USRowing Profile Summer 2008
Fairmount Rowing Association had been rowing 60 years when its board became concerned that members were not aware of all the club activities. Then rower Edward Jonik decided to print the Fairmount Log, a repository of results, stories and humor that was distributed to club members at 2 Boathouse Row. He promised, “It will cover all club affairs for all members. The Log hopes that Fairmount will thus become still more important and still more valuable to every one of its members.”
The newsletter was printed from 1937 until 1951, and throughout World War II served as a way for soldiers to communicate with each other and the people back home.
The club’s fun-loving attitude and self-deprecating humor did not fade. Even today, Fairmount seems to balance the intensity of rowing and the cheerfulness of camaraderie.
Fairmount Rowing Association from its beginning was different from the other clubs lining Philadelphia’s historic Boathouse Row. Lee Silverberg, recording secretary of Fairmount, has tracked the changes.
“Probably the differences aren’t as pronounced anymore, but it was a workingman’s club when it started, mostly made up of kids from the Fairmount neighborhood,” Silverberg said. “It wasn’t like all the other clubs that were largely upper-crust, white-collar professionals and the like. There were a lot of blue-collar kids in the club. Some white-collar, but they all worked. None of these guys were born into money.”
The working-class mentality initially created a little tension on Boathouse Row, but Fairmount rowers did not care. “These guys didn’t take themselves too seriously,” Silverberg said.
In 1889, one race was delayed until past 8:00 p.m. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that when asked whether they wished to postpone the race until the next day, the Fairmount bowman responded, “Row her now. We want to have some beer tonight.”
The club was still thirsty in 1942, and still funny. One piece from the Fairmount Log urged members, “Spend your Sunday Air Raids at Fairmount’s Wonder Bar….You might get hit elsewhere, but you’re sure to get half hit there.”
In the wartime editions, the log served a new function, as rowers-turned-soldiers used its letters section to communicate with the community back home as well as one another. The club kept track of addresses so that mail could be delivered to and from the soldiers.
The log continued to record rowing results and gossip in the summer, club basketball games and cross country meets in the winter. Jonik, the original editor, left his position 1947. Others took over as editor, but the last issue appeared in 1951.
Silverberg resurrected The Fairmount Log in 2003 and is its current editor. He provides a product similar to the original, a cocktail of race results; rowing and social news; tongue-in-cheek humor; and boathouse gossip.
“I tried to emulate what was in the old logs,” Silverberg said. “I wanted it to be in the same vein. If you look back at that stuff, there was a lot of humor in there, there was a lot of funny stuff in there as well as race coverage and letters from GIs.”
Today the club still prints letters from soldiers, such as Master Sergeant Curt Kaufmann, who is stationed in the Middle East.
Silverberg also updated the log to suit its modern audience. It is now distributed over e-mail, with a few print copies for those who do not have a computer or e-mail address. Contributions from Fairmount members can be e-mailed to Silverberg, who constructs the entire newsletter on a computer.
“It’s a lot easier than in the old days,” Silverberg said. “It’s really a big production. I’m always kind of amazed that they did it. They had to type it out, take it over to a printer, get a hundred or so copies printed out, and then mail them, and they mailed them to everybody. It was a really amazing production.”
The modern log is now five years old and has a strong following within, and even outside, the club. It was dubbed “The Boathouse Row Newsletter of Record” by Cliff Pearlman, who published the Penn Athletic Club newsletter.
Amid the club, high school, and college racing results; letters; pictures; and snippets of Fairmount history, there is still room for fun. Each January the “Unisuit Issue” appears, lampooning Sports Illustrated’s “Swimsuit Edition.” “I try to do things that are funny, and I thought it would be pretty funny to have pictures of overweight bald guys bulging out of their unisuits,” said Silverberg.
The humor echoes the ironic wit of the WWII log issues and the good humor from the club’s early history. “I think the basic personality of the club, from what I can tell, has been the same throughout its entire history,” Silverberg said. The personality is immortal, recorded in each new edition of the Fairmount Log, which succeeds in fulfilling the mission stated in the first edition in 1937: “To promote rowing and good fellowship.”