Delaware County doctor, working with COVID-19 patients in suburban Chicago, recalls St. Joseph’s big Dad Vail Regatta win 50 years ago

Dr. Jerry Daly has seen a lot in his five decades in medicine, but certainly nothing like the coronavirus outbreak that has kept doctors like himself and nurses busy at Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, Ill.

Given all that’s happening, a big moment in Daly’s life 50 years ago might seem like a faint blip in his memory but it’s something that remains with him – the victory by the St. Joseph’s crew in the featured men’s varsity eight race at the Jefferson Dad Vail Regatta on May 9, 1970.

“How can your life revolve around a six-minute race?” Daly, a former Broomall resident and Cardinal O’Hara High School graduate, said Wednesday night in a telephone interview.

“I’ve been in medical practice for 41 years so you have to put it in perspective. I have a wife and two kids that are both grown. But it’s amazing how six minutes in your life can be fused in your memory. You know what’s funny? I remember bits and pieces but I don’t remember each stroke of that race, that’s for sure.”

Daly, 71, who received a Masters in biology from DePaul before earning his degree from Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, is board certified in family practice and gerontology. He splits his time between family practice and administration as the chief medical officer of Essential Health Partners, which is affiliated with Silver Cross and Northwest Community Hospitals southwest of Chicago.

He hopes the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak is over. He credited sheltering in place as a reason why Silver Cross is down to four patients on ventilators after a peak of 19 or 20. Still, over the last 90 days, he said “probably 61 or 62” patients have died of the virus.

“It was a very unique situation, I’ve never faced it before,” said Daly, who lives in Mokena, Ill.

“We weren’t in the fray. We weren’t treating intubated patients in the ICU and stuff like that. Being an outpatient doctor, we saw patients. I’m at risk because of my age. The conundrum was that patients would call and say ‘What do we do?’ We would screen them and the patients would be scared to death.

“We made a lot of phone calls every day or two just to check in on people. We didn’t want them dying but we didn’t want them coming into the emergency room for no reason, either.”

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After graduating from O’Hara in 1967, Daly entered St. Joseph’s on a rowing scholarship, one of five rowers who would start as freshmen. The Hawks were a powerhouse in his sophomore season and undefeated entering the 1969 Dad Vail Regatta, including a lopsided victory over Georgetown the previous month in Washington.

But in the big race on the Schuylkill, the Hoyas narrowly defeated St. Joe’s, something Daly called “the ultimate choke.” The Hawks would lose two powerful rowers from that team and struggled in 1970 prior to the Dad Vails.

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“We had a mediocre year at best,” Daly said. “We lost to Georgetown twice. The ultimate defeat was, the week before the Vails, Mike Fitzgibbons, our stroke, got sick with about 700 meters left in the race. We had a quarter to a half-length of open water on Temple and lost.”

Fitzgibbons recovered by Tuesday of Dad Vail week but coach Joe Toland moved him elsewhere in the boat and inserted freshman Paul Rudolph at stroke. It would be a key move.

***

Daly saw people on an outpatient basis in the early days of the pandemic until his three concerned partners suggested a change.

“They got together,” he said, “and were like, ‘Hey, you’ve got enough things to do. You can do telephonic visits so we’re going to push the telephonic business to you and you push your face-to-faces with us. Otherwise we’re going to put you in a closet and lock the door.’

“As a doctor, it’s what you sign up for. You’re supposed to take care of people who are sick whether it’s an infection or not. But I took their advice. So 90 percent of my visits over the last three weeks have been phone calls or telephonic. A few patients I’ve seen have been with me for 35 or 40 years. They’re scared to death and don’t want to see anybody else.”

Daly said his practice has seen six COVID patients in person with only one needing hospitalization.

***

Two days before the start of the 1970 Dad Vails, Toland had the Hawks row the entire 2,000-meter Schuylkill course as if it were the final. The swift showing told them they had a good chance at winning, Daly said.

The crew easily won Friday’s preliminary heat. In an atypical move, Toland instructed the Hawks to finish second in their semifinal heat on Saturday morning to get a lane nearer the stands, which he felt was a better position on a hot and calm day.

“Joe never did this, he wanted to win every race,” Daly said.

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Still, the strategy worked. St. Joseph’s finished second, and then dominated the final in the afternoon.

“I just remember everything just clicked in the final,” Daly said. “We had changed our starting routine from the classic three short strokes to three long strokes, and we had it all planned out to go 40 strokes a minute. We came through the bridge and we had a significant lead on Georgetown. We came to the 1,000-meter mark and we had open water, so we could keep the strokes per minute at 36.”

The Hawks cruised to the victory. Rudolph, the freshman stroke, “did an amazing job, he was a metronome,” Daly said, in keeping a steady pace as directed by coxswain Bob Jaugstetter, who would win an Olympic silver medal later in his career.

In addition to Daly, Rudolph, Fitzgibbons and Jaugstetter, the St. Joe’s crew consisted of Jim Glavin, Paul Laskow, John Kowalski, Jim Henwood, and Ed Lalley.

After the Hawks returned to the dock and climbed out of their boat, Toland, a 1948 Olympian who won a gold and a silver medal at the 1955 Pan American Games, warmly greeted his crew.

“He said, ‘Guys, this means more to me than winning the Olympics,’ ” Daly recalled. “He was almost teary-eyed. He was not an emotional guy, he was a pretty hard-assed guy. This was the highlight of his career. He had coached for so many years and he had never ever gotten to win the Vails.”

***

The Dad Vail’s celebration of the Hawks’ 50th anniversary must wait. For Daly, a lingering memory was his return to the regatta in 1990 with his wife and his two children. He saw his old coach, Toland, who retired after the 1973 season and died in 2002.

As the pair spoke, the subject of the speedy practice two days before the 1970 competition came up.

“I looked at him and I said, ‘Joe, did you ever think we’d win the Vails in ’70?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, I was sure you were going to win,’ ” Daly recalled.

“He said, ‘Jerry, you don’t remember but that day we raced, you guys came through the bridge in 2 minutes and 17 seconds. Coming through that fast, you’re either a great crew or you’ve got a [bleeping] motor behind you. You guys smoked the course that day.’ So he was confident in us.”

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The activity at Silver Cross Hospital during the pandemic has been a whirlwind. The hospital set up a command center as the threat escalated with morning and afternoon meetings to review the previous hours and discuss what needed to be done. Special care was taken to conserve personal protective equipment initially because of short supplies.

Daly has admired the work of his colleagues, particularly the nurses who “spend way more time with the patient than anybody else.

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“For the first month, protection equipment was in short supply,” he said. “So the really heavy lifting was done by the nurses and the doctors in the ER and the doctors in the ICU.

“It’s been a unique experience. For someone who’s been in medicine as long as I have, it’s the first time we’ve ever had something that no one knows what to do with. It’s a learning curve for everybody.”