A note and rich history: Philly’s connections to George Clooney’s ‘The Boys in the Boat’

On Christmas Day, the movie “The Boys in the Boat,” about the 1936 rowing eight Olympic gold medal team from the University of Washington, was released to the general audience. The movie is based on Daniel James Brown’s book from 2013, which chronicles a group of boys persevering through the Great Depression to win a gold medal in Berlin during the Nazi Germany era.

On the surface, a movie about a west coast school wouldn’t seem to have a connection to Philadelphia, but it does. Two former Olympians, who still competitively row in the area, said that the 1936 gold medal Olympic rowing team will be forever bonded to the 2004 gold medal team by a hand-written note.

“The coxswain of the 1936 boat, [Robert] Moch, sent a letter after we won the Olympics to our coxswain, Peter Cipollone,” said Daniel Beery, now residing in Philly after helping bring home the first U.S. Men’s Eight Rowing gold medal in 40 years in 2004. “And in that letter, he talked about the fact that he made a really strong effort to get the [Washington] crew together once a year or as often as they possibly could, to get everyone together and to keep the guys communicating, to make sure they all stayed in touch.

“In the last 20 years, our coxswain Pete has really made that effort to keep all of us in touch. I thought that was just the most priceless little artifact connection.”

Beery’s teammate on that 2004 team, Jason Read, has deep ties to Philly rowing. First with Temple, where he made history helping lead his varsity eight at the Dad Vail Regatta to four gold medals. He later coached the Temple women’s teams in 2011 to 2012 and spent four seasons (2017-21) as an assistant coach for the Penn men’s heavy rowing squad.

Read, who began his career at The Hun School of Princeton as a coxswain, was considered undersized. While many rowers at an Olympic level were tall and long-limbed, Read was just 6-foot, but had dreams of winning a gold medal at the Olympics, even as a student-athlete at Temple in the late 1990s.

He referred to the opportunity to represent and win a gold medal in Athens, Greece, “sublime” and “intoxicating,” however, receiving the note from Moch propelled Read to teach and nurture the many lessons rowing has given him in his life.

“It was like his hand was extended to us through time and he was still mentoring and coaching, just like he did [with] his boys in 1936,” Read recalled of the note. “He was a de facto coach and he was sharing a really important emotion, and connection with us, and encouragement by saying, ‘Hey, guys, stick together, you’ll never forget this. Your lives will never be the same.’ ”

» READ MORE: Here’s how rowing took a St. Joe’s grad from Hawk Hill to the world championships in Bulgaria

Noah Teachy began his rowing career in college as a walk-on at Colby College in Maine and recalls having a slow freshman four boat before moving up the varsity eight. Winning for him didn’t happen much until he joined the New York Athletic Club, where he rowed for six years and won two national championships.

Teachy may not be a native Philadelphian, but since moving to the area in July, he has immersed himself in the rowing scene, currently serving as the varsity boys’ coach for Philadelphia City Rowing, a nonprofit, privately funded program that provides free, year-round programming to middle and high school students in the Philadelphia School District.

In addition to coaching, Teachy is also a member of the Undine Barge Club on historic Boathouse Row.

PCR is one of several programs in the area working to create a sport that is more inclusive and accessible, an issue touched on in “The Boys in the Boat,“ where many of the rowers on the Washington boat were struggling financially, specifically the film’s protagonist, Joe Rantz.

The sport has some strides to make, Teachy said, but he hopes the movie gains traction for people outside of the rowing community.

“To make a movie for a non-rowing audience is great, because you end up maybe bringing some people into a sport that isn’t always visible, especially outside of Philadelphia,” Teachy said. “If young me had seen the movie and knowing that you can be uncoordinated and tall and do really good stuff in the sport, I would have gone looking.”

» READ MORE: Philadelphia City Rowing is inspiring public school students to take up a new sport

Overseeing the 18 clubs and organizations that make up Boathouse Row is Bonnie Mueller, the 65th commodore of the Schuylkill Navy of Philadelphia. In its infancy, the Schuylkill Navy was founded in 1858, comsisting of 300 members and nine clubs which host a number of regattas yearly.

Mueller participated in the sport at St. Joe’s before stepping away from rowing for 15 years. Her return began as a U.S. Rowing referee, then assisting in regattas before working her way up at the Schuylkill Navy from a board member to becoming the third woman to serve as a commodore.

Seeing the movie twice before its Christmas Day release, Mueller commends director George Clooney for capturing the emotion, effort, and difficulty rowing can bring out of its athletes — in a sport that is often difficult to explain to outsiders.

“It tells a wonderful tale and it’s amazing to see rowing up on the big screen,” Mueller said. “It’s like what ‘Rudy’ was to football and the ‘Miracle’ was to hockey; it’s a great story about rowing at the highest levels.”

While viewing the movie, Read and Beery, who experienced the highs and lows of training, competing, and bringing home gold, couldn’t help but feel the raw emotion of their own journeys.

“I think it will be as monumental, or as important for our sport as ‘Chariots of Fire’ was, the British [track and field] film in the early 80s; ‘The Boys in the Boat’ was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen,” Read said.

Beery added: “I hope [the audience] feels there’s something very important that unifies us all, and that there are still athletes out there, following their example and grinding.”

Read, Mueller, Beery and Teachy, along with several others involved in Philly’s rowing community, had an opportunity to view “The Boys in the Boat“ ahead of its release. On Dec. 5, a special viewing was hosted by the Schuylkill Navy at the PFS East Theatre, facilitated by Amazon MGM, the movie’s production company.

Mueller had a vision in mind after the production company called her to allow Philly’s rowing community to be among one of the first to view the film: Look out into the audience and see the entirety of the rowing community all in one place, support the local organizations on the forefront of making rowing more accessible and inclusive, and honoring the Olympians and Paralympians in the audience that shared the same triumph as the eight boys did in 1936.

“We asked people to make donations to support five organizations and those organizations include Philadelphia City Rowing, Philadelphia Adaptive Rowing, BLJ Community Rowing, A Most Beautiful Thing Inclusion Fund, and our local High Performance Collaborative,” Mueller said. “Those five organizations really represent five groups that are doing work every day, to open up access and inclusion, and also develop the next generation of Olympians.

“So the whole night benefited those organizations. And I was really proud of that.”

» READ MORE: Philly played a critical role in making rowing popular in America | Philly History

Mueller added that much like the movie portrayed of a group of men coming together, that having the local rowing community in one space brought power to that message.