Word: bubba
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Shower. Mrs. Tongay eventually presented Russ with two more babies-another Russell Jr., who was nicknamed "Bubba," and, 18 months later, a girl whom they named Kathy. Russ began training them to swim before they could walk. He sprinkled water in their faces from the time of their first baths, turned showers on them at six months to teach them proper aquatic breathing. Kathy swam 20 feet under water when she was only ten months old. At 17 months the Tongay children paddled a quarter of a mile a day; at two years each did five miles...
Both were towheaded, wide-shouldered, active tots, bronzed by the Florida sun. Their ribs showed. Russ, who fed them protein baby food long after they were babies, said: "I keep them lean because they swim better." Eventually, both learned amazing stunts. Bubba would jump off a 33-ft. tower with his hands and feet tied and swim two lengths of the pool under water. Kathy swam seven miles every morning when training, and dived 20 feet blindfolded...
Down the Mississippi. Russ billed them as the "Aquatots," and was as proud as the owner of a top dog act. Bubba, he boasted, could hold his breath four minutes. The lad trotted 15 minutes on a treadmill, set to duplicate an 8½% grade, to prove that his oxygen intake per pound of weight was more than that of any recorded human other than Runner Gil Dodds. Kathy caused Russ some embarrassment-sometimes she cried in public. In 1949, two Miami women complained to the police that he treated the little girl cruelly; while his car was stopped...
...summer of 1951, Russ and his wife took both tots to England, amid a gratifying fanfare of publicity, to swim the English Channel. Bubba was five and Kathy four. The British were horrified, and after debate in Commons, refused to countenance Russ's fondest dream. Russ took the kids to France, but the French turned him down, too. Eventually Russ gave up and brought them home. They starred in Florida water carnivals and branched out with bit parts in an Esther Williams motion picture, Skirts Ahoy...
When the Tongays arrived at London Airport last week, the whole family was placed under "technical arrest." While their parents argued with representatives of the Home Office, Bubba and Kathy raced in wild unconcern up & down the corridors of the immigration building. When the officials told them to go home forthwith, Bubba menacingly waved a toy six-shooter under their official noses. Next day the officials relented slightly, said it was all right for the Tongays to stay in England for one month. But any swimming the kids did, they warned, must be strictly for fun-not cash...