Information Overload!

Prof C.S Leaf

On Saturday afternoon, I met with Phyllis Spencer and her daughter Julie Bernard.  Phyllis is 101 and has really gone downhill the past few weeks and is expected to pass shortly.  I tried asking her questions about her husband, Orson and their young life.  But she was incoherent most of the time.  I'll try to scrap together a few seconds of the recorded interview, but I really should have done this interview last year.

Julie let me borrow several copies of newspaper articles which I copied and have gone over.  There is just so much information there and alot of great coverage of the old GSL races.  Many of the articles I already had, but I copied those that I did not have.  Here's the original collection I had a while back, and here's the new collection of cool articles. 

I was pleased to see articles about Orson's fellow swimmers Ed Watson, Ken Lyman and a picture of the first guy to swim the Antelope to Saltair course - C.S. Leaf.  I was also interested to read about an exhibition race at the old Deseret Gym where Adolph Keifer came along with a couple of his buddies and kicked around all the local speedsters, giving them various handicap head starts, and still beat them.  Must have been very entertaining and impressive to watch!  Now Adolph Keifer is a worldwide name associated with swimming!

I am amazed at how much media coverage there was of this event!  It must have been a very exciting time to be a successful swimmer in the Salt Lake area! I really dig the old swim suits.  Here's a very cool old picture of the life guards and those associated with the Red Cross probably in the late 1930's:

Later this week I will highlight a specific article and put them in digital form.  Now off to bed.  I have a 9 mile swim tomorrow morning!