Word: swimming
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Actually the swim, undertaken as a physical outburst against his family, ended as a hoax; and the newspaper description of him as an "ex-Harvard star" drew only one comment from Crimson swimming coach Harold S. Ulen: "I never saw any starts...
Grover entered Harvard in 1946 after military service at a time when freshmen could compete on varsity teams. He was not good enough to swim with the varsity, however, but became captain of the freshman squad apparently because his 24 years impressed his younger classmates...
...later found occasion to report in the Boston Traveler, "I knifed through the blazing surface and started to swim under water breast stroke, gliding as far as I could on every stroke to conserve my wind and strength...
Grover placed second in Rhode Island's Matanuck Beach-Block Island race in 1950 and fifth in a 1954 endurance swim at Atlantic City, N.J., in 1954. His interest in long distance swimming grew almost maniacal, so much so that it developed into an obsession which dominated his thinking and became almost a release from worldly problems...
...Grover was undaunted, even though no one paid his boasting much heed since the venture was so obviously impossible. No one, that is, except the local Boston press. Headlines announced, "Ex-HARVARD STAR BEGINS HUB-PROVINCETOWN SWIM," and glorious Grover took...