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A Sketch of "America's First Fencing Hero" : Lt. George Charles Calnan, U.S.N.
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February 1942
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7
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A Sketch of "America's First Fencing Hero"
LT. GEORGE CHARLES CALNAN, U. S. N.
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With the coming of war, many of our fencers are serving in the armed forces of the United States. The memory of Lt. Calnan, probably the greatest figure in American fencing history, who lost his life in the dirigible “Akron” disaster in 1933, is treasured by our older colleagues. But many of the younger fencers are only vaguely acquainted with Calnan’s name, and know little of the man or his achievements. The Riposte is fortunate to be able to present Calnan’s story largely in his own words. In the fall of 1932, at the request of one of our editors, he wrote a short fencing autobiography. This is the first time that this material is made available for publication. This is the first of two articles.
—
At the opening ceremonies of the 1932 Olympic Games, before an audience of 105,000, an American naval officer ascended the rostrum, and on behalf of the assembled athletes of the world, recited the traditional oath of amateurism and sportsmanship. That officer was the Captain of the American Olympic Fencing Team; Lt. George C. Calnan. It was the first time that a fencer had been so honored in the Olympic Games.
During the succeeding two weeks, the American fencing team, led by Lt. Calnan, made its highest score in Olympic history. Early in the new year of 1933, Calnan’s nomination for the presidency of the Amateur Fencers League of America was universally acclaimed. Then, one night in early April, the great airship “Akron” left its Lakehurst base, Lt. Calnan at his post as ballast officer, never to return. A year later, the Amateur Fencers League of America dedicated a new trophy, emblematic of the National Three-Weapon Team Championship, to be known as the Calnan Memorial Trophy. President O’Connor said at the time: “Calnan ... belongs to a period in American fencing which marks the transfer of emphasis from technical perfection to competitive excellence, without detriment, strange as it may seem, to fencing technique. When Calnan started his fencing, the emphasis in all schools was on form, and he became a perfect stylist ... Calnan was a leader in this transition and fencing history still to be written will give him credit for the part he has played.”
Calnan was the first American fencer to convince the skeptical Europeans that American swordsmanship had come of age. His greatest international triumph, third place in the individual epee championship at the 1928 Olympic Games, behind the immortal Lucien Gaudin and the redoubtable European champion Georges Buchard, was the first individual Olympic medal ever won by an American fencer. His national championship record in the United States was phenomenal: In ten years, he won the foil championship six times, once taking second and once taking third place. He won the epee championship once, besides two seconds and two thirds. He won the three-weapon championship, the outdoor epee title, and a host of other events.
Yet, when he was asked to summarize his fencing life, he wrote: “In writing a personal biography I find it very difficult to be anything but quite impersonal. It is rather difficult to be dramatic about one’s self unless one is an actor or an actress. You have my permission to change any of the material that I am forwarding you and to dramatize as you see fit ... Although this has been a lot of work to write, I would still feel quite happy, and in fact would appreciate it, if you decided not to use it, but decided to use the biography of Breckinridge, Levis, or Huffman ...”
—
George Charles Calnan was born in Boston in 1900, where he attended English High School. At Annapolis he was an honor student, besides serving as a midshipman during the war aboard the U.S.S. Rhode Island and the U.S.S. Pennsylvania. He was foil champion of the Academy and captain of the fencing team. How he came to start fencing may best be told in his own words:
“In June, 1916, I went to the Naval Academy, a gangling youngster of sixteen years of age and of such an imposing stature that when I walked down the corridor in my military uniform, my classmates were constantly afraid that I was going to suddenly fall apart. I was six feet tall and weighed a little over one hundred and thirty pounds.
“When the call for football candidates came out in August of that summer, I reported for football practice with a great deal of enthusiasm, but with, as it was afterwards proved, absolutely no ability. When the football suits were handed out in September at the beginning of the academic year, my ability was recognized and I was given no suit.
“Very much depressed, I walked back from football practice that September evening with a desire to go out for some sport other than football. I met a friend in my class who had been to the fencing room, taking fencing lessons for the previous month. After a great deal of persuasion on his part, I volunteered to go to the fencing room with him just to look on, but with a mental reservation not to become interested under any circumstances.
“Mr. Darriaulat, the present Fencing Coach at Cornell [Ed. note: now deceased], was then at the Naval Academy and was having his usual difficult time in convincing the midshipmen to take more interest in the sport of fencing. Anybody who entered the fencing room looked good to him. He came over to greet me and persuaded me to put on a mask and a glove and to take a foil in my hand. He even bribed me by giving me a lesson. So I received in fifteen minutes more attention than I had received in one month on the football field. From then on, I hardly missed a day of fencing for the whole three years that I was at the Naval Academy. I am quite sure that I averaged five days a week for those three academic years.”
The story continues in a tone that will be familiar to all fencers who are or have been members of a college team:
“During that time the outstanding memory is that of being Captain of the fencing team and going to New York with the team my senior year without the services of a coach. That was in April 1919 when there were only six colleges in the Intercollegiate Fencing Association. I remember distinctly being so nervous during the night before the competition, that I did not sleep a single wink the whole night. The competition was run off in those days so that every member of each team fenced every member of every other team, and then the total number of bouts won and lost was added up and the team which had the highest number of wins was declared the winner; thus, on this occasion the team which won the greatest number out of forty-five bouts was declared the winner. Although my team was a heavy favorite to win, due to a number of causes Columbia carried away first place and we got second. Through all the sixteen years of college, national, international and Olympic competition in which I have been, that defeat crushed me more and had more of a lasting effect on me than anything else that ever happened.”
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First Olympics
It is obvious that this disappointment became only an incentive to greater effort, for the story continues:
“In 1920 the call came out from the Amateur Fencers League of America for candidates for the Olympic Fencing Team. Although I had been out of training for nine months, I decided to go back to the Naval Academy and try out for the team. After months of training and a series of tryouts at Washington, Philadelphia and New York, the Olympic Team was selected and I was named as a substitute on the foils team. So, I journeyed to Antwerp and got my first taste of Olympic competition. That year I believe there was gathered together at Antwerp the greatest group of fencers that I have ever seen in my whole experience, Aldo Nadi, Nedo Nadi, Pulitti and Terlizzi were there from Italy; Gaudin, Cattiau and Ducret were there from France; Thorn and Anspach were there from Belgium; Osier was there from Denmark; and the only people missing were the Germans, the Austrians and the Hungarians. I never imagined that fencing could be so magnificent as what I saw there, and I resolved to continue fencing with the hope of attaining some close approximation to that perfection. At those games I fenced only five bouts, winning two and losing three. At any rate, I never survived the preliminaries of the individual championships.”
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Amateur Coaching
Upon returning from Europe, Calnan went for one year to the Naval Academy for post-graduate work, and then was sent to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for additional training in construction engineering. As to his fencing during these years, he says: “At each of these places, I was an amateur coach with the teams, helping out the undergraduates as best I could.” This was an interest that Calnan actively retained throughout his career, and many a midshipman who later became a strong national and international competitor owes much to Calnan’s effort. However, it was not a midshipman but a young student of engineering at M. I. T., Joseph L. Levis, that became most famous among Calnan’s proteges. Although their relative competitive record from 1926 to 1932 heavily favored Calnan in the foil, he always regarded Levis as the best American foilsman. He used to say, prior to the 1932 Olympics, “I am only a big, strong ox, but Levis . . . there’s a foilsman for you.” It is a matter of record, of course, that Levis’ second place in the 1932 Olympics is the highest honor ever won by an American foilsman.
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First Victory in Epee
Let us continue with Calnan’s story:
“In May of 1923, after winning the New England Foils Championship, I went to New York to take part in the National Championships. In New York I found the going too rough in foil and was eliminated, so rather than go home that evening, I decided to wait over until the next day and get some experience in the National Epee Championship. Up to this time, I had never entered a competition in the epee. Much to my surprise and to the surprise of everybody else, I won the National Epee Championship. For the last nine years I have each year without exception endeavored to capture that Epee Championship again and the best I have been able to do is two second places and one third place.”
—
This is the first of two articles about Lt. Calnan. The second, telling in his own words about his later national, international and Olympic successes—and disappointments—will appear in the next issue.
A Sketch of "America's First Fencing Hero" : Lt. George Charles Calnan, U.S.N.
A Sketch of "America's First Fencing Hero" : Lt. George Charles Calnan, U.S.N. [continued]
