Rowing Out of Past, Into the Future

By 7:30 every morning, 80-year-old Kearney Johnson is in his wooden scull, rowing miles across Mission Bay.

Johnson, manager of the boat room for the San Diego Rowing Club, joined the club in 1930. One would think that he would easily have the SDRC’s longest membership, but he’s not even close.

Along the shoreline to the north, down at the boathouse of the ZLAC Rowing Club, Del Beekley sands an eight-oared shell. He stepped away from the coxswain’s seat a year ago but still maintains his ties to the San Diego Rowing Club, working on boats there as well. He is one month from being 92 years old, and he joined SDRC in 1917.

Beekley and Johnston have seen their club grow--not quite from its infancy but certainly its adolescence--to the present. Beekley had not yet been born in 1888 when 13 men gathered at Steadman’s Boathouse and formed the Excelsior Rowing Club, which changed its name to the San Diego Rowing Club in 1891. But both Beekley and Johnston were there when the club was perched on San Diego Bay’s Pacific Coast Steamship Wharf at the foot of 5th Avenue--where the Chart House Restaurant now exists--and they were there in 1979 when the club moved into a small facility at the back of the Santa Clara Point Recreation Center building on Mission Bay.

And, linking its rich past with its future, Johnston and Beekley were there for recent groundbreaking ceremonies on El Carmel Point, where the club is expected to move in March, 1991.

The new center will be named for A.W. Coggeshall, a prominent member of the club in the 1920s and ‘30s who later became a successful businessman. Coggeshall died in 1987 during the early planning for the boathouse, and his $850,000 bequest allowed the dream to become reality. He left the same amount to the athletic departments of the University of San Diego and UC San Diego.

When completed, the $1-million Coggeshall Rowing Center will contain 14,400 square feet, most of it taken by five boat storage bays. Each bay will house about 60 boats, ranging in size from 26 1/2-foot long single sculls to 62-foot, eight-oared shells. The SDRC will occupy three boat bays--one devoted to junior rowers--and the Mission Bay Rowing Assn. will occupy the other two.

The new center also will provide men’s and women’s dressing facilities, a large room for meetings and social events, and office space for the two rowing clubs and the Crew Classic, San Diego’s annual regatta that attracts teams from all over the country and participants from all over the world. The plan also calls for development of additional public parking, landscaped areas and walkways.

SDRC President Archie Meihls expects membership to increase beyond the current 135 members once the club moves into its new digs.

“We’ll have the first chance we’ve had for locker rooms and showers for the ladies and they are probably the most important part of our future,” Meihls said. “They’re the ones that really get things organized. The women are the ones we want to get in, but we don’t have showers for them. I think they’ll add a great deal to our club’s social aspect because they think of the things that men will typically neglect. If we hadn’t had a few women there to organize a recent breakfast, it never would have gotten done right.”

Johnston agrees that membership is bound to boom.

“When we get over there, we’ll come back in size and popularity,” he said. “Lots of people like going to someplace that’s new.”

Johnston and Beekley were part of the club when it had more than 600 members nearly 60 years ago. At that time, it was one of the most popular organizations in the city and among the largest rowing clubs in the country. Those were the glory years.

Back then, before the second world war, it was more than just a rowing club; it was an institution brimming with activities: handball, volleyball, horseshoes, swimming, a bowling league and competitive baseball and softball teams.

“In fact, it had quite a bit of influence in politics at that particular time,” Beekley said. “Most of our members were made up of successful attorneys, several mayors of San Diego, police and fire chiefs--they were all members of the club. It seemed anyone running for a popular position more or less needed to be a member of rowing.”

One of those mayors was Harley Knox, who was an SDRC president from 1937-41, whom Beekley recalled as a championship rower among lightweights and winner of the Pacific Amateur Oarsman Assn. Western Championships in the 30s. He served as mayor from 1943-51.

Like Knox, Beekley and Johnston were champion rowers. Beekley participated as coxswain on crews of four or more; Johnston was a sculler, for one or two rowers.

Beekley was the coxswain of the SDRC’s four-oared shell that barely lost to Harvard in the 1928 Olympic trials. A few years later, he began the rowing programs at Hoover and San Diego high schools; he also organized and coached the first college crews at San Diego State in 1946.

Johnston’s past is also filled with considerable rowing success, but one of his fondest memories came when he didn’t even place. It was in Mexico City in 1977, and he was competing in a Masters and Veterans race against men who were 36, 44, 45 and 46 years old. He finished fourth out of five, but when the race was over, he was urged to attend the awards ceremony.

“They said, ‘Hey, get up to the awards stand,’ “Johnston recalled. “I didn’t know why, but they gave me a standing ovation because of my age; I was 66 at the time.

“They gave me gold medals from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico for still rowing at my age.”

They should see Johnston now. He has won many age-group races, and after getting back from his morning row, he often teaches others.

“I feel like I’m 30, row like I’m 30, and live like I’m 30,” he said, and sprinted to his locker to pull out some old photographs. “You can’t act old. That’s why I love rowing; it gives you a real lift.”