International Swimming Hall of Fame Honorees By Category - Contributor

Hungary is a land of thermal springs and although landlocked, swimming and water sports are ingrained in its culture. This love of water led to an early domination of international swimming and diving competitions in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the 1920’s, it was water polo that came to symbolize Hungary’s unique strengths and individuality. So, it was natural for a boy born in 1930 to want to play water polo.

Joy Cushman was born into an aquatic family that had a summer beach house in Galveston, Texas. It was there she developed an early love for swimming, fishing, surfing, and waterskiing. Back in Houston during the school year, she joined a swimming team. Like most female swimmers in those days, she performed water ballet routines for her club’s annual water shows, starting in 1939. It was the great heyday of water shows and the Aquacades that helped popularize swimming and make Hall of Famers Johnny Weissmuller, Eleanor Holm, Buster Crabbe and Esther Williams superstars.

For over 50 years, the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF) has recognized a category of honorees known as “contributors.” They are the unsung heroes who have used their talents and work behind the scenes to positively impact the aquatic sports and help create platforms for others to achieve fame and glory.

Heinz Kluetmeier was born and raised in Germany until he was nine, when his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was introduced to the idea of a career in photo journalism when several photos taken of him by his mother, with his multi-talented pet parakeet “Chirpy,” were picked up and published nationally by the Associated Press. By age 15, he was shooting pictures for the local AP office.

As a swimmer, he was the Scottish freestyle champion and record holder over several distances between 1942 and 1947 before deciding to concentrate on diving. Self-taught and self-coached, he won gold medals at the 1950, 1954 and 1958 Commonwealth Games on the 10-meter platform and represented Great Britain at the Olympic Games in 1948 in London and in 1952 in Helsinki.

He was born in Roma, Italy and as a youth he loved sports, especially basketball, swimming and water polo. Aquatics won out over basketball, and Bartolo Consolo has spent the last 40+ years dedicating his life and his free time to FINA and all its aquatic disciplines.

Dale Petranech has been a leading figure, promoter, historian and organizer of open water swimming competitions in the United States and around the world for the past 35 years. He has accepted every challenge head on and is well respected internationally for his work.

A great promoter of youth sports and art, Bruce Hopping was born in 1921 in Vietnam. He grew up in Asia and the islands of the South Pacific, where his parents had business interests. When he was ready for high school, his family relocated to the United States, and then, like the rest of his graduating class in high school, he volunteered for the Army at the outbreak of World War II. He became a pilot and while searching for a missing plane, he was forced to ditch his plane into the Pacific. Battling storms, waves, sharks, sunburn and salt sores in a leaky raft, he survived on seagulls that roosted there and washed ashore in the Philippines two weeks later. It was a prime example of Hopping’s perseverance, tenacity and desire to live.

When he wanted to join the local Rowing Club in Durham City as a ten-year old, his mother insisted he should swim first. He liked it so much he took up swimming rather than rowing. Six years later Norman Woods Sarsfield was the city champion.

Peter Montgomery was raised on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, where he played water polo and swam competitively in addition to being a surf lifesaver and junior rugby league player.

When this former high school football coach’s daughter, Allison, began competitive diving in 1973, Eldon Godfrey switched allegiance to a whole new sport, and rose to the highest levels of volunteerism. With his organizational skills and insight, within three short years, he was elected president of the Canadian Amateur Diving Association and two years later the Aquatic Federation of Canada on whose committee he remained for 16 years, serving as Canada’s Chef de Mission for the Third FINA World Championships in Berlin.

Dr. Julio Maglione was born in 1935, in Montevideo, Uruguay. After learning to swim, he soon became Uruguay’s National Champion and record holder in the 100 and 200 meter butterfly and 100 and 200 meter breaststroke from 1949 to 1954.

Tom Hoad was a Western Australia State Butterfly Champion from 1950 to 1954, but his love for the water was in water polo. For over 60 years, he helped keep Australia in the forefront of world water polo, first as a player, then as a coach.

Re Calcaterra was born in 1915 in St. Louis, an area where she lived all her life. In this landlocked state of Missouri, swimming was not on the minds of most people especially after the dirty- water swimming conditions where many athletes became ill at the 1904 St Louis Olympic Games only eleven years earlier. After high school graduation, she went to work as a secretary atthe Brown Shoe Company in St. Louis. Soon married, she took her daughter, Roz, to the YMCA, teaching her to swim at a young age. A few years later, she attended a synchronised swimming clinic and in 1948, at the St. Louis Downtown YMCA, she organized the Clayton Shaw Park Synchronized Swimming Team, which she coached for more than 50 years; producing two national champions, one being daughter Roz, syn­chro's first nomination for the Sullivan Award.

In 1986, FINA President Bob Helmick handpickedCornelio Miguel Marculescu Bulfon to take the helm of a permanent FINA Office in Lausanne. The workload had grown to a point where a professional office staff was needed and Cornel had the capacity to do the work of ten people.

Since 1953, Judy McGowan has been active as a synchronized swimming competitor, coach, judge and most importantly, as an administrator both nationally and internationally.

During his lifetime (1937-1991), Bob Helmick became the most influential American in international sport. He led the governing bodies of the international aquatic disciplines (FINA), the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).