The permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art includes Thomas Eakins’ The Champion Single Sculls (1871), also known as Max Schmitt in a Single Scull. The picture is an idyllic scene of the Schuylkill River, Eakins’ friend Schmitt drifting at rest in his shell JOSIE and looking back over his right shoulder toward us, left hand on the handles, right hand on his thigh, while farther away Eakins himself sculls his single toward a distant double-with-coxswain. Since my late 20’s I have studied the framed print of the painting that hangs in my office, and imagined myself away from work and on the Schuylkill.  

My first visit to the Met is in autumn of 1977. The Champion Single Sculls is not on display, so I wheedle a docent into taking me behind the scenes. She leads me through a door and down a hallway, lifts a cloth, and there it is! I have never seen real art up close. I am electrified by the beauty of the picture and even more by the deftness of one sensitive soul who could manage sculls and could paint so exquisitely.

Inspired, I decide to visit Eakins’ city. Early the next day, following a bumpy train ride from New York City to Philadelphia, I hustle to the art museum, race several strangers up the steps and join them hollering and jumping around up top ala Stallone. Then I’m off to the Schuylkill Navy boathouses. In one I meet two older gentlemen ready for their daily row of a double. They date to about the year of Thomas Eakins’ death, I think – 1916. They have rowed together since college, and although friendly and happy to meet somebody from the wilds of Oregon, they don’t have much time to talk. They are eager to push off. They paddle through their drills, lengthen, and disappear around the bend as if in an Eakins painting.

My experience in a pair or double is limited at this point and watching them leaves me with a sense of the intimate bond that can develop in a two-person crew – something I will experience in time. One of the rowers is blind. Thinking about what it is like for him to row without sight prompts me to include eyes-shut drills in my rowing and coaching. I learn that balance comes from feeling and not from seeing.     

Wandering the banks of the Schuylkill brings to mind the Kellys. John B. (“Jack”) Kelly’s mother was a Costello. Jack won the gold medal in the single sculls at the 1920 Olympic Games, then a half-hour later teamed up with his cousin Paul Costello to win gold in the double. They repeated their feat in 1924, and in 1928 Paul Costello won a third Olympic gold in the double, this time with Charles McIlvaine.

My grandfather, Miles Costello, was born in 1988 in Allentown, 60 miles from Philadelphia. Like Jack Kelly, he was a bricklayer. My Costello line and Jack’s trace to County Mayo and the potato famine in Ireland. Is there a connection besides the surname and bricks? Well, I too participated in Olympic rowing: at Eton Dorney / London 2012 – as a spectator.

© 2026 Don Owen Costello. All rights reserved.