Although Club
member Geza Berger says basketball is his favorite sport, he has a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings from his rowing
career—something
he didn’t participate in until college.
Geza was born in Hungary, and escaped the country in 1944 with his parents and older brother. They spent a few years in West Germany before coming to the United States as displaced persons in 1950. Geza says he has always been active in sports: He played soccer while in Europe and picked up sports like basketball, track and skiing when the family came to the United States. In fact, Geza and his best friend were on the basketball and track teams throughout high school, and Geza continued playing basketball when he joined the United States Army. When Geza and his best friend started college at the University of Washington they were told they weren’t
Geza, front, with his four-man team that won the gold medal in the 1963 Pan American Games.
good enough to play basketball. Because both young men were more than six feet tall, the university’s rowing team recruited them. “There were signs all over campus (that) had a bar at six feet,” says Geza. If you were above the bar, the team was interested in having you try out. “They wanted tall people.” Geza soon started rowing for the Lake Washington Rowing Association in a four-man boat without a coxswain (an extra person that steers the boat). He never lost a competition in North and South America with the four-man boat he rowed with for around four years.
In 1961, Geza says he was on leave from the Army, traveling in Germany, and was at Checkpoint Charlie when the Berlin Wall was going up. “I didn’t know the wall was going up,” he says. “I drove up to this thing ... and there was a tank pointing right at me.” He says he was looking at a guard at the wall through binoculars, who was in turn watching him through his own pair of binoculars. “I didn’t like the feeling,” he says, and quickly left. That same year, Geza and his rowing teammates qualified to row in the European championships after winning a national title. Geza soon learned, however, there was a catch—because
1960 Olympic Trials team, Geza is second from left.
he was a refugee from a Communist country, the United States State Department wasn’t comfortable letting him travel with the team to Prague, where the competition was held. Geza did decide to go, but was told if he was arrested or kidnapped, there wouldn’t be much the United States could do for him.
The team’s 1961 trip was soon followed by a trip to the Pan America games in 1963. They flew to Săo Paulo, Brazil, from Miami and were met with a military escort. Geza says he and his teammates were ready to train in their boat when they got there, but their boat was stuck on a ship in Rio de Janiero due to a strike. “So we ran around, we ran stairs, whatever we could, and negotiated to get our boats off the ships. Two days before the race we finally got our boats. (We) got in the lake and were rowing all kinds of miles, trying to make up for it.” Geza says the team was fit enough that even with the setback, they took home the gold medal. Geza continued rowing until 1966, when he took a break from rowing and started playing basketball again for years, including participating in the Bellevue Club’s first basketball team after it started up in 1979.
After watching his parents worry about relatives left in Hungary, and seeing his mother glued to the television before she died in 1989, watching the Iron Curtain slowly come down, Geza knew he would be at the Berlin Wall in 1990 when it was taken down. He rented a car in West Germany and drove to the border, where he says the towers and barbed wire were still there, but all the guards were gone. “I went up to Checkpoint Charlie and the guy was renting sledgehammers right there.” Geza says he wailed away at the wall until his forearms froze up. He calls the experience “great therapy.” He still has a box of pieces from the wall. During that time, he says he walked back and forth through Checkpoint Charlie a number of times, but “I still
wasn’t comfortable.”
It was the Fourth of July, a day that symbolizes freedom for most Americans, including himself, says Geza, and the Berlin Wall symbolized oppression for most Europeans including a lot of his relatives still in Hungary.
In 1993, Geza received a phone call from his old rowing friends—they were going to be in the area rowing in an alumni event, which was part of Opening Day of Boating Season in the Montlake Cut. Geza received permission to row with his old team under Stanford University from the University of Washington. At first, he says he was hesitant about racing, after all, he hadn’t rowed in 27 years. His teammates said not to worry, they had six weeks to get ready. “I did,” says
1961 eight-man National Champions, Geza is second from left
Geza, “and we won. I said, ‘This is fun!’” All the pressure and careful consideration of diet was no longer there like it was 27 years ago. Soon after that race, the team was again in Washington, this time at the U.S.
Geza’s daughter, Monica, inherited
his athleticism—she won a high jump
competition in high school after training for just two weeks!
National Masters Rowing Championships in Vancouver. Geza drove down to race with them again, and they won. “Then I was hooked,” he says. Aiding in his decision to row again was an ankle injury he sustained playing basketball. Rowing would keep him active while giving his ankle some rest. His two competitive interests—basketball and rowing—collided in 1998 at the World Masters Games in Portland. Originally, basketball and rowing competitions were slated for different weeks, so Geza signed on for both. Then, the scheduled changed and basketball and rowing were the same week. “The final, bronze medal game in basketball was at 8 in the morning, the final in four (man competition) in rowing was at noon,” says Geza. “I played basketball; I was eating my breakfast in the car on the way to rowing.” Geza now rows with the Ancient Mariners Rowing Club in Seattle, as well as spending time exercising at the Club. “It’s a really great place to come,” he says about the Club. “I can spend three, four hours in here and just relax, enjoy the whole experience. It’s very much a part of my life.” It should be no surprise, then, that after a rotator cuff injury last year, Geza is anxious to get back to rowing. He recently had surgery and has been doing physical therapy—he’d like to get back to rowing in time for the Northwest Regionals in June.
