Exclusive: Up Close and Personal; An Interview with Bruce Wigo, New President of International Swimming Hall of Fame

By Chuck Kroll

Editor’s Note: This interview with Bruce Wigo, former Executive Director of USA Water Polo, who was named last week as the new President of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, is an opportunity for the swimming and greater aquatic community to get to know ISHOF's new CEO. The interview was conducted by noted swimming historian, Chuck Kroll.

SwimmingWorldMagazine.com: Why are you interested in leading ISHOF at this time? Why come out of ‘retirement’?

Bruce Wigo: Simply put, because the IHSOF is in trouble and needs help. My personal history with the ISHOF goes back to the mid-1950’s when my old swim coach, Tom Williams convinced my parents to drive down to Fort Lauderdale over the Christmas holidays to train at the old Casino Pool. It was a magnificent salt water chlorinated pool that stood in front of the spot where the current pools are located.

Williams was a Michigan alum and through him I got to know Buck Dawson, founder of the Hall of Fame, at a very early age. I got to meet Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe and many other legends of our sport as a youngster. And, since retiring from USA Water Polo in 2003, I have been writing something of a history of swimming as told through the eyes of Joe Ruddy, an ISHOF honoree who was, according to Arthur Daley, the first sports writer to win the Pulitzer Prize, the “most fabulous character the aquatic sports ever produced.” So, the history of aquatics and the ISHOF have meant a lot to me over the years, so, that is why I am interested in helping.

SWM: How did your role at USA Water Polo help prepare you for this new role at ISHOF?

Wigo: Coincidentally perhaps, I took over USA Water Polo at a time when it was facing significant financial and governance problems. It was deeply in debt and there was some talk of the USOC intervening in the governance. With the help and support of many individuals, I was able to turn it around and make it a model NGB. I see many similarities to the situation at ISHOF.

SWM: What personal strengths do you bring to the job? What weaknesses do you perceive and what will you do to augment these areas?

Wigo: One of my greatest strengths is a network of friends that can help me with the monumental task of turning around an organization that has not had the best of reputations in recent years. I can rely upon these friends to give me the best advice possible. I also have a legal background and the experience of having lived through a similar situation with USA Water Polo.

I also believe that most people I have worked with would consider me a good communicator and competent and creative administrator who knows the importance of budgeting and strategic planning. I am passionate about the things I chose to do and am a tireless worker. As for weaknesses, I do not keep a neat office and realize the need for an administrative assistant to help keep the office straight. I also recognize I don’t know everything and am secure enough to ask experts for their opinions. That is why I have reached out to my friend Dennis Carey of Spencer Stuart, a business
consultant who literally wrote the book on “How to Run a Company,” for advice on restructuring the ISHOF Board, which I hope will be the greatest board we could possibly have.

SWM: What are your thoughts about the heritage of ISHOF and the history contained therein?

Wigo: The ISHOF has been called a shrine, and for the international swimming community it certainly is. Through the rooms of the ISHOF have walked the greatest names in the history of aquatics: Duke Kahanamoku, Johnny Weissmuller, Gertrude Ederle, Buster Crabbe, Eleanor Holm, Esther Williams, Donna DeVarona, Tamas Farago, Mark Spitz, John Naber, Greg Louganis…you name it, they have been here.

This weekend, at the Masters championships, I met Jeff Farrell. His is one of the greatest swimming stories of all time. There are so many incredible and inspirational stories to tell. It is the mission of the ISHOF to tell these stories and to inspire our youth. The aquatic sports have some of the most sensational and inspirational stories in all of sports. These stories need to be preserved and told.

SWM: What are some of the opportunities and goals you see for ISHOF in the immediate, short term and mid-long term?

Wigo: The short-term objective is to restore the credibility of the ISHOF within the aquatics community. We will do this by establishing a leadership team of outstanding and highly respected individuals, starting with Mark Spitz.

The long-term goals are to create a world-class, interactive museum that will inspire young athletes to pursue their dreams and to develop a variety of independent, reliable and ongoing revenue streams that enable the ISHOF to preserve the legacy of the aquatic sports in perpetuity.

SWM: How do you see ISHOF better using its existing materials, facilities and other resources?

Wigo: In the late 1960’s, ISHOF Chairman Doc Counsilman said he envisioned the ISHOF as a science fair of sights and sounds, using the latest technologies to entertain and tell the history of swimming and competitive swimmers, diving, synchro and water polo. It would not be a museum of show boxes filled with medals and old, used nose plugs. When the ISHOF first opened, it was moving toward what Doc envisioned. Unfortunately, the latter is what it has become.

We have some amazing stories to tell and using the memorabilia and new technologies, I believe we can make ISHOF an exciting place that everyone with an interest in aquatics will want to see in person or by way of a virtual visit on the internet.

SWM: Who are some of your favorite “aqualetes” and personalities in the aquatic world, both past and present?

Wigo; There really isn’t enough space to do this question justice… In nearly every Roman public pool, in every part of the Roman empire, for nearly a thousand years, stood a statue of Horatius Cocles, the swimmer who saved Rome in 509 BC.

Ben Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe and Lord Byron were all recognized as holding world records in swimming and each had interesting stories. Before diver Sam Patch lost his life making a jump from the Rochester Falls on Friday the 13th, 1829, there was no superstition surrounding Friday the 13th. American swimmer Paul Boyton was so famous in 1878, that when he swam in the Seine, over one million Parisians lined the banks of the river to see him. Swimmer Steve Brodie became world famous after being the first man or woman to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and survive.

In 1911, in the first race he ever entered, Hawaii’s Duke Kahanamoku shattered the world record in the 100 free. After Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel, she became – for a brief moment in time – the most famous woman in the western world. In the 1940’s, Arthur Daley, the first sports reporter to win the Pulitzer Prize, called Olympic swimmer and water polo player Joe Ruddy, “the most fabulous character the aquatic sports ever produced.”

There are just so many great stories…and great personalities … not just from the distant past, but swimmers are making stories every day…not just Olympians. I’m thinking of John Grant, a Scotsman who just won ISHOF’s Heroic Deeds award. Grant is a swimmer who saved dozens and dozens of people in Indonesia after saving himself during the tsunami last year.

SWM: What legacy do you hope to leave ISHOF?

Wigo: I find it incredible today that young swimmers have no connection to the history of our great sport. At a recent swim meet, I asked some kids if they had ever heard of John Naber, Tim Shaw, Shane Gould, Tracy Caulkins and Matt Biondi and came away with blank stares. I then asked who their sports heroes were and I heard the names of football, basketball and NASCAR stars.

This is both tragic and unfortunate because I don’t think kids have the pride of being aquatic athletes they should have. They accept society’s judgment that our sports are “minor” or second-class sports. I hope to make the American and world aquatic communities aware of the great legacy they have as swimmers, divers, synchronized swimmers and water polo players.

We participate not only in the world’s greatest sport, but its most healthful and useful. It is the entre into dozens of other sports that are in, on or under water and it is one of the only sports that can help you save your life or the lives of others. Historically speaking, where would mankind be if man hadn’t learned to swim? If primitive man had not overcome his fear of water, the earth never would have been populated. Daniels, Kanahamoku, Weissmuller, Spitz and Phelps are part of that legacy and preserving this legacy and making young swimmers aware of this legacy I hope, will be my legacy.

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