Happy Birthday Carolyn Schuler!!
Carolyn Schuler (USA)
Honor Swimmer (1989)
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1960 gold (100m butterfly; relay); WORLD RECORDS: 1 (relay); AAU NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS: 3 (relay); AMERICAN RECORDS: 4 (100m butterfly; relays).
Carolyn Schuler, winner of two gold medals at the Rome Olympics was simply a case of a girl ready to swim. She had never won an individual National Championship. Often she was fourth in her favorite event, even on her own Berkeley Y Team, a remarkable group of only five girls, who twice won the A.A.U. National Championship. Her only American record was while swimming first on the medley relay in the long course Nationals. Yet she was always up there getting valuable team points and swimming her best times under pressure when team relays were depending on her.
At the 1960 U.S. Olympic Trials, her former teammate Ann Bancroft qualified first in the 100 meter butterfly but in the finals. Carolyn Schuyler beat her for second place by a finger tip and made the team.
Carolyn Wood had won the Olympic Trials and by the time they got to Rome there was still nothing to make Schuler the favorite over Wood. But the unexpected happened. Carolyn Schuler came through, first by winning the heats in an Olympic record qualifying time. Wood was still favored to beat her as were at least two other world class swimmers from the Netherlands & Australia. In a frenzied race the two Carolyns were stroke for stroke when Miss Wood suddenly grabbed the lane line. She had choked, swallowing too much water on the turn. Carolyn Schuler streaked to a meter victory over Marianne Hemmskerk breaking the Olympic record she had set in the heats. Her victory meant that she and not Wood would swim on the medley relay which was old stuff to team swimmer Schuler, who was used to winning on relays. They did and she did in world record time as Schuler again went under her Olympic record time to give Chris Von Saltza a lead after the butterfly leg. For the fourth time she set an American record as part of a 400 meter medley relay.
Her series of personal best times were 1:09.8 in the 100 meter butterfly heats, 1:09.5 in the finals and 1:08.9 in the relay
Throwback Thursday: South African 12-Year-Old WR Setter Karen Muir Was Overlooked Star
by JOHN LOHN – EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
04 January 2024, 03:11am
Throwback Thursday: South African 12-Year-Old WR Setter Karen Muir Was Overlooked Star
On occasion, we highlight athletes from the past who did not receive their proper recognition, due to no fault of their own. In this installment of the series, we examine the career of South African backstroker Karen Muir.
Mexico City should have been her stage. It should have offered her the opportunity for Olympic glory. It should have been the site of Karen Muir’s greatest accomplishment, the one accolade missing from the South African’s Hall of Fame career. Alas, the backstroke sensation could do nothing more than watch.
We’ve written before about the intersection of sports and politics, and the toxic reaction when they are mixed. In the case of Muir, the denial of an Olympic berth was connected to her homeland’s apartheid policies.
From 1964 through 1988, the International Olympic Committee banned South Africa from competing in the Games, due to the South African National Olympic Committee’s refusal to oppose apartheid practices. Among the athletes caught in the controversy was Muir, who was a rising star in the backstroke events.
Although she was not a factor to compete at the 1964 Olympics, the first Games in which South Africa was banned, she would have been a leading medal contender at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. That potential was realized in August 1965 when Muir stunningly set a world record in the 110 yard backstroke—at the mind-boggling age of 12 years, 10 months and 25 days.
Racing at the British National Championships as an international invitee, Muir clocked 1:08.7, a global standard in a swim that was supposed to be an experience-supplying outing. Muir is recognized as the youngest world record holder in history.
“It has been a bit too much, and I still cannot really believe that I am the holder of the world record,” Muir said of her breakthrough performance. “It’s like something out of a fairytale. Everyone has been very kind and wonderful, but I am glad that the fuss is finished. Now all I want to do is to forget all the fuss and get back to my schoolwork.”
If Muir thought the hoopla surrounding her would subside, she was mistaken. The pre-teen world record set by the South African simply launched her into the spotlight, as she maintained a steady presence among the world’s elite for the remainder of the 1960s. Over the course of her career, additional world records arrived in the 100 and 200 meter backstrokes, along with the 110 and 220 yard backstrokes, the latter events still common for the era. More, she set a global mark in the 440 yard individual medley, an effort that was a testament to her multi-stroke talent.
Yet, for as much as Muir could control during training and her competitive forays, she did not have any influence on what took place in sporting offices around the world or on governmental decisions. Consequently, when the 1968 Olympics were held, Muir was missing, her absence a sad footnote in history.
At the time of the Games, she was the world record holder in the 100 and 200 meter backstroke. Obviously, Muir would have challenged for gold in both events, the titles ultimately going to American Kaye Hall (100) and the USA’s Pokey Watson (200). Canadian Elaine Tanner, a friend and rival of Muir’s, was the silver medalist in each race.
In 1969, in what could be deemed as her response to missing the 1968 Olympics, Muir broke Hall’s world record in the 100 backstroke, touching the wall in 1:05.6. The record endured for four years—until it was broken by East Germany’s Ulrike Richter, who was later found to be part of her country’s systematic doping program.
A 1980 inductee to the International Swimming Hall of Fame, Muir set 17 world records before retiring in 1970 at the age of 18. In 2013 at 60, she passed away after a battle with cancer.
“I’m heartbroken,” Tanner said of Muir’s death. “It’s like a piece of me has died, too. She was very quiet, very reserved. That was her nature. She let her performance speak for her.”
Happy Birthday Patty Caretto!!
Patty Caretto (USA)
Honor Swimmer (1987)
FOR THE RECORD: WORLD RECORDS: 7 (800m, 1500m, 800yd, 1650yd freestyle; 1 relay); AAU NATIONALS: 5 (500yd, 1650yd, 1500m freestyle; 1 relay); AMERICAN RECORDS: (800yd, 1650yd, 400m, 1500m freestyle; 1 relay).
Patty Caretto revolutionized women’s swimming with her windmill stroke — a continuous arm turnover and a two beat kick…She was the second youngest, the shortest and the smallest “giant” to set a world record at 13 years old, 98 pounds and 5 feet 1 inch tall. Patty’s specialty was the 1500 meter freestyle (metric mile), a distance swum by women everywhere but in the Olympics.
She went from a national champion and a world record holder in the summer of 1964 to the high point winner at the U.S. Indoor Nationals in the Spring of 1965, but missed the 1964 Olympics in November because she failed in a 400 meter swim-off against three world record holders at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Ironically, again, the only younger world record holder ever was backstroker Karen Muir (12 years old) of South Africa who also missed the 1964 Olympics because her country was banned by the International Olympic Committee. These two world record holders got to meet and swim in the same pool the next winter when Patty and her coach Don Gambril toured South Africa giving clinics and demonstrations in 1965.
This five foot dynamo broke world records eight times in the 1500 and 800 meter freestyle beating several Hall of Famers en route. She was swimming’s “queen of the mile” and held American records from the quarter mile on up. Patty was a swimming workaholic, a role model for her coac
Happy Birthday Charles Silvia!!
Charles Silvia (USA)
Honor Contributor (1976)
FOR THE RECORD: U.S. National Collegiate record holder: 300yd individual medley; College All-American; Captain, Springfield College Swim Team; Multi-sports coach: New Hampton School; Wibraham Academy; New Haven YMCA; Springfield College (from 1937); Assistant Coach: 1956 U.S. Olympic Team; Developed 50 college swim coaches; His swimmers set 14 World Records; President, College Swimming Coaches Association of America; President, Board Chairman, ISHOF; Recipient of Collegiate & Scholastic Swimming Trophy; Honoree in Helms (Citizens Savings) Hall of Fame; Author of Life Saving & Water Safety Today.
Charles “Red” Silvia coached Bill Yorzyk in a 20 yd. pool and brought him from a non-swimmer freshman in college, to a graduate student with Pan-American and Olympic gold medals, 13 World Records in freestyle and butterfly, and US. National AAU Championships in butterfly and individual medley. Yorzyk won the USA’s only 1956 Olympic gold in men’s swimming. In 1973, Davis Hart, another of Sylvia’s swimmers, set the record for the English Channel. In addition to revolutionizing the dolphin-butterfly stroke in the mid-1950s, Sylvia, in the late 40s, was the first to embrace mouth-to-mouth insufflations, the method of choice for artificial respiration. In 1967 Coach Silvia had 37 of his former pupils as college swim coaches, many more as medical doctors. He is a prime example of the multiplication factor in education. He has used swimming as an effective medium for the development of human potential and sent his students out into life with a sense of social responsibility that includes propagating his teaching in every possible environment.
Happy Birthday Chris von Saltza!!
Chris von Saltza (USA)
Honor Swimmer (1966)
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1960 gold (400m freestyle; 4x100m freestyle relay; 4x100m medley relay), silver (100m freestyle); WORLD RECORDS: 4; U.S. NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS: 32
Chris von Saltza was valedictorian of the first big group graduating from the Age-Group swim program. She held 4 world records and 32 American records in an era when FINA no longer accepted as world records our world’s fastest times done in the traditional American 25 yard (short course) pools.
Chris was picked as the outstanding girl swimmer of the 1960 Rome Olympics for her 3 gold medals and a silver. Her 4:44.5 world record for the 400 meter freestyle ended the domination by Australian girls in freestyle swimming and set standards ten seconds faster than the next fastest Americans were swimming. Earlier, she had been the first American girl to break 5 minutes.
While considered primarily a classic crawl swimmer, Chris also held the world record in the 200 meter backstroke. She won the maximum allotted four individual events plus relays in several U.S. Nationals, sparking her Santa Clara Swim Club to team victories. Her performances in 1960 were considerably ahead of the U.S. competition and helped spark the current renaissance in U.S. swimming.
An anxious mother once asked Chris’ doctor father how he could let his daughter swim so hard for so long, “Madam,” he said, “the longer the distance, the better the von Saltza.”
In route to the Olympics, Chris won five gold medals in the 1959 Pan American Games. Retiring one year after the 1960 Rome Olympics, Chris entered Stanford, majoring in Asian History. She took a leave of absence during 1963-64 to be a coach-consultant in Asia in the American Specialist Program under a State Department grant. She visited and taught competitive swimming in South Korea, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Chris was an assistant chaperone-coach for the U.S. girls at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
Happy Birthday Mark Schubert!!
Mark Schubert (USA)
Honor Coach (1997)
Ever since his college days as a swimmer and assistant coach at the University of Kentucky, he has had a fascination with fast, expensive sports cars. Now, his living is turning out fast swimmers. He likes speed and has turned his young swimmers into national and international speedster champions, creating one of the most impressive record books in the history of our sport.
Coach Dick Wells first introduced swimming to Mark Schubert at Harvey S. Firestone High School in Akron, Ohio, where, as a student, Mark swam the breaststroke and played trombone in the band. He attended Kentucky on a swimming scholarship, but served as assistant coach his last two years before working as swimming coach and teacher in the Cuyahoga Falls School District, Ohio for one year (1971-72).
In 1972, at the age of 23, he was offered the co-head coaching position with the Mission Viejo Nadadores Swim Team in California, directing a program of 55. The program grew to over 500 swimmers of all ages and abilities by 1985. Between 1972 and 1985 he amassed an AAU and USS Club National Championship record that proceeded to break Hall of Fame Coach George Haines’ Santa Clara Swim Club record of 43 national team championships. Mission Viejo won 44 team titles including 18 women’s team championships, 8 men’s team championships and 18 combined team championships.
While at Mission Viejo, his swimmers won 124 individual national championships, ten Olympic gold medals, six Olympic silver medals, one Olympic bronze medal, five individual World Championship titles, 88 American records and set 21 world records, all within a 13 year period. Schubert was named American Swimming Coaches Association, National Coach of the Year for 1975, 1976 and 1981. In 1981, for the first time in the history of swimming, his team captured all national team titles in one year, six team titles (men/women/combined), plus 15 individual national titles and 9 American records. One of his teams scored a record 1255 total points in the Nationals. His team competed internationally in Japan, Russia and other countries, conducting clinics and good will. If you add up the results of his swimmers competing in the 1979 Pan American Games, Mission Viejo would have finished 5th as a country.
In 1985, Mark moved from one Mission to another, directing the training and coaching of the Mission Bay Makos Swim Team in Boca Raton, Florida. During his three years there, his teams won another nine national team titles and placed three swimmers on the 1988 US Olympic Team, winning a silver medal.
Although Mark has been the most successful club coach in history, in 1989 he moved to the college coaching ranks as the University of Texas women’s coach, winning two NCAA Championships during his four year tenure. His Longhorn swimmers won 12 NCAA individual and eight relay titles, and Schubert was named 1990 NCAA Coach of the Year. As head coach of the Texas Aquatics Team during that time, his teams won another 10 USS national team titles.
Then it was back to California, taking the reigns of the women’s and men’s team from retired Hall of Fame coach Peter Daland at the University of Southern California. Since 1992, Schubert has established an impressive .822 winning percentage and placed in the NCAA top ten.
One of the world’s most highly respected coaches, Mark Schubert has served as US coach of many international traveling teams: 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1996 USA Olympic assistant coach and 1992 USA Olympic Head Women’s Coach – the most of any active US coach. He has been the 1978, 1986, 1991 and 1994 USA World Championship Assistant Coach and 1982 USA World Championship Head Coach.
His Olympic gold medal swimmers include Brian Goodell (1976), Shirley Babashoff (1976), Mary T. Meagher (1984), Tiffany Cohen (1984), Mike O’Brien (1984), Dara Torres (1984), Rich Saeger (1984), Janet Evans (1992), Brad Bridgewater (1996) and Kristine Quance (1996). Other Olympic swimmers include Casey Converse (1976), Maryanne Graham (1976), Nicole Kramer (1976), Marsha Morey (1976), Steve Barnicoat (1980), Jesse Vassallo (1980), Brian Goodell (1980), MaryBeth Linzmeier (1980), Dan Veatch (1988), Erika Hansen (1988), Susan Johnson (1988), Erika Hansen (1992), Lawrence Frostad (1992) and Janet Evans (1996). His world record holders include Goodell, Babashoff, Jesse Vassallo, Ricardo Prado, Alice Brown and Sippy Woodhead. His World Championships swimmers who medaled in competition include: Babashoff (1975), Goodell (1975), Valerie Lee (1975), Vassallo (1978) Dan Veatch (1986) Mike O’Brien (1986), Lee Ann Fetter (1991), Janet Evans (1994) and Kristine Quance (1994). Other swimmers who have made the teams from 1973 through 1994: Peggy Tosdal, Mary Beth Linzmeyer, Bill Barret, Robin Leamey, Steve Barnicoat, Whitney Hedgepeth, Jodi Wilson, Beth Barr, Erika Hansen and Lawrence Frostad.
In his 25 years of coaching, Schubert has placed 22 swimmers on US Olympic teams, winning twelve gold, seven silver and one bronze medal. They have broken 21 world records, 97 American records and have won 160 US national individual titles with 65 national team titles.
Mark knows how to bring out the best in each swimmer. His long-time assistant, Jack Roach, said, “Mark knows how to orchestrate a work out. He utilizes all parts of the facility at one time and everyone from staff to the youngest swimmer feels involved and important.” Coach Dick Wells says, “It is his ability to transfer the technical aspects of the sport to the swimmer. The amount of work he can get out of each swimmer and himself is phenomenal.” Mark would say to his swimmer, “You’re not going to fail for lack of training.”; a philosophy he placed upon himself, too. Mark has a hard-nosed, no-nonsense reputation that carried over into the success of his swimmers. As Brian Goodell put it, “Everything I learned from him, I carried over into my everyday life.”
Mark lives with his wife Joke, who has served as US Team Manager for numerous international trips, and two children, Tatum (20) and Leigh (18), both swimmers.
Mark has served on various USS administrative committees including Steering, Olympic Operations and Technical Planning as well as the ASCA Board of Directors and the College Swim Coaches Association of America Vice President.
Happy Birthday Don Gambril!!
Don Gambril (USA)
Honor Swimmer (1983)
FOR THE RECORD: 1984 U.S. Olympic Coach; Assistant U.S. Olympic Coach: 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980; Assistant Coach: 1978 World Championships; Coach of 1977 World University Games; Head coach at the University of Alabama beginning 1971; His career record from 1966-1982: 4 NAAU team championships; 1 NCAA College Division Championship; 4 times finished in the top 5 NCAA Championships; 178 wins and 22 losses in dual meets; 114 of his swimmers received All-American honors; His swimmers held at least 10 World Records.
The United States head Olympic swim coach for 1984 has served his apprenticeship on every level of swim coaching. Known throughout the world for his ability to work harmoniously with star swimmers and coaches alike, Don Gambril has been a member of the U.S. Olympic coaching staff five times in ’68, ’72, ’76, ’80 and ’84 following the great success of his swimmers in ’64. It was just after the Tokyo Olympics that he was named “Coach of the Year” by his 2,000 peers in the American Swim Coaches Association. 16 years later, he was elected the President of this largest swim coaching body in the world. Gambril has always paid his dues, serving as a member of the USOC, the AAU Men’s and Women’s Swim Committees, USS Board of Directors, NCAA Swimming Rules Committee. He has coached at City of Commerce, Pasadena City College, Philips 66 Long Beach, Long Beach State University and Harvard before coming to Alabama.
Among his famous swimmers are Hall of Famers Sharon Stouder (USA), and Gunnar Larsson (Sweden), who have won a total of 5 Olympic gold medals between them. He is also credited with developing Jonty Skinner, the supreme sprinter from South Africa who was denied the Olympics because of politics. The President of U.S. Swimming (Ross Wales) and the head coaches at Stanford (Skip Kenney), Arizona (Dick Jochums) and UCLA (Ron Ballatore) are among Don’s former swimmers and assistants who have hit the top along with Olympic team members from the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Germany, Brazil and ten other nations.
Happy Birthday Lynne Cox!!
Lynne Cox (USA)
Honor Open Water Swimmer (2000)
FOR THE RECORD: First crossing of the Catalina Island Channel (1971) 12:36 hrs.; Women’s and men’s record crossing of the English Channel (1972) 9:57 hrs.; Women’s and men’s record crossing of the English Channel (1973) 9:36 hrs., Catalina Island Channel crossing record (1974) 8:48 hrs.; Cook Straits between North and South Islands of New Zealand (1975) 12 hrs., 2 min.; Straits of Magellan (Chile), Oresund and Skagerrak (Scandinavia) (1976) 1 hr., 2 min.; Aleutian Islands (three channels) 1977; Cape of Good Hope (S. Africa) 1979; Around Joga Shima (Japan) 1980; Across three lakes in New Zealand’s Southern Alps (1983); Twelve difficult “Swims Across America” (1984); “Around the World in 80 Days”, 12 extremely challenging swims totaling 80+ miles (1985); Across the Bering Strait, U.S. to Soviet Union (1987) 2 hr., 6 min.; Across Lake Baikal, Soviet Union (1988); Across the Beagle Channel between Chile and Argentina (1990); Across the Spree River between the newly united German Republics (1990); Lake Titicaca Swim (1992).
Lynne Cox became the best cold water, long distance swimmer the world has ever seen. Her 5 foot 6 inch, 180-pound frame of a body was at one with the water. With a body density precisely that of sea water, her 36% body fat (normal is 18% to 25%) gave her neutral buoyancy. Her energy could be used all for propulsion and not to keep afloat. Propelling though the most treacherous waters of the globe is what Lynne Cox did best.
When her parents moved the family from New Hampshire to Los Alamitos, California in 1969 so that Lynne and her older brother and two sisters could receive better swim coaching, Hall of Fame coach Don Gambril, at the Phillips 66 Swim Club, took her under his guidance. What he saw was a large-boned girl with boundless energy and great upper body strength who could slice through the water like a porpoise. When she was 14 and already tired of “going back and forth in the pool and going nowhere”, Gambril urged her to enter a series of rough water swims near Long Beach. As a result in 1971, at age 14, she swam the 31-mile Catalina Channel in Southern California with four other friends. She loved it. The chill, the chop, the solitude, and the liberation were all exhilarating to Lynne. “Everything opened up. It was like going from a cage to freedom.”
For the next two decades, Lynne competed against the elements in swims which took her to all the major bodies of water in the world, many of which had not been crossed before and most of which had not been done by a woman. Her study of history at the University of California Santa Barbara may have been a catalyst in choosing which swims to pursue. It became her desire to use her swims to help bring people together, to work toward a more peaceful world. This realization was sparked during her 1975 swim as the first woman to swim the 10-mile Cook Straits in New Zealand in 12 hours 2-1/2 minutes. During this difficult swim, the outcry of support from the New Zealand people was all she needed to finish this 50 degree Fahrenheit swim, even when the tides and current had taken her farther away from the starting point after the first five hours of the crossing.
Her most famous swim was in 1987, eleven years after her father had planted the seed in her head. Lynne completed 2.7 miles in the Bering Straits, 350 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska where the water temperature ranges from 38-42 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps the most incredible of cold water swims, her 2 hours, 16 minutes from Little Diomede (USA) to Big Diomede (USSR) astonished the physiologists who were monitoring her swim. It marked one of the coldest swims ever completed. One can’t get much colder. After this temperature, the water turns to ice. It was a swim that brought the United States and Soviet Union together in an exchange of glasnost and perestroika. In Washington, Presidents Reagan and Gorbachov toasted Lynne’s swim saying that she “proved by her courage how closely to each other our peoples live”. Before this time, at the start of the Cold War, the families of the Diomede Islands had been split and had not been permitted to see one another since 1948.
Lynne is the purist of marathon swimmers. She does not wear a wet suit in frigid water and does not use a cage in shark infested waters. Her swims in Iceland’s 40 degree F Lake Myzvtan and Alaska’s 38 degree F Glacier Bay, where the lead boat had to break a path in the one quarter inch ice, were done wearing only a swim suit, cap and goggles. She wanted to do more than just achieve times and set records. And she did. But in the process, she became the fastest person to swim the English Channel (1972 and again in 1973), the first person to swim the Straits of Magellan (Chile) 4-1/2 miles, 42 degree F (1976), Norway to Sweden, 15 miles 44 degree F (1976), three bodies of water in the Aleutian Islands (USA) 8 miles total, 44 degree F (1977) and around the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) 10 miles, 70 degree F which attracted sharks, jellyfish and sea snakes (1978). Many other swims included Lake Biakal in the Soviet Union (1988), the Beagle Channel of Argentina and Chile (1990) and around the Japanese Island of Joga Shima. In 1994 at the age of 37 years, she swam the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea joining the 15 miles of 80-degree water between Egypt, Israel and Jordan. She has swum Lake Titicaca in the Andes Mountains, the world’s highest navigable lake.
Lynne works as an author, motivational lecturer, and teaches swimming technique both in the pool and open water.
Friends we Lost in 2023
It is always sad to recall all the wonderful friends and family we have lost throughout the year. Each December, we like to take a look back and once again remember our friends officially, one last time.
Honoree Ursula Carlisle https://ishof.org/australias-swimming-community-mourns-the-passing-of-national-treasure-coaching-pioneer-and-ishof-honoree-ursula-carlile/
Honoree John Devitt https://ishof.org/ishof-loses-australian-honoree-john-devitt/
Coach Frank Keefe https://ishof.org/legendary-coach-frank-keefe-dies-at-85-leaves-lasting-legacy-at-numerous-stops/
Honoree Shiro Hashizume https://ishof.org/ishof-1992-honor-swimmer-shiro-hashizume-japans-oldest-living-olympic-medalist-dies-at-age-94/
Honoree Pat Keller McCormick https://ishof.org/ishof-and-the-world-of-diving-loses-one-of-the-greats-pat-keller-mccormick-may-12-1930-march-7-2023/
Honoree Great Anderson https://ishof.org/ishof-and-marathon-swimming-world-suffers-a-great-loss-greta-anderson-may-1-1927-february-6-2023/
Honoree Thea deWit https://ishof.org/thea-de-wit-of-the-netherlands-a-pioneer-in-womens-water-polo-passes-away-on-january-31-2023/
How An Olympic Champion Saved a Life and Opened Doors: The Story of Crissy Perham and Dick Franklin
by MATTHEW DE GEORGE – SENIOR WRITER
27 December 2023
How An Olympic Champion Saved a Life and Raised Awareness: The Story of Crissy Perham and Dick Franklin
Olympic gold medalist Crissy Perham (competing as Crissy Ahmann-Leighton at the Barcelona Games in 1992) helped save the life of the parent of another Olympic gold medalist—Missy Franklin’s dad, Dick Franklin—by becoming a kidney donor in August 2022.
Crissy Perham is no stranger to intense focus on a goal. So when she saw the Facebook post shared into her feed in January 2022 and made a decision that would alter lives beyond her own, she turned on her tunnel vision.
Through mutual friends, Perham—who competed as Crissy Ahmann-Leighton when she won three medals at the 1992 Olympics—saw D.A. Franklin’s post that her husband, Dick, had reached end-stage kidney failure. To their network of friends, D.A. put out a request for a “Hail Mary” of an organ donor to save his life.
Perham saw the post, saw a chance to make a difference, and acted.
On went the blinders, honing her focus and containing her excitement: to avoid illness before donation, to check off boxes in preparing her side of the process mentally and emotionally, to be on top of her recovery after the transplant on Aug. 24, 2022, to stay healthy. The intense drive on not just the donation going well, but telling her and Dick’s story to advocate more to follow her path left little time for Perham to fully process all of what her choice meant to her.
So this September, more than a year after the surgery, Perham gratefully accepted an invitation to speak at the fifth annual Trivia for Life event in Denver, for the benefit of the American Transplant Foundation. When she got on the stage for her three-minute talk, Perham got as far as, “Thanks to the Franklin family and my husband, Charlie…” before a tidal wave of emotions overwhelmed her.
“I think I just, as a former athlete, you just march right through it,” Perham said last month. “To be a year removed from it—and realizing how amazing it was—is, I think, why it was so emotional a year post-op.”
Perham’s emotional response speaks volumes about her decision. Although she knew the reputation of Dick and D.A. Franklin—parents of Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin—she had never met them. Their famous daughter didn’t factor into Perham’s decision to donate, their plea finding her in the right life circumstances to give an organ—so much so that Perham had intended to originally remain anonymous.
The delayed upwelling of emotion underscores how routine a decision Perham felt she was making. But it also evinces the power in the extended family that the kidney, which the Franklins dubbed “Olympia,” has created. Across three generations of families and two eras of American Olympic swimmers, it’s not just a selfless deed, but a testament to the interconnectedness of the swimming world.
“There’s not really words to describe,” Missy said. “This person was already miraculous. The fact that they were a match, that they were willing to do this for my father—and then to find out that connection (as Olympic swimmers)—I think we were just speechless, all three of us. It was almost hard to wrap your mind around how unbelievable that connection was.”
FROM IOWA TO THE OLYMPICS
Whatever else time may dull, there remains a tenacity to Perham at age 53. It’s easy to square the life-changing donor with the scrappy rise of an Olympic gold medalist.
Photo Courtesy: Crissy Perham
That’s in part because at first, there was no pool. Perham was born Crissy Ahmann—she married for the first time while at the University of Arizona to become Ahmann-Leighton—in Yankton, South Dakota (population 11,919 in 1970), and raised in New London, Iowa (2,043).
Until a trip to her grandparents’ house in California at age 6, she swam only in ponds. When it came time to train seriously, her parents drove her the hour roundtrip to Burlington, Iowa. Her dad, Leo, a teacher and basketball coach, eventually moved the family to Benson, Ariz., when Crissy was in high school, where the trip to train at a proper facility would be the 47 miles each way to Tucson in her 1982 Toyota Tercel.
The slight 5-8 butterflyer cut a different figure than her more imposing peers like Jenny Thompson. But that didn’t stop Perham from winning a pair of NCAA titles with the Wildcats and taking down Mary T. Meagher’s hallowed short course yards record in the 100 fly.
It led her to the Barcelona Olympics, where she won a silver medal in the 100 fly, outtouched by 12-hundredths by China’s Qian Hong’s Olympic record. (Perham had been 1-hundredth of a second quicker than Qian’s time in winning Olympic Trials in March.) She added gold medals for prelims of the 400 free relay and the final of the 400 medley relay, the latter a world record with Thompson, Lea Loveless and Anita Nall.
Perham gave birth to her eldest son, Alex, while competing. She was one of several stars from 1992 who fell just short of a second Olympics at the 1996 Trials, then retired shortly thereafter. She married Charlie Perham, an engineer and retired colonel in the United States Air Force, the family traveling often to California, Virginia, Nevada and eventually Texas. She became a swim parent to Alex and her younger son, Ryan, who followed Crissy’s footsteps to swim at Arizona.
All of it positioned her to be ready to answer D.A.’s call for a donor, even if Perham can’t quite put a finger on why that was.
“It’s been over a year, and I wish I had a better answer,” she said. “But I don’t know why. It just made me want to do something.”
A DONOR’S DECISION
Perham’s journey as a donor, in broad strokes, is an amazing act of selflessness. Fill in the lines, and it reveals a portrait of the swim community’s interconnectedness.
“Team Kidney” Frank Busch, Patty Busch, D.A. Franklin and Charlie Perham. Photo Courtesy: Crissy Perham
Perham had never met the Franklin family before deciding to donate a kidney to Dick. She saw D.A.’s post thanks to a share from mutual friend David Arluck, the former agent and founder of Fitter and Faster. (Perham had never met Arluck in person, either.) One of the few people Perham confided in about her plans to donate was Frank Busch, her coach at Arizona and a friend of the Franklin family from his tenure with USA Swimming while Missy was one of the program’s stars.
Perham intended to donate anonymously, a complicated decision that requires donor and recipient wanting to know the identity of the other and pursue a relationship. But Busch convinced Perham that getting to know the Franklins would be beneficial. Perham assented only a month before the procedure. “Frank was like, I think that you should meet them. I think they should know it’s you,” Perham said. “We’re a swimming family, they’re amazing people, you’re amazing for doing this.”
That group comprised the support network as the transplant neared. Perham stayed with the Busches before her procedure. Frank, his wife Patty, D.A. and Charlie were there the day of the surgery to provide moral and logistical support.
“Crissy didn’t know us from Adam,” Franklin said. “She knew of us, but there wasn’t a personal story. This was genuinely coming from the straight-up goodness of her heart…of ‘someone is in need and I could potentially fill that need, so I’m going to try.’ That in and of itself was incredible. And when we got to know Crissy…and it was like, oh my gosh, we could not have picked anyone better to become family! We absolutely adore her and Charlie.”
Perham knew of the Franklins and had watched Missy’s career from afar. She identifies as an Olympic junkie, even before her career. She remembers watching the 1976 Games as a kid and cites the 1980 Winter Olympics and 1984 Summer Games on American soil as “transformative” in shaping her goals. So of course she knew of Franklin’s achievements, of the five Olympic gold medals, the 11 World Championships, the four world records. But Perham was also attuned to the less glamorous side—of the injuries that hampered the latter stages of Franklin’s career and the way she battled the weight of expectations at the 2016 Olympics.
“It was so amazing to watch her as a high school kid, just the immense talent that she had, how long she could stay at the top,” Perham said. “Watching her struggle was heartbreaking—and we’ve all been there—and she just handled herself with such class and grace. I know she’s very well respected and well liked within the swimming community.”
When Franklin found out Perham was the donor, she made the choice not to look into Perham’s past. Instead, she wanted to meet and learn about Perham directly. Times and medals would be scant description of someone giving her something as valuable as more time with her father. Only a human connection could do that.
Franklin had married former Texas swimmer Hayes Johnson in 2019, and they welcomed a daughter, Caitlin, in 2021, almost a year to the day of her father’s transplant. The connection as mothers was another common trait that Franklin and Perham built their bond around.
“As a fellow mom, she really understood the gift that she was giving,” Franklin said. “I think she was able to see it from my perspective: Giving me time with my dad was so special, but giving my daughter time with her grandfather was even more of a priority.
“It’s something that every time my dad gets quality time with Caitlin, I text Crissy or I call her with, ‘I just want you to know, every single one of these moments that I look up and I see Caitlin and my dad together, or the moments where my dad and I are going out on a special date night together, I think of you every single time, because they would not be possible without you.’”
In that way, the relationship between the families has provided even more than the transplant. “Swimming has given me so much,” Franklin said, “but never in a million years did I think it was going to give me the person that was going to save my dad’s life.”
ON THE TRAIL OF ADVOCACY
Perham always obliges in discussing her donorship—she jokes that she won’t shut up about it. It comes with such genuine enthusiasm that exceeds merely her first-hand experience.
More than 100,000 people are waiting for an organ in the United States, a new person added to the national transplant waiting list every 10 minutes. On average, 17 people on that list die every day, despite more than 42,000 transplants performed last year. Almost 90,000 of those waiting need a kidney, a procedure that, like a liver transplant, can be achieved from a living donor.
Photo Courtesy: John Lohn
Perham worked with counselors to make sure she was emotionally prepared for her donation. Physically, she describes the procedure as orders of magnitude less onerous than a bout of appendicitis she suffered a decade earlier.
“I gave a kidney to someone on a Wednesday, I was discharged on a Friday, and I was walking through a farmer’s market on Saturday,” she said. “I didn’t realize the need for kidneys and livers. I didn’t realize how you could be a living donor and how many people needed help until I got into it.”
Perham lived an active life before donation and continues that lifestyle with few restrictions. She’s an avid CrossFitter, tailoring workouts after the surgery and finding community in the gym. She and two former Arizona teammates walked more than 130 miles through Western Europe in the Camino de Santiago this year.
In the water, she teamed with Kidney Donor Athletes for a relay in the Swim for Alligator Lighthouse in the Florida Keys. The self-professed “black-line girl” took to open water with two fellow kidney donors and one recipient, kayaking for two three-mile stretches between a pair of one-mile swims. “Our priority was to raise awareness that you can donate an organ or receive an organ and still lead a super, super active life,” she said.
Franklin, an outspoken advocate, has added organ donation to her list of philanthropic priorities. She’s partnered with Otsuka Pharmaceutical to raise awareness about Dick’s condition, autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), and about the need for living donors.
Perham gets a tad sheepish when she admits that two friends have become living donors after learning of her experience. But the magnitude of what that decision means—of the two families they’ve helped, of the family she’s grown into thanks to her donation—brings that intensity back with full and unapologetic force.
“I feel super moved about being an advocate for it now,” she said. “And knowing that two people literally have donated because of me, I’m so, so proud of that.”