CT Olympians rowing in the wake of history

The 1924 Yale Olympic rowing crew pictured practicing in Lake Housatonic in New Haven, located on the southern end of the Housatonic River.
New York Public Library
The 1924 Yale Olympic rowing crew pictured practicing in Lake Housatonic in New Haven, located on the southern end of the Housatonic River.
Connecticut will be represented by boat rowers in the upcoming ‘24 Paris Olympics.
That statement holds as much truth now as it did a century ago.
While Paris gets set to host the Olympic Games for the first time in 100 years, so too do boat rowers with roots in Connecticut prepare.
Oliver Bub from Westport, Liam Corrigan from Old Lyme, Kelsey Reelick from Brookfield, and Ben Washburn from Madison will each row in the 2024 Games. Team USA crews will also feature three alumni of Yale rowing: Margaret Hedeman, Kristi Wagner, and Mary Mazzio-Manson.
When the Olympic water contests begin July 27, these Connecticuters will row into the pages of history. The last time Paris hosted the Games in 1924, a Connecticut-based eight-man crew won gold. The “Yale Eight” won in dominant fashion, more than 15 seconds ahead of silver-medalist Canada.
The legendary 1924 crew included several noteworthy oarmen: James Stillman Rockefeller, great-nephew of John D. Rockefeller, attended the Taft School before going on to Yale; Leonard Carpenter, a graduate of The Hotchkiss School, went on to a successful career in the lumber industry; Benjamin Spock, famed pediatrician and author of “Baby and Child Care,” rowed in the seven-seat.
In the archives of the National Rowing Hall of Fame is a letter from Spock to Rusty Wailes, seven-seat in the gold-winning Yale crew of the 1956 Olympics. In the letter Spock shares his experience of the Parisian Games.
The 1924 Yale crew was delayed in departing for France due to a late-season race against Harvard. The team traveled by boat across the Atlantic and Spock recalled their journey: “Four rowing machines were screwed into the boat deck where one of the life boats was swung over the side and we had two hard workouts a day on the rowing machines in addition to doing calisthenics. Gloria Swanson was on board but was not in our party. Our captain [James Rockefeller] met his wife on the boat and between these two extremes various other possibilities were considered.”
Upon arriving at Olympic Village late, the crew found no available housing for them: “The only place we could get in were some huts right near the track and field stadium where we were with the extras of the various teams who had come in late. They were miserable quarters. Our nearest and dearest neighbors were Esthonian weight lifters. The beds were uncomfortable and the mosquitoes terrific. The representative of the Yale Rowing Committee, however, was very nearly murdered in trying to make us feel better by referring to the noise of the taxi horns outside his accommodations at the Ritz Hotel.”
A July 3, 1924, edition of The Lakeville Journal recounts a different arrival for the American athletes who made it on time to Paris:
“Police Hold Back Surging Throngs Around Olympic Stars
Paris — Trim, alert and eager to be up and doing, the American Olympic team arrived in Paris on two special trains from Cherbourg. They presented a fine spectacle as they descended from the trains, and groups of French fans who assembled out of curiosity broke into cheers of enthusiasm as the young Americans [section damaged] the quays to the wailing cars. All are reported in fine condition.”
Spock goes on to describe the medal race on the Seine River on a sweltering hot day just past where “the sewers emptied out.” He ultimately recalls winning gold and angering the French by refusing to attend a champagne party. He ends with words of encouragement for the 1956 team:
“Having seen your crew a week ago, however, it does not disturb me in the least to say that you must be a faster crew...Let me urge all of you to the extent that time permits to make a hobby of rowing.”
Yale crews went on to win gold in the 1956 Melbourne Games in both Men’s Eight and Men’s Pair.
A Parisian summer awaits the current generation of Olympian rowers from Connecticut. Supporters of the stars and stripes will do well to echo the urge of Spock that the 2024 oarsmen “make a hobby of rowing.”
Note: Connecticut will be represented by several non-rowers in the 2024 Olympics as well.
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.