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The generation non-gap. If Parker had trouble keeping up with Burk, then Harvard oarsmen ever since have been hard-pressed to match Parker, who has always been in superb physical condition. He runs with his athletes on flat land and up and down the steps of Harvard Stadium-and he competes. "The lack of that generational distinction is in some respects what fuels Harry's competitive fire and makes him such a fabulously successful coach," says Peter Raymond.

Even in his 40s, Parker was able to beat many of the varsity athletes. Today, giving away about four decades to them, he devises an age handicap that still gives him a chance to win an event like the Newell triathlon-ergometer rowing, running, and stadiums-by beating the team average. (Thus far, Par-ker is undefeated in the New-ell triathlon.) On a cold winter day in the early 1980s, Altekruse and Parker initiated the "Century Club" by running up and down 100 sections of Harvard Stadium, essentially making three tours around the horseshoe. Altekruse, one of the all-time great stadium runners, finished in under an hour. So did Parker who, pushing hard on the last 10 sections, came in at 59:50. Another time, in Switzerland, Parker invited Altekruse to go on a five-mile run with him; he didn't mention that they were five uphill miles in the Alps.

Each Christmas vacation, the Harvard oarsmen compete to see who logged the most athletic training over the holiday, with points awarded for various activities. "Every year my Dad would sneak in a different activity that he could get points for," says David Parker-citing paternal passions like golf and cross-country skiing. One Christmastime, Parker got interested in windsurfing and went to the Virgin Islands to visit the family of Paul Hoffman '68, J.D. '74, who coxed the 1966-68 Harvard varsities. "Lo and behold, that year, the scoring system gave significant points for windsurfing!" exclaims Hoffman. Farther north, a couple of years ago, Parker, son David, and friends climbed New Hampshire's Mount Washington in frigid January weather. Fritz Hobbs reflects on Parker's unending appetite for challenges: "He gets younger, I get older."

THE SILENCE.
The Tao Te Ching opens with a famous line: Those who say do not know; those who know do not say. "I used to go for weeks and Harry would never say anything to me," Hobbs recalls. The coach is indeed a man of few words; Parker's senior thesis at Penn, on moral reasoning, was four pages long. At a typical crew practice, Parker says little or nothing. "He's very reticent," says Al Shealy. "In the launch, he would sit up there like a hood ornament." In the 1960s, Hobbs recalls, Parker "had this big, white, twin-screwed launch. Standing up in front, he looked like Washington crossing the Delaware."

After the long stretches of silence, when Parker actually speaks, the rowers hang on his every word. "He has a very compelling voice," says Tom Tiffany. "Think about the great orators or singers-you catch a lot of meaning in the nuances, the inflection in their voices. Harry doesn't say much, but when he does speak, you strain to catch the meaning." Most crew coaches now use battery-powered electronic megaphones. Not Parker. While useful for saving vocal cords, these devices turn all voices into a generic, amplified drone. Parker's old-fashioned cardboard megaphone preserves shades of individual expression. "You'd hear that low, deep voice coming at you across the water," Ian Gardiner recalls. "And it would send a shiver down your spine."

It is not Parker's way to yell at athletes or tear them down; he is equally parsimonious with his praise. "You never were told that you were good enough," Fiechter muses. "Many oarsmen valued Harry's approval more than that of their parents. Nothing mattered as much as Harry's special blessing-the most immediate form of which was putting you in the varsity boat." The coach's silence might induce athletes to work harder to resolve an uncertainty. "He put goals there without ever stating them," says Jim Crick '88, who coxed the 1987-88 varsities and now coaches at Union College. "We were always trying to figure out what he wanted. If he never told us we were doing it right, we were going to keep it up until he told us."

Parker allows his rowers latitude for experiment, room to figure out for themselves how to move a boat effectively. "I felt a lot more motivated by the coach not giving me too many instructions," says Didzis Voldins '94, of the 1992-94 varsities. "It gives the rower a lot of confidence for the coach to hand that responsibility over to him."

Scores of oarsmen will testify that Parker was the most important teacher they had at Harvard. Crick states flatly that "Harry has been the most influential person in my life." Paul Hoffman calls him "the single best teacher I had at Harvard College or Harvard Law School. I personally still approach all major challenges using the metaphor of rowing." And Travis Metz goes so far as to state that "anybody who comes out of the Harvard crew program will tell you that it was the most important thing in their college experience." Parker's first wife, Elinor, thought she was marrying a college teacher, a professor of philosophy. And she was. His field, though, is applied philosophy.

THE WORLD STAGE.
Parker applied his philosophy with startling success when he coached the national women's team in 1975 and 1976. The United States had sent women's crews to the European Championships in 1973 and 1974 but they had finished far back. In 1975 Parker took over and ran a selection camp out of Newell Boathouse. "He just doesn't get in the way of what you want to do. He doesn't try to manipulate you," says Northeastern women's coach and former Radcliffe coach Carie Graves, a rower on those 1975 and 1976 eights. The women won silver medals at the 1975 World Championships and bronze medals at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. "That's when women's rowing in this country changed," Graves says. "Ever since then we have been taken seriously." Hoffman adds that "Harry compressed 15 to 20 years of development for women's rowing into one Olympic cycle. He approached it with the idea that `there's no reason these people won't go as fast as anybody else I've ever coached.' And they did, by God!"

Parker worked with every U.S. Olympic team from 1964 to 1984 (including 1968, when the Harvard varsity eight represented the United States at Mexico City). One tally in 1992 counted 55 of his college and national-team athletes who had taken part in the Olympic Games and had won, individually, 5 gold, 11 silver, and 13 bronze medals; he had also coached 57 rowers who competed in the World Championships, resulting in 25 silver and 6 bronze medals. Over the last decade Parker has done much less international coaching. "It takes an incredible amount of work to do both," he explains. "And I get much more satisfaction and enjoyment from coaching at Harvard." He also has more autonomy in Newell. "In international coaching," says Raymond, "he doesn't have control over his domain."

Though Parker likes being in charge, he is no tyrant. "One of Harry's real assets is what he doesn't do: he doesn't impose his values on the crew," says Will Scoggins '70 ('71), who rowed for the 1971 varsity. "In college I was a hippie with hair down to the middle of my back. Harry could care less what you looked like, or what your political beliefs were, as long as you pulled hard. That kind of freedom really allows things to go." Coxswain Tom Tiffany sported an Afro hair style that Scoggins remembers as "two feet wide"; Parker noted it only once, in a tongue-in-cheek remark after winning a race: "There's a lot of wind resistance from that hair, Tom."

THE SOURCE.
In 1968, Fiechter went to the Olympic trials in a coxed pair; his coach was none other than former rival Ted Nash of the University of Pennsylvania. As Fiechter got into the shell for his trial race, he saw a wide piece of tape that Nash had placed across his foot stretchers. On the tape was lettered one word: pride.

That is not Harry Parker's approach to coaching. Those who say do not know; those who know do not say. Parker believes that the will to excel exists within each athlete, and is not something that a coach can, or should, attempt to instill. "In life as in sport, you don't do it for the Gipper, or for Seiji Ozawa, or for Harry," says Washburn. "Harry opens a space into which an athlete can pour his passion. There's no room for it when the coach is in the spotlight." Scoggins says, "While hard work was going on, it was not onerous. People chose to work hard, not because it was mandated from above."

Crick asserts that "Several times, guys who were on the junior varsity squad could have made it to the varsity if they'd been kicked in the pants. Harry never bothered to. He is singularly great at getting people to find the motivation within themselves. It's a case of the cream rising to the top." Parker's laissez-faire attitude has extended to his own sons. George, who says his father "neither encouraged nor discouraged" rowing by his offspring, eventually rowed and coached for the Mather House crew. David began his rowing career as a college junior and rowed two years with the Harvard lightweights. "Dad rarely tells people what to do, or how to do it," David says. "He leads by example; I caught his enthusiasm and wanted to share it." (They continue to share it: for the past decade, David and his father have rowed a double scull in the annual Head of the Charles Regatta.)

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