AASC thanks these sponsors of 50 Years of Memories: 1956-2006

Consumers Energy

Different Strokes

Knox Presbyterian Church

Legacy Printing

Speedo

1956 Flashback

By Heather Keeler

In 1956, the Wizard of Oz is featured for the first time on televisions throughout the country. Young Dorothy (with Toto, too) dreams a whirling tornado transports her from her small Kansas farm to the strange and colorful Land of Oz. Imagine a similar experience; you are transported, but not to a different place — to a different time. You wake to find the year is 1956. The Ann Arbor Swim Club is just getting started.

Giving orders poolside, she corrects technique and promotes endurance. In a few short years, coach and club alike begin garnering state- and national-level attention.

You don't know this yet, of course. It's 1956, and this "swim club thing" is new to you. What is life in the pool like? When not in the pool, what activities and events influence you and your teammates?

Happy Holidays

If the holiday season of 1956 is anything like the average for Ann Arbor, Michigan, December is cold and wet. You bundle up on your way to the pool, as most days of the month are below 30 degrees with a total snowfall of about 11 inches for the month.

You picked the right time for your time travel! This year's holiday celebrations are more lavish than last year's, because the minimum wage has just been boosted to a whopping $1.00 per hour. If Father's income is on par with the average, he earns about $4,100. Mother does not work outside the home. So it's a good thing that a swim practice costs only 50 cents and a first-class stamp 3 cents. For less than one dime, you can bring home a newspaper. Father gasses up the Ford for 23 cents a gallon—the same car that cost him somewhere between $1,600 and $2,900, depending on make and model.

What's on your holiday wish list this year? The popular Mr. Potato Head, a new game called Yahtzee, new saddle shoes to replace your old scuffed ones and Elvis' new single, "Heartbreak Hotel."

The Teen Experience

Forget strolling with your iPod. You are thrilled to have your own Sony transistor radio. You pop your new "record" on your small record player in your room, and you are good to go. Pre-CD and DVD, a 33 RPM is a 33-inch vinyl disk, with music tracks laid down in its vinyl grooves. Music does not play in stereo for a few more years. Your parents listen to "Old Blue Eyes" Frank Sinatra, but you sneak into your bedroom to groove with Elvis Presley. Around a summer campfire, you sing Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," not for nostalgic reasons but because this is the popular new folk song.

The World Stage

In 1956, Cold War tensions are high. Twice in the same year anti-Communist worker uprisings in Poland are brutally crushed by Soviet troops and tanks. Mother and Father speak in hushed tones about our country's testing of the first hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll, a group of small islands in the South Pacific. The bomb's force is equal to 10 million tons TNT.

The year is an election year. War hero Dwight D. Eisenhower is voted into the White House; his vice president is Richard M. Nixon.

It is also the year that begins to build momentum for the country's Civil Rights movement. These are formative years for the young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These years shape his character and convictions, and in later years he emerges as one of our country's most influential leaders.

An Olympic Year

It's an Olympic year! The opening ceremonies of the Games of the XVI Olympiad are on November 22, 1956 in Melbourne and in Stockholm. Because of quarantine concerns for horses entering Australia, equestrian events take place in two different cities (Stockholm and Melbourne), in two different countries and continents and in two different seasons (June and November). For the first time ever, the Games' Charter of "unity in time and place" is set aside.

Silver medal of the 1956 Olympic Games

The big news of the Games: the US basketball team dominates; American Pat McCormick wins both diving events, just as she had in 1952; and Team USA takes the medal stand 74 times — 32 times for Gold, 25 for Silver and 17 for Bronze.

The star at the pool, though, is not an American. It is 17-year-old Murray Rose of Australia, who swims away with three Gold medals for the world-record-setting 4x200 meter freestyle relay (8:23.6), the 400-meter freestyle (4:27.0) and the 1,500-meter freestyle (17:59.5).

Another star at the pool is a device, not an athlete. The semi-automatic, digital-display timing device appears for the first time in use at a major competition. Before this, only hand-held stopwatches capture times, and finishes are called by finish judges.

Polio on the Decline

When warm spring breezes blow down Main Street, for the first time in many years you enjoy the warm weather with much less anxiety for yourself, family and friends. Every summer between 1945 and 1955, the Ann Arbor News carried daily lists of community members stricken with infantile paralysis, or poliomyelitis.

But this year is different, because by now the disease is in serious decline. The year before, on April 12, 1955, you sat in school and cheered with your classmates as Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, described his detailed field testing program for the Salk polio vaccine.

His major announcement, broadcast throughout Ann Arbor area schools: the polio vaccine is eighty to ninety percent effective. Prior to the Salk vaccine, polio had struck up to 40,000 people each year, most of them children. By 1961, the crippling disease will be a thing of the past.

The Ann Arbor Scene

If you thought popping into Ann Arbor in 1956 would land you in a small, quiet college town, you are mistaken. The town's role during World War II has quickened the pace of post-war technology development. Ann Arbor is a center of space-age technology, and is on its way to becoming the "Research Center of the Midwest." Most of your friends' fathers work at the University, many involved in engineering and technology. Research-oriented industry is moving into the city in a big way.

In 1956, when the Democrats swing several major victories in city council elections, Father mopes around the house for days. On those days, it's best to stay extra long at the pool.

Life at the Pool

Your training venue — the pool in the basement of the Michigan Union — is small, overheated and the air stuffy. The smell from the cigar-smoking older men who were here before you lingers in the air. You and your teammates warm up under the watchful eye of Coach Dawson and get ready for your sets.

In the training lanes and at national championships, avoiding head-on collisions is as much the swimmer's challenge as swimming fast. Anti-turbulent lane lines are decades away (devised by Adolph Kiefer) and few pools in the 50s have gutters to mitigate turbulence. Many pools are only 20 yards, which explains the existence of 40-yard sprints and 160-yard relays.

"The pool was crowded and with no lane lines we constantly fought the backwash, but I believe we became stronger faster for having to swim through the chop and waves."

Anne Huntzicker,
AASC Member 1956-62

Other problems at the pool are bad lighting and harsh chemicals. You train and race without goggles because the small, eye-socket goggles you now rely on simply don't exist. Small goggles aren't available until the late 1960s. You will pay for it later that night — with red, painful eyes and double vision, making reading or studying difficult.

By far, training and racing under these conditions are your biggest adjustments to life in 1956.

Back to the Future

Sources: Sources include personal recollections of former AASC member Anne Huntzicker; previous issues of 50 Split: Celebrating the First 50 Years of Ann Arbor Swim Club;"The Making of Ann Arbor" from the Ann Arbor District Library; Olympic Games information of the International Olympic Committee; "History/Coaching Legends" from USA Swimming; the Novi News' "Half-Century" edition of May 26, 2005; Weatherbase historical weather for Ann Arbor, Michigan; Infoplease, an online research source; and various websites of 1950s trivia.

AASC swimmers, coaches, and parents — past and present —send us a "Memorable Moment" from your AASC years. Is it a funny moment, coach's heart-to-heart or an inspired race? Email yours by Dec. 20; be sure to include your name.

Entries will be randomly selected to receive an anniversary gift item, a $10 value. Results will appear in a future issue of 50 Split.

Ann Arbor Swim Club isn't the only organization celebrating with 50 candles this year! Walt Disney World also celebrates a golden anniversary. Share WDW's "50 years of magic" by previewing Disney Theme Park attractions and treasures from around the world — the Cinderellabration from Tokyo, Extreme Stunts from Paris and California's own Soarin', a sky-high view of the Golden State's stunning vistas.

Next Issue: Former AASC swimmers who shaped our club weigh in on how the club shaped them. Look for what's new in their lives as well as insights and advice about our sport.