Parker says. “It was cold and windy, but it happened, and it turned out there was a lot more interest than they had anticipated, and it started growing right away.”

RAPID GROWTH

Crews from the Union Boat Club, the University of Wisconsin, and a number of other organizations were added to the Regatta for its second year as attendance soared thanks in part to a misunderstanding.

“The first year certainly nobody came to watch [the race],” MacMahon says. “But afterwards US Rowing printed a manual which reported on rowing activities for the year, so I had to write about the Head of the Charles Regatta. My opening line was ‘Countless thousands lined the shores,’ which was supposed to be humorous, but people believed it and took it literally. A lot of people who weren't there [the first year thus] thought, ‘I better go to this Regatta.’ So it became sort of the thing to go to."

By 1967, 450 oarsmen were competing, already making the Regatta the largest in North America. The race grew to 600 participants the following year, with schools from as far west as Santa Barbara, Calif. taking part.

“It has become for rowing what the Boston Marathon is for running,” The Crimson wrote of the Regatta in 1968, noting that every Ivy League school besides Cornell was represented following the lifting of the league-wide ban on fall varsity crew competition.

In 1968, Harvard won its first Paul Revere Point Trophy, which was awarded to the college, club, or school with the highest number of overall points.

“For quite a while at [the] Cambridge Boat Club, they would rig or skew the points system so that they always won,” Parker says with a laugh. “Then they began to be a little bit more transparent and fair about it, and we began to win quite a few [Revere Trophies], largely because we have a lot of entries.”

Such success was abundant in the final Regatta of the decade, when Harvard oarsmen won the three major team races against an increasingly large field. By 1970, the event had grown to include 900 competitors in 232 boats representing 48 rowing clubs, colleges, and high schools from the United States and Canada.

­Within a half-decade, the Regatta had become the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

“Even in the ’60s it grew quite quickly,” Parker says. “Everybody was surprised, I think the organizers in particular. They made no arrangements for visiting crews.... It was actually quite a burden on the boathouses along the river, Newell in particular. We ended up many of those years with half of the entrants boating in our boathouse. It was a major headache.”

Yet that problem—which Parker says continued into the ’80s—did little to slow the Head’s rapid expansion. In 1973, over 30,000 people showed up to watch the defending national champion Radcliffe eights and the men’s championship four lead the Crimson to another Revere Trophy. The following year’s race featured a then-record 2,530 rowers, and the thousands in attendance—bundled in blankets and consuming rum and fried chicken—were able to watch the reigning World Champion U.S. men’s eight, featuring four Harvard oarsmen, row by. In 1976, Radcliffe won the championship fours race for the second time.

By the decade’s end, the Head was already regarded as “the rowing world’s fall classic” and “the rowing Mecca of the world,” featuring upwards of 3,200 rowers and 720 shells as crowds of 60,000 took in the action.

And thanks to a propitious rule change, Parker was even able to compete at the event himself.

“The international body’s rules declared that paid coaches could not race as amateurs,” Parker explains. “But then in 1973 we changed that rule because we had a coach from Columbia who had stopped coaching and then wanted to compete again.... I remember sitting at that meeting when the vote was taken and thinking, ‘Hey, that means I can compete in the Head of the Charles.’”

That was something Parker would do in the majority of Heads from that point forward.

VICTORY ALL-AROUND

The 1980 Regatta was among the most highly anticipated to date, as it featured a matchup between the West German and American Olympic men’s eight boats—a race that was expected to take place in Moscow the previous summer but did not due to the American boycott.

The United States Olympic Committee provided transportation and living expenses for the racers, who included former Harvard captain Charlie Altekruse ’80. To compete for the Americans, Altekruse returned for the weekend from Germany, where he was studying abroad. Led by Altekruse, the United States took third place in the featured event, finishing behind Navy and West Germany.

“A couple of guys had ballooned up 20, 30 pounds, so we were not in racing form, that’s for sure,” Altekruse recalls. “[But] we had enough residual fitness to get down the course in a reasonable amount of time.”

In 1981, despite concerns over the cleanliness of the Charles, the Regatta had become so popular that organizers had to turn away 300 applicants from spots in the 18 events. The following year, attendance broke the 100,000 mark, and by the middle of the decade, the race had grown to include 3,500 competitors.

“We've had to limit its size because the river wasn't getting any wider,” MacMahon says. “The first year we had a system that limited entries I didn't get in...so it's a system that's incredibly fair.”

Also in 1981, Parker won the veterans’ division race for the first—and to date only—time.

“It was fun because I had been racing against a bunch of those guys in the championship singles over the years,” Parker says. “Obviously we weren’t finishing very high up, with all the young guys, [until] we all moved into the veterans’ division.”

In 1983 Andy Sudduth ’85—one of Parker’s former rowers—also found success at the Head of the Charles when he won the championship singles race. Sudduth, who died in 2006, went on to win the single’s race in five consecutive Regattas while serving as a computer programmer at Harvard.

“It stands out, there’s no question about that,” Parker says. “[Sudduth] was an extraordinary athlete and oarsman.... He’s certainly the best sculler we’ve ever had.”

As Harvard racers continued to win—the Crimson took the championship doubles race in 1984—the Regatta continued to expand. By 1988, it had grown to include 850 boats which raced during a day that now lasted eight hours—more than twice its original length.

“It got to the point where after about 20 years the [Metropolitian District Commission] was going to charge us something outrageous to run it because it was attracting such crowds,” MacMahon says. “So we did everything we could to hold the crowds down. We put the wrong date in the Globe, but it didn't work.”

In the final Regatta of the decade, history was made again when the the 1964 U.S. Olympic men’s eight celebrated the anniversary of its Tokyo gold medal by taking on the 1968 USSR Olympic squad, which came from Lithuania to challenge the Americans.

“We all began to recognize that this was a terrific event and was attracting rowers from all over the country and overseas,” Parker says. “It was a true national celebration of rowing as a sport, and it began to attract national attention.”

THE CRACKDOWN

As interest in the Regatta continued to grow, officials placed a greater focus on those attending it.

During these years, the event had come to have an increasingly festive feel for spectators, who would heavily imbibe champagne and drink from beer kegs and buckets of Bloody Marys. (The Crimson estimated there were 44,000 consumed of the latter in 1985.) In 1987, former Northeastern coach Buzz Congram commented that the race was attended by “drunken stumblebums” who made the event “ugly [and] unruly.” Former BU coach Joe Falco added that the Regatta was “getting out of hand...[with] more people getting drunk than watching the races.”

Such activity led to a crackdown by the Metropolitan District Commission, making 1987 “the first (allegedly) rowdiness-free Head of the Charles Regatta weekend,” according to The Crimson.

“[The changes came] all of a sudden,” Parker says. “The MDC just suddenly took a ban on alcohol. Came around and confiscated it without much notice ahead of time.”

According to a 1987 Crimson piece, Harvard administrators also “decided to exercise unprecedented authority over the Harvard community and the banks of the Charles in an attempt to curtail the craziness that has plagued the Heads of the past.”

Outsider access was strictly limited in all Houses, and parties were banned in some. The MDC assigned 300 police officers to the Regatta and threatened to cancel the event in the future if behavior did not change.

The security crackdown infuriated the student body.

“The only thing [this] will accomplish is the suffocation of Harvard’s none-too-healthy social life,” wrote The Crimson in one 1987 editorial.

The new measures worked, with the result that by decade’s end, on Head of the Charles weekend, “a Saturday night reveler would have had an easier time getting into heaven than into Eliot House,” according to the newspaper. But in the short term, they also served to diminish the number of attendees.

“[The new measures] changed the tone of the Regatta for spectators significantly,” Parker says. “It went from having huge crowds all around the river to much smaller ones.”

The small crowds did not last, but student complaints persisted.

In the ’90s, the extra security measures continued to dominate undergraduate storylines on race weekend. They led one student to compare the school to a “prison,” another to comment that the measures made it “one of the worst weekends [at Harvard],” and a 1994 Crimson editorial to be entitled “Students Suffer on Head Weekend.”

“The commie pinko pigs are trying to ruin our lives,” said one student in 1995, adding that he was going to Brown to escape the Regatta weekend crackdown.

These sentiments notwithstanding, the administration continued to emphasize strict security measures and guest and party limitations during Head of the Charles weekend, and such policies remain in place today.

THE REVIVAL

Despite the short-term drop in attendance that such measures brought about in the late ’80s, interest in participating in the Regatta itself continued to rise as the new decade began.

“About 1990, somewhere in that time frame, the Regatta became so popular that they restricted you so that you could only row one time,” says Altekruse, who now runs a consulting company in Berkeley, Calif. “Before 1990 we could row multiple times.... When I was an undergrad, I rowed three times in a day, which is unbelievable.”

In 1990, television crews from the documentary series American Chronicles filmed competitors in the 25th edition of the Regatta, which had returned to drawing crowds (now much more family-friendly) of 200,000 and included participants from more than 250 colleges and athletic clubs.

By 1992, the number of racers had broken the 4,000 mark, and the once alcohol-soaked banks had been overtaken by a number of food and business vendors from around Boston.

Though the Regatta was canceled due to heavy rain for the first time in 1996, officials expanded the competition into a two-day event in 1997 thanks in part to the revived attendance.

That year, hundreds of companies distributed everything ranging from apple cider to mouthwash while the Crimson men’s heavyweight crew’s second-place finish behind the U.S. national team excited many.

In 1998, MacMahon's son started the Head of the Charles Regatta Charity Program, which has since raised over $650,000 for its official charities, which include Cambridge Community Foundation and Community Rowing, Inc.

“The good that comes out of [the Regatta] isn't really entertaining the public, it’s doing some good for non-profits in Cambridge and Boston communities” MacMahon says. “I think the charity aspect has been very important.”

Meanwhile, the 35th edition of the race in 1999 brought an estimated crowd of 300,000 people, who had an opportunity to enjoy free samples from Dunkin’ Donuts and Ben & Jerry’s as well as a variety of foods ranging from Italian sausages to clam chowder.

“The Head of the Charles has done a pretty aggressive job of promoting corporate interests, putting up tents for retailers and the like,” Parker says. “So it has a very different flavor to it [than when it began].”

This fact is one that still bothers MacMahon.

“I am concerned about the degree to which [the Regatta has] become commercial,” he says. “We built it into the largest regatta in the world without any one of us being paid to do anything. Now it has a budget of a million dollars a year.... It's because it became so big that it required corporate sponsorship to keep it going. It's sort of a necessary evil.”

THE MODERN ERA

By the mid-2000s, the race had expanded to include 1,500 boats and 7,000 rowers—turning away 1,000 entries—and had added a showcase of Boston bands. Today, it features 1,900 boats and 9,000 competitors—ranging in age from 14 to 84—as well as 55 events that routinely draw crowds of 300,000 picnickers, frisbee-throwers, and crew fans who enjoy the wide array of different foods, apparel, and product samples.

“[When I raced] there weren’t as many vendors and it wasn’t as commercial as it’s become,” Altekruse says. “It was much more of a cow pasture regatta back then.”

But the winding, 3.2-mile course beginning at DeWolfe Boathouse and ending just before Northeastern’s Henderson Boathouse remains the same, often challenging racers who are expected to navigate six bridges and a number of turns that often lead to collisions.

“There’s always the home-team advantage,” Gunderson says. “If you know how to cut the corners a bit, you’re that much better off.”

Though the event has also become more internationalized over the years—with rowers from 19 countries partaking in last year’s edition—many traditions have remained the same. The 1972 Olympic team has returned to the Regatta for a reunion every year since the Munich Games—tomorrow will be its 40th consecutive appearance—and the 1980 Olympic squad has done the same since its Games.

“There was a special chemistry of how we rowed and how we raced together,” Altekruse says of his 1980 team. “That chemistry has to some degree prevailed to this day and it allows us to come together really with just a Friday afternoon practice and be competitive year after year for the top two or three places, and I think that’s the most remarkable thing to me.”

Over the years, a number of Harvard and Radcliffe teams have found similar success, winning 40 Head championships in total. Last year’s men’s heavyweight crew won the premier eights race at the Regatta for the first time in 34 years, helping the Crimson earn the MacMahon Cup Regatta Point Trophy—named after the organizer—for the “non-traditional” (club or collegiate) team that demonstrates “overall rowing supremacy at the Regatta.”

“I’d say it was probably my favorite race ever, just because our success was such a surprise,” says junior Andrew Reed, who was one of the premier eights racers. “We went in with no expectations at all, so to come out winning just felt so great.”

That excitement is shared by many who participate in the Regatta, which since originating on a dreary October day has continued to grow over nearly a half-century and has now become one of the most revered traditions in the sport.

“It’s amazing when you have an event like that, when there’s so many crews on the water at one time,” Gunderson says. “It’s a real unique thing—there aren’t many places where you can see that.”

—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.