Poor Nephew

From the day big (6 ft. 6 in., 215 lbs.) Jim McMillin went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940 to coach the freshman crew, he was determined to beat good neighbor Harvard in a big race. Although Harvard had helped to start M.I.T.'s crew in 1913 with equipment and advice, the relationship had long been that of a poor nephew and rich uncle. Long before he became varsity crew coach five seasons ago, McMillin was thoroughly fed up with being just a poor relation.

Last week at Annapolis for the Eastern sprint regatta, McMillin got another chance to change M.I.T.'s status. With 34 eight-oared shells from 13 colleges competing, spectators saw the biggest flotilla ever assembled for a crew regatta in the U.S. But for McMillin there was only one other shell on the Severn River: undefeated Harvard, which had lost only nine varsity races since 1937, had already beaten M.I.T. twice this year.

At the starting cry of "Ready all. Row!" Harvard Coach Tom Bolles clamped his battered felt hat down firmly on his bald head, wrapped his black slicker around him, stood high in the middle of the coaches' launch, gripping two stop watches. Big Jim McMillin, dressed in undersized Marine green jumpers, stood nervously beside him. For nearly a mile, as the launch dropped farther & farther behind, M.I.T. and Harvard matched strokes in third and fourth places on the pace set mainly by Pennsylvania and Princeton.

At the end of the mile the Harvard crew was rowing smoothly at a steady 32 strokes a minute. M.I.T. was rowing a little higher. As the twelve varsity crews hit the final stretch, M.I.T. and Harvard spurted into the lead, upped the beat to nearly 40 strokes a minute as they skimmed across the finish line.

Then for an agonizing ten minutes, while the officials went into a huddle, the coaches wondered who had won. Even from their position 400 yards behind the finish it was obvious that M.I.T. and Harvard were out in front alone. Finally the public-address system intoned the verdict: Uncle Harvard had lost. M.I.T.'s winning margin: four feet.

Grey-haired, 36-year-old Jim McMillin whooped like a schoolboy, almost threw himself overboard in his frenzy of delight. All he could say was, "Damn, damn. We won it!" The winning time: 6:28.8 for the 2,000 meters, 20 seconds better than Harvard's a year ago.

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