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His hopes went with it . .
but Alan Ladd learned that if you lose
one dream, you grab another
BY DOROTHY DEERE
Alan, of “Calcutta,” still holds swimming and diving records
“flO you can dive, huh? What makes you think so?” asked the coach.
The coach had deep-set gray eyes and eyebrows that bristled rather than grew on the rocky promontory that was his brow. An immovable fellow with shoulders that, to the boy facing him, looked like two granite boulders.
“I don’t just think I can dive, sir. I know I can,” said the kid.
He wasn’t a very big kid — he didn’t weigh much.
“Hmph — ” said the coach. “Okay, get up there and let’s see what you can do.”
The pool’s edge was slippery with the splashing of the swimmers, the kid’s stubby toes gripped the tiles carefully. He’d never been in a real athletic club before. TPhe steam heat rising in damp clouds, the shouts and laughter making hollow sounds, the muscled deities cleaving the pool’s sacred waters with ease and assurance, all gave him an awesome feeling. He’d never been in Heaven, either, but this was at least one of its anterooms.
The coach indulged in an inner grin, trained not to interfere with his face. You never could tell about those small kids. This one had good legs and shoulders and carried himself like an up-ended arrow. Plenty of guts, too. He watched him walk to the end of the strange board, test its spring once, then do a perfect arc into the water. The coach gave a noncommittal nod of his head toward the board, a silent order to try it again. Again and again — a jack-knife, a back-flip, a gainer, a half-gainer, with the big man watching every move.
“Okay, sir?” The kid’s eyes were red from the pool’s chlorine when he climbed out at last, and his dripping hair gave him the look of an anxious, blond water spaniel. “Can I dive — like I said?”
Giving the boy a brief pat on the back, the coach said, “Get here tomorrow as soon after school as you can. Tell your Mom you’re going to be pretty busy for the next three or four years — you’re going to be swimming for the Hollywood Athletic Club!”
“You — swimming — Holly ( Continued on page 82)
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