Sunday, June 17, 2007

Swimmers celebrate what was, and what's to come




By PAUL SIEGFRIED, Sports Editor
Huntington Herald Press June 14, 2007

The history of swimming at the Huntington YMCA could fill volumes. Well, at least one very large volume. There's a rich legacy that can draw direct lines from Huntington to the greatest swimmers the United States has ever produced, but never before has that history been compiled. Now as the YMCA prepares to leave its familiar Warren Street location and move to its new home on the north side of town, the people and events that shaped that history are finally coming together. Former swimmers who competed on teams from 1933 to 1996 will return to Huntington this weekend for events to celebrate the YMCA's history, and also the facility's future. Among the events scheduled Friday are a golf outing, a swim camp at Lake Clare and a reception in the evening at the YMCA. On Saturday, Lake Clare will host an open-water swim meet, including the Huntington Mile and an Olympic prequalifying event. The main event, the reunion banquet, will be held Saturday night at Huntington North High School. On Sunday, a Father's Day brunch held will be held at the site of the new YMCA on CR 500N near Parkview Huntington Hospital.

To go along with the celebration, records from Huntington's national championship competition have also been compiled. Anne Pittenger, a former YMCA swim team member who worked at the Huntington YMCA for 27 years, was asked by YMCA executive director Dan Akeley to take on the task of collecting as much information as could be found on the history of swimming at the local Y. She her husband, Lynn, began their research last summer, and have just completed the 550-page volume. “Dan had said they would like to do a reunion to help raise funds for the new Y, so he sort of dropped that little bug,” said Anne. “Later on that day, we talked that we probably ought to give back. We'd been involved with the Y for so many years, that this is something we should do.” In the basement of the YMCA, the Pittengers found numerous scrapbooks from over the years. From those scrapbooks, they came up with names of some 800 former swim team members, and began to contact as many as they could.

Of the 800 names, they turned up approximately 500 complete addresses. Around 100 of the swimmers had died, and another 200 or so could not be tracked down. The ones they did find have all been invited to the reunion. Each was sent a biography form to fill out, and that information will be put together for another publication at a later date. “There's going to be a memory book that is going to be published after the reunion,” said Lynn. “They want to get a group picture of everyone at the reunion that can be included.”

The Pittengers were able to talk to a number of the former swimmers in their research. “Some of the stories we've gotten from these people are just amazing,” said Anne. “A lot of the swimmers have done quite well. Everyone I've talked to has been very proud to be a part of the swimming world. They felt it helped them grow as an individual.” The man responsible for putting Huntington YMCA swimming on the map was Glen Hummer, whose record of success was unparalleled during his 44 years coaching the local team. Hummer began the swimming program in 1933 and first took a Huntington squad to the YMCA national championships in 1936, where they finished fifth Huntington won its first national title in 1940, and added nine more over Hummer's tenure, the last championship coming in 1969. No other program in the country won as many national titles over that time than Hummer's Huntington team.

In addition to the 10 first-place finishes, Huntington placed second nine times and was third five times. Hummer produced 18 individual national champions and 32 All-Americans. At the state level, Huntington won 15 Indiana YMCA championships and had 359 individual state champions during Hummer's tenure. Two of Hummer's swimmers rose to the pinnacle of the sport. Gary Dilley swam in the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, earning a silver medal in the 200 backstroke. In 1976, Matt Vogel swam in the Montreal Games, winning two golds with a win in the 100 butterfly and as a member of the winning 4x100 medley relay team. Dilley and Vogel will return to Huntington this weekend and will be guest speakers for Saturday's reunion banquet. A total of 18 swimmers from Hummer's Huntington YMCA program competed in seven Olympic trials from 1936 to 1976. The Huntington legacy continued with one of Hummer's proteges, George Haines, who left Huntington for California. There, he became the top swimming coach in the United States, developing the country's greatest swimmers including Mark Spitz. Hummer coached the Huntington YMCA team until 1977, and died in 1992. Haines died last year. While the achievements of Hummer's team are impressive, it was the impact Hummer made on individual lives that the Pittengers say have been the most lasting. “So many people told us they don't know where they'd be today if it hadn't been for Glen Hummer,” said Anne. “He was a no-nonsense person and he drove them hard. He expected a lot out of his swimmers. He taught more than swimming.” Memories are still vivid, even for some of the oldest former swimmers. “Talking to them on the phone has been fun,” said Anne. “One fellow, Kendrick Pilkenton, was captain of the first national championship team in 1940. He lives in Sturgis, Michigan, and he taught school for 30-some years. When I first talked to him, he told me he was basically a very shy person, then he talked to me for 45 minutes.”

In addition to the more than 800 swimmers who competed on his teams, Hummer was responsible for teaching more than 2,000 Huntington youngsters how to swim. During his tenure, nearly 90 swimmers earned college scholarships. Hummer would take in anyone who wanted to learn to swim, said Anne. “He took on kids who had no athletic ability at all, and he worked with what he had,” she said. As they researched the YMCA's history, the Pittengers also heard a few quirky stories. Transporting a swim team of more than 20 members to national events to all corners of the country was expensive, especially in Depression-era times.

“One of the fellas told us that the swimmers had to go around town asking for nickels and dimes to buy gas to get to Boston, because they just didn't have any money,” said Anne. Hummer would save money by camping out along the way to the events. He had some favorite places to stop, but on occasion the entourage would just decide to pull over whenever they got tired. One year, the group stopped at night and the swimmer spread out sleeping bags on the ground. When they woke up the next morning, they found they had spent the night sleeping on a green of a golf course. Even finding transportation was difficult. In their first trip to the nationals, a large truck was donated the team by Huntington businessman Howard Kriegbaum, and Hummer set up a stove in the back of the truck to cook meals for the team.

Later, the YMCA got its own truck, nicknamed “Goo the First,” said Anne. A second truck earned the name “Goo Goo 2.” Eventually, the YMCA was able to purchase a school bus to transport the team. In addition to Hummer's success with the YMCA swim team, he's also known as the father of open water swimming, and Huntington teams won 12 long-distance swimming national championships and produced 35 All-Americans.The Glen Hummer Huntington Mile, the national championship of open-water swimming, was held at Lake Clare from 1975 to 1986, and was revived just two years ago. This year's event will be held Saturday at Lake Clare, along with a five-kilometer open-water Grand Prix Qualifier, which serves as a qualifying event for the Olympic trials.
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Welcome

Hello fellow Hummer alumni. We each have memories of the huge influence Glen S. Hummer had on us all. The Huntington YMCA is still conducting a continuing funding campaign for the marvelous new facility which replaces the one we all swam in and more since the team began in 1933. This space is for us to meet and/or meet up again. There were 250 at the reunion on June 16, 2007, coinciding with the newly reestablished Huntington Mile at ole Lake Clare in which many of us swam again. All are invited and welcomed to submit reminiscences here (click on "comments" in the section below.) See some of you, again we hope, at the 2010 Glen S. Hummer Huntington Masters Mile. And visit us on facebook too at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#%21/group.php?gid=100802262318&ref=ts



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Huntington YMCA Building Program

Note: To donate to the fund-raising campaign for the new YMCA (and its Hummer Pool) contact:

Dan Akeley, Executive Director, Huntington YMCA, 607 Warren St., Huntington, IN 46750, 260-356-4200, ymcadan@kconline.com

From The Herald Press12/18/06

Goal: $8 million; In hand: $5.4 million; Yet to raise: $2.6 million

It will take $8 million to build a new YMCA, and that's the amount the Y's fund-raising committee has set as its goal. With the $2 million gift from Parkview Huntington Hospital - seven acres of land worth $450,000 and a pledge of $1.55 million in cash from the hospital's Community Benefit dollars - the capital campaign committee now has $5.4 million in hand, said Dan Akeley, the YMCA's executive director.

That $5.4 million, which includes pledges that will be paid over the next five years, came in as the result of a campaign that began in May as YMCA volunteers contacted potential major donors, Akeley said. That leaves the YMCA with $2.6 million yet to raise. Some of that will come from additional major donors, Akeley said, but the Y hopes to raise $250,000 from people throughout Huntington County who are everyday users (or former users) of the facility. An effort to reach those people will begin in late January and continue until June, Akeley said. YMCA volunteers will begin with personal contacts and later use phone calls and letters to solicit donations.

From The Herald Press, 12/18/06

The inside story: Nearly double the usable space

By CINDY KLEPPER, City Editor

The new Parkview Huntington YMCA will encompass about 52,000 square feet, all on one floor, with two pools, two basketball floors, and an elevated walking track. By comparison, the current facility has about 30,000 square feet of usable space on three levels, one pool, one basketball court, and no dedicated place to walk - although it does have numerous nooks and crannies that may have had a function when the Warren street building opened in 1930, but now serve no useful purpose.

The new building was designed by Moake Park Group, a Fort Wayne-based architectural firm whose work can be seen in the Parkview Huntington Hospital building as well as the Jorgensen Family YMCA in Allen County. Moake Park's design for the Huntington YMCA was intended for a 14-acre site north of Huntington that the YMCA board originally planned to purchase, said Dan Akeley, the Y's executive director. The building and parking areas would have occupied only seven acres of that site, Akeley said, and can be moved to the Parkview site practically unchanged. "The floor plans will basically be the same," Akeley said. "It worked for both sites." The remainder of the original 14-acre site would have held a soccer field, two retention ponds, and a fitness trail. At the new site, retention ponds are already in place outside the YMCA's seven acres. Although there's no room for a soccer field, there's a possibility of additional property being made available for soccer sometime in the future. In addition to surveying members about what they wanted in a new facility, YMCA board members checked out features of other recently built YMCAs.

"We learned a lesson from the Jorgensen YMCA," Akeley said. "They have one pool, and if someone has an accident in the pool, they have to shut down the whole thing." The Huntington Y board decided to go with two pools, side by side. "If somebody has an accident, we can just shut the one pool down," Akeley said. The smaller pool will have a "zero," or sloped, entry making it accessible to people in wheelchairs and others with limited mobility. It's water will be warm enough to be comfortable for swimming and aerobics classes. The second pool will be large enough to be used by swim teams and can also be used to host meets. The gym's two basketball courts can be separated by a curtain. A fitness center will include both free weights and cardio equipment, and an adjacent aerobics/dance area will feature floating floors. A walking track, one-tenth of a mile long, will be suspended around the perimeter of the gym, fitness center, and aerobics/dance area. An expanded child watch area will be located next to two preschool rooms.