Walk around the banks of the Schuylkill today and it will be impossible to miss Kamrad. He is one of the sages of the Dad Vail, a 71-year-old rowing lifer with a protruding white beard, narrow face and unpredictable sensibility. Everyone knows him. Everyone stops to talk to him.
This regatta is Kamrad's love and the reason why, after a lifetime of coaching, he eschewed retirement and agreed last fall to coach the Grand Valley State University women who will try to win the varsity heavyweight eight title, among other events. For John Bancheri, head of the Lakers rowing program, pulling Kamrad out of retirement was akin to Andy Reid luring Howard Mudd back into coaching - only Kamrad is essentially working for free.
Kamrad stays in an honors dorm on the Allendale, Mich., campus, in what he calls his "monk's den," and has a meal card that allows him two daily meals. Otherwise, he coaches out of love, trying to give back to a sport that has consumed his life.
And he wanted to get back to Dad Vail.
"He's obsessed with this course," said Vanessa Dean, a 19-year-old on the team. "That's all he talks about. I think even in the fall he was just anxious to get to Dad Vail."
Kamrad grew up in Trenton, around the corner from the state prison and a block away from the Roebling Steel mill. His father was a butcher and a musician, his mother a piano teacher and secretary, and as a kid Kamrad played the cello and took voice lessons.
He rode horses while in high school at Valley Forge Military Academy, a place where "the structure was good for me," Kamrad said.
Not until his freshman year at Florida's Rollins College in 1958 did Kamrad taste the water. He put down the cello and picked up an oar, and in May 1959 he raced in his first Dad Vail for Rollins' legendary coach, U.T. Bradley, one of the regatta's founding fathers.
Kamrad has missed four Dad Vails since.
