Head Of The Charles Regatta 2018 HOCR Program | Page 39

Then it was time to race.
We approached the starting
line at full tilt, ignoring the starter’s
instructions to build slowly into it. I
matched my strokes to Parker’s as
best I could, even though our rhythm
felt a bit rushed and the stroke length
curtailed. Still, I could feel that our
boat moving along at decent clip.
After one minute, no one had moved
on us. Another minute passed, and
sure enough, just before we got to
Riverside, we began to overtake the
two friendly guys who’d said ‘hi’ to us
during our warm up. As we went
by, they actually started cheering
us on. That was weird, I thought.
They wanted us to pass them.
At Weeks Bridge, however, our
luck ran out, when a slower double
right in front of us refused to move
over.
“Port pressure,” I said.
“Why?” Parker barked back
at me.
“Boat in front of us,” I gasped.
“They won’t move.”
“Run into them!” Parker shouted.
We charged ahead, briefly clash-
ing blades with the other double.
Our adversaries looked at us,
surprised and bewildered, as the
angry man in the back of our boat
glowered at them. When Harry was
unhappy his face seemed to lengthen
and turn to granite, like some sort of
ancient gargoyle.
“YIELD!” Parker shouted.
By now I was already spent,
but there was still over a mile to go.
Fortunately, crowds of alumni and
Harvard oarsmen cheered us on
from Anderson Bridge and then from
Newell as we chugged by. My legs
and lungs were riddled with pain, and
for the last two minutes of the race I
resorted to counting off sets of 10 to
myself, like a prisoner marking off the
final days of his confinement.
When we finally finished, I felt
that awful feeling in my arms and
legs and lungs, like I’d swallowed poi-
son and it was now running through
my veins.
“Good job!” Harry said, turn-
ing around and patting my foot as I
gasped for breath.
He was jubilant as we rowed
back to Newell, bantering with other
boats and teasing them as they went
by. Back at Newell, Greg Stone asked
PRESENTED BY BNY MELLON
me how it went.
“It was an interesting experience,”
I said. “But I’m not sure I’ll repeat it.”
He smiled and nodded.
It was, in fact, the first and last
time I rowed with Mr. Parker. A few
days later his wife, Kathy Keeler,
revealed to me that when the race
results were posted Harry became
less enthusiastic about our perfor-
mance. Finishing 29 out of 44 boats,
we didn’t do all that much better than
his previous year’s outing with his
son—despite passing 2 or 3 boats and
“Boat in front of us,” I gasped.
“They won’t move.”
“Run into them!” Parker shouted.
not getting passed. Harry eventually
went back in his single, competing in
the Head for several years, doing well
in the senior master and grand master
events before taking on his long battle
with myelodyspastic syndrome, a rare
blood disease, which eventually took
his life when he was 77.

A FEW YEARS AFTER HIS PASSING,
I was out on the river with a group of
master’s scullers who had taken up
the sport of rowing in the latter half of
their lives. Among the group was a guy
who had been quite successful in the
business world, who was not shy about
broadcasting his various achievements
to others. Somehow, as we rowed
along, the topic of Harvard and Harry
Parker came up.
“Yeah, I beat Harry Parker once,
during his last Head of the Charles,”
the guy said, bragging to his water-
borne cronies.
I looked at him quietly, not saying
a word, until he finally added:
“Of course, that was when he was
dealing with cancer.”
I shook my head and rowed away,
wondering what Parker would have
done.
FIFTY-FOURTH HEAD OF THE CHARLES REGATTA
39