Bayer rows to finish in Somes race> Pioneer’s passion rows on

SOUTHWEST HARBOR – Under a clear blue sky with the fog rolling into Somes Sound, rowers gathered round Ernestine Bayer to hear tales of the old days.

Days when women watched the rowing regattas like Boston’s Head of the Charles from a boathouse deck; when a woman rowing her own boat was enough to set the tongues wagging and tempers cresting on Philadelphia’s Boathouse Row.

Tagged the “Mother of American Women’s Rowing” long ago, this sharp 86-year-old woman brushes the title away like sea spray.

“I didn’t coin that phrase,” she said with a shake of her bright white head. “That was somebody’s else doing.

“Women didn’t row back in 1938, that was considered a man’s domain,” Bayer recalled. “You can’t imagine, jeez. This man came up to my husband, my husband was (a 1928 Olympic) silver medalist, and asked `why do let your wife row?’

“He came home and he told me and I laughed,” Bayer said.

Gathered for the 11th Somes Sound Rowing Classic at Southwest Harbor Saturday, Bayer and first-time partner Evan Randolph carried an eight-second handicap for every year of the pair’s average age, 85.

The pair were the last across the finish line at the bow of the red officials’ boat, but were greeted with a hearty cheer from the three boats manning the course and those left on land of the 35 participants.

The pair finished third in the doubles race with an elapsed time of 46:04, which was pared down to 39:56 with their handicap.

Organizer Reg Hudson had been sending Bayer applications each year, but Bayer never made the three-mile race until this year, when Hudson’s invitation and Randolph’s coaxing convinced her to make the voyage from her Stratton, N.H., home.

She had already won the over-80 age category at the Head of the Charles this spring.

Quite a different story from 1938, when she was forced to start her own rowing club in a rented building along the Schuylkill River.

“There were men who wouldn’t even speak to my husband but I have to give credit where credit’s due,” Bayer said. “There were men who were supportive. If they hadn’t been we would have been dead.

“They loaned us boats, we didn’t have any money,” she said. “Back in those days, it was only $25 (club) dues. Most of our girls were 18 or 19 and they only made $25 a week.”