By Diane Pucin, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Joan Scholl was trying to find a copy place. Instead, she found a 76-year-old solid gold rowing trophy that's been missing for somewhere around 40 years.
And that begins the story of the Philadelphia Challenge Cup, which was rowing's version of tennis' Davis Cup or golf's Ryder Cup or yachting's America's Cup until it disappeared many years ago.
Scholl stumbled upon the Challenge Cup at I. Switt Antiques in June. The 18-inch, solid gold trophy had been missing since sometime in the mid-1950s, by the best accounts.
It was commissioned in 1920 by the arbiters of amateur rowing on Boathouse Row, the Schuylkill Navy, which raised $2,500 for the cup and presented it to Olympic singles sculling champion John Kelly Sr. Each year after that, the trophy was to be presented to the world's best singles sculler.
It was an in-your-face taunt by Philadelphia at the hoity-toity Henley Regatta, which considered Kelly too blue-collar to compete in its prestigious regatta at Henley-on-Thames in England.
Jack and Joan Scholl, rowers from way back, are Philadelphians who moved to Palm Desert, Calif., about 12 years ago. Back in town for a family reunion, they were looking for a copy shop, not an antique store, when they made their discovery.
"A Kinko's or something," Joan Scholl said. "Then we walked past this antique place." She likes to collect rowing memorabilia, so she said to her husband: "I wonder if they have any old rowing medals."
He told her to check. "But, you know, you had to ring the bell and have them let you in," she said, "so I almost didn't bother. Except, something seemed to pull me in." So she rang and went in. The man said he didn't get much of that stuff anymore, and I said, "Oh, that's disappointing," Joan Scholl said. "But then he told me that he had a gold rowing trophy on a shelf somewhere."
Now, Scholl had rowed on the Schuylkill in the 1950s. She remembered the Australian Mervyn Wood, rowing against John Kelly Jr. on the Schuylkill for the cup. She knew the story of the Philadelphia Challenge Cup, and she knew that it had been missing for many years. She asked to see this gold trophy.
It was pulled off of some back shelf, dusty and not gleaming. When Scholl looked at the front, it said Philadelphia Challenge Cup. And on the back, it had the list of winners. Scholl asked about purchasing the cup.
"The man told me he was looking for somewhere between $25,000 or $30,000," she said. "I couldn't exactly write a check for that."
Scholl left and called Clete Graham, who had done research on the missing trophy several years ago, and who is commodore of the Schuylkill Navy today.
TESTING THE LEGAL WATERS
Now the Schuylkill Navy has filed a lawsuit in Common Pleas Court against Joan Switt Langbord and George Antoniak and I. Switt Antiques asking for the cup back. When she answered the phone at I. Switt Antiques on Friday, Switt Langbord said: "I have no comment and will not speak about this," then referred the caller to her lawyer, David Glansberg.
Glansberg said he had no comment either, except that "the Schuylkill Navy will have a hard time proving ownership of this cup.''"
Maybe so. "The records are hazy," said Joe Sweeney, a rower and a member of the Schuylkill Navy. "Someone remembers the last time it was seen was at the Fairmount bar. Someone remembers that Bill Donovan, who was Schuylkill Navy commodore at the time, took it home. Someone says it was in a vault at Bailey, Banks & Biddle. It was never reported stolen, or at least we can't find any police reports."
In his research, Graham came up with four theories on the cup's disappearance. One was that the cup disappeared during a race in Philadelphia in 1962, a race that included Vladimir Ivanov of the Soviet Union - thus leading to nefarious thoughts of some evil Soviet plot to abscond with it. Another was that the cup disappeared in 1951, and that from that time pictures of it were awarded to rowers. Another held that the cup disappeared from the Bailey, Banks & Biddle vault. And finally, that some local rowing official made off with the trophy.
IT WASN'T FOR KEEPS
But the winner never got to keep the cup, either. Oh, no. The golden trophy was kept in Philadelphia, guarded, polished, periodically tidied up and, OK, maybe taken to a Boathouse Row bar now and then.
Switt Langbord told the Philadelphia Daily News that her shop has held the Challenge Cup for more than 20 years, and that she acquired it at an estate sale.
After the cup was rediscovered this summer, Graham, who worked the Olympics as an official, decided to revive a tradition. On the day of the men's singles final at the Olympics, he made a quick appearance on the dock and handed gold-medal winner Xeno Mueller of Switzerland a framed photo of the Philadelphia Challenge Cup.
Graham said that he hoped the cup would be repossessed by the Schuylkill Navy, and that Mueller's name, along with each Olympic winner after 1956, would be added.
The names engraved on the cup are those of Kelly, who represented Vesper in 1920; Walter M. Hoover, from Undine Barge Club; W.E. Garrett Gilmore of Bachelors Barge Club; Paul Costello of Vesper; Joseph Burk of Penn Athletic Club; and international rowers Jack Beresford of England; H.R. Pearce and Wood of Australia; Charles Campbell of Canada; Gustav Schafer of Germany; and Jurij Tjukalov and Ivanov of the Soviet Union.
Ted Nash, an Olympic rower and now the Penn AC coach, remembers Ivanov, the great Russian sculler, rowing for the cup on the Schuylkill. "It was a very big deal in its day," Nash said. "It was a beautiful cup."