A Gray-flannel Émigré From The East Builds An Empire Out West

At prep school and during his fumbling days at Harvard, Daland did some running (2:10 for the 880, 4:50 for the mile). While stationed in Florida before going overseas in the war, he went out for the Camp Murphy swimming team, primarily, he now recalls, because the team did not have to stand retreat. The motive was perhaps shabby, but regardless, once the chlorine got in him it was there to stay. After the war, at Swarthmore, he captained the swimming team and coached it two days a week while the regular paid coach was out earning the rest of his living. (The most famous of Daland's Swarthmore swimmers is the Balloonist Don Piccard, who still holds the world record for falling straight down in a burst balloon: 4,200 feet in 1:55 flat.) At Swarthmore, Captain-Coach Daland himself clocked about 5:35 for the 440. This was passable time for a small-college performer then. Today a number of Daland's girl swimmers could do as well while towing a Rose Bowl float.

An eye on the kids

After college Daland worked two years for a medical book firm in Philadelphia, enduring great waves of boredom that might have floated him back into his drifting ways if he had not retained a spectator interest in track and swimming. "I was," he explains, "an enthusiast with a good statistical knowledge," or, to put it briefly, "a statistical nut," doting on the great distances and clockings of the strong and swift. Swimming prevailed over track as his choice of a profession largely because of a peculiar circumstance that physiologists have recognized for some time, although most people are barely aware of it. Track and baseball and football were—and to a marked extent still are—inhibited in their dealings with youth. Swimming rarely has been and certainly is not now. Even 15 years ago, while baseball, football and track coaches were waiting for the young males to grow at least 4 feet tall, in swimming pools little boys and girls were taking extraordinary punishment in practice and teen-agers were at the gate of big-time competition. (In 1946, before Daland had floundered his first quarter mile for Swarthmore, a 15-year-old Ohio kid named Jimmy McLane was beating the men in four-mile races and priming for the '48 Games.) As Daland now sums it up, "Swimming has been getting first pick of the good, strong bodies."

In the early '50s Daland decided swimming was for him. He served four years as an apprentice under Bob Kiphuth at Yale. While working for Kiphuth, Daland persuaded him that they should publish a monthly mailer of swimming performances. "I proposed my time and his money," Daland explains. This partnership had two significant results: 1) Kiphuth lost $600 a year and, 2) in collating swimming summaries for the monthly, Daland got a close look at the sport across the U.S.

When it came time for him to move out on his own, Daland picked California, but not for reasons that would occur to just anybody. The geography, the cultural and economic climate and the generally equable year-round temperature of California all suggest a perfect land for competitive swimming. But as a student of swimming, Daland knew that the only climate that matters must be man-made and the only temperature that counts is the fever in the coach and team. When these requirements are met, a great swimming team is possible anywhere, among the penguins of Antarctica or under the auspices of Santa Claus at the North Pole. This is the First Law of Competitive Swimming, and it can be validated by the record books.

As the records attest, in the '20s, when competitive swimming became a serious affair. California was a booming, sun-blessed land, but virtually a wasteland of competitive swimming. In the '20s—indeed, in the '30s and '40s—the majority of the great swimmers were born under the bitter winter winds of the Midwest, in the chlorine-stenched waters of the East and in the irrigation ditches of Hawaii, where there were coaches who gave the sport 25 hours a day.

What interested Daland about the California wasteland in the early '50s was another peculiar circumstance. Though still short on talent, California was a land of swimming pools, into which well-dressed celebrities occasionally fell or were pushed and into which, sadly, small children also fell and drowned. Swimming schools where children could be waterproofed had sprung up all around Los Angeles. To keep the kids interested, the instructors naturally staged meets. By the time the AAU Age Group swimming program was rolling, southern California kids were lined up, ready to affiliate. The good, strong bodies were already in the swim, so Daland packed up his zeal and went west.

He remembers his plane flight out very well. His first California job promised him a base pay slightly better than he could have made running an elevator. On the plane he met friends of some of his prep school friends. These new acquaintances were getting off at Dallas to look into some oil wells that promised to net them a bundle. They were astonished to learn that a smart, snappy Easterner like Daland was going all the way to California to coach swimming. They simply did not believe it.

"Are you interested in oil or money?" Daland asked his new friends, who were not interested in oil. Then, with his usual abrupt logic, Daland said, "I am interested in swimming."