The Mile Swim and the Heart of a Champion

My camp memoirs were long, so I pulled this out because it could stand alone.

"I love to swim. I always have. When I saw that there were two swimming activities offered at camp I could not pass them up. One was the Polar Bear Swim the other was the Mile Swim. First was a little hokey, it was more refreshing than cold, the latter was a pretty decent chore. I talked up the mile swim to my boys and actually got three of them to go with me. One of them was my son. The other two didn't strike me as swimmers. There are three days of mandatory conditioning. Starting at 1/8 mile and doubling each day until the full mile. So long as I was doing it, I knew that Chip was not going to give up. I felt like the other boys would lose interest after a day or two. I was wrong. Those boys stuck with it. On the day of the 1/2 mile swim, one of the boys admitted that he really wanted to do other things, but he had committed to this and he was going to stick with it. Citing the 50 mile hike the troop did last year he said, "I hiked fifty miles, I can swim one."

Friday was the day of reckoning, they all did it. It was not easy but they did it. There was one thing that made it easy for me, that was my swim buddy Chip. I was swimming at a steady pace and he stayed right with me. A few times he got a little behind, but with some quick recovery strokes, he was right back even with me. I wanted to tell him that he didn't have to keep up with me. After all, it was not a race we just needed to finish. But I knew that I couldn't stop swimming so I let him do what he thought was right. It took about 45 minutes to complete, it was tiring. I watched as he pulled his long skinny body out of the pool and totally exhausted he lay on the deck. I asked him how he felt and very quickly and confidently he said, "Good." He started to shake, so I got him his towel, that helped a little. I gave him some peanuts and a Gatorade and that helped. After a few minutes he was back to normal.

I was in awe as I witnessed one whose will exceeded his own physical abilities. I was so proud of him."

"Chip off the old block"

"The old block"