Speakers

Robert Pruter: Having a life-long interest in sports history, Pruter received a BA degree in history, Roosevelt University, 1967; an MA degree in history, with honors, Roosevelt University, 1976; and an MLIS from Dominican University in 2000. This academic preparation led to more than 27 years career as an encyclopedia editor in the social sciences and more than eight years as a university librarian. Equally important in the shaping of writing interests was his growing enthusiasm for rhythm and blues music while attending college. Thus, his writing career has been motivated by his lifelong love both for the history of sports and for the history of African-American music as they relate to his hometown of Chicago.  Among is books are:  Chicago Soul, University of Illinois Press, 1991. (Certificate of Excellence for scholarly works from the Illinois State Historical Society, 1992; and the ARSC Award for Excellence In Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, 1992) and; Doowop: The Chicago Scene, University of Illinois Press, 1996 (Winner of the the ARSC Award for Excellence In Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, 1997).

Stathis Avramidis, PhD conducts research on drowning prevention, rescue and treatment in his capacity as Associate of the Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Greece), Visiting Research Fellow of Leeds Metropolitan (UK) and Task Force Member of the Lifesaving Foundation (Ireland). Dr Avramidis is one of the most prolific water safety authors having authored 9 academic and professional books on water safety and over 200 other publications or conference presentations. He was honored by the International Swimming Hall of Fame with the Paragon Aquatic Safety Award 2009.

Kevin Dawson, PhD is an assistant professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 2005.  He was a 2004-2005 Ford Dissertation Fellow. Dr. Dawson’s research analyzes how members of the African diaspora recreated aspects of their African heritage in the Americas and Europe.  Field and archival research have been conducted in West Africa, Barbados, and throughout the United States. He published “Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World” in The Journal of American History (March 2006).  He is currently working on a book titled Enslaved Watermen in the Atlantic World, 1444-1888, which considers how slaves transmitted African maritime skills to the Americas and how they shaped the social, cultural and economic development of the Americas. A side project considers how concepts of cleanliness and hygiene shaped perceptions of race of civilization.

Dawn Bean founded Synchro –  the first magazine devoted entirely to the sport of synchronized swimming –  in 1963 and continued as its editor and publisher for 30 years.  A National and Pan American Games champion, she was the head coach for three nationally ranked clubs from 1951-1983 and currently has coached Masters synchronized swimmers to national and world championships.  From the 1970’s through the 1990’s, she was one of the U.S.’s top international judges as well as a national judge. She has served as President and Olympic International Chairman for United States Synchronized Swimming, represented the sport on the U.S. Olympic Committee and was competition director for synchro at its inaugural competition at the 1984 Olympic Games.

Dr. Tom Griffiths has been an Aquatic Safety Specialist for 40 years, including his position as the Aquatic Director and Safety Officer for Penn State University from 1986 to 2009. Dr. Tom has written seven books, created four videos, wrote hundreds of articles, invented numerous products and has been featured in several segments in television and radio, including the Discovery Channel and Inside Edition. Dr. Tom is the founder and president of the Aquatic Safety Research Group, LLC. He conducts research, creates videos, educates and speaks – sharing his expertise as a successful professional to help others gain success.

Paul Carvalho is a Montreal-based documentarist who has authored many hour-long documentaries over the last decade. Locations span from Harlem to London, Las Vegas to Rio, the heart of Africa to Alaska. Paul’s films have been broadcast on such stations as Japan’s NHK, France’s ARTE, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Planet Green cable channel, PBS and virtually all the major Canadian stations. Paul is currently directing, writing and producing the first-ever history of Montreal for Canada’s French-language public television channel, Radio-Canada. He is a Harvard University Nieman Fellow.   See paulcarvalhofilms.com

Ted Woods, Filmmaker. Ted grew up outside Chicago. He began his work as a documentarian during his undergrad at Fordham University in New York City where he received his B.A. in Peace and Justice Studies. While there he traveled and did research throughout Africa, Latin America, Cuba, and the Caribbean. Upon graduation he did work documenting Cuban Hip-Hop and presented his research to the American Anthropology Association. He them moved to Los Angeles to begin work in the film industry and studied film at UCLA.

Lisa Bier is an associate librarian at Southern Connecticut State Univeristy’s Buley Library. She is the librarian liaison for the departments of Anthropology, Sociology, Social Work, Political Science, and Marriage and Family Therapy. In 2011, her book, “Fighting the Current: The Rise of American Women’s Swimming, 1870-1926”, was published by McFarland. Another book, American Indian and African American People, Communities, and Interactions: An Annotated Bibliography, was published in 2004 by Greenwood/Praeger Press.

Bruce Wigo, J.D. has been the innovative and tireless President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Swimming Hall of Fame since 2005. His love of history predates his undergraduate minor in history at the University of North Carolina and the research and writing skills he learned from Widner Law School.  As  steward of ISHOF’s memorabilia collection and editor of ISHOF’s annual yearbook, he is regarded as one of the world’s leading experts in world swimming history and has personally researched and visited many of history’s most revered swimming sites such as Paestum, Tarquinia, Rome and Pompeii in Italy, Xian in China, Bath in England, to name a few.  Much of his research has been published in ISHOF’s annual or in a self-published the book “The Golden Age of Swimming: A Picture History of the Sport & Pools That Changed America”, and in a paper he will present for the first time at this symposium on the little written about topic of “Native American Swimming Skills Before and After The Arrival of the Europeans.”

Richard “Sonny” Tanabe. An All-American at Indiana University and member of the 1956 US Olympic Swimming Team, Sonny Tanabe is one of Hawaii’s greatest swimmers and legendary free diver and spear fisherman.  His books include Spear Fishing on the Island of Hawai’i: A Pictorial History and  The Evolution of Freediving & History of Spearfishing in Hawaii.  Sonny is founder and President of the Hawaii Swimming Hall of Fame and President of the Hawaii Chapter of the U.S. Olympians.

Bob Duenkel was the 1997 recipient of the Glen S. Hummer Award, an award given to the individual who makes the greatest contribution to the open water swimming in the United States. As the Curator for the International Swimming Hall of Fame Museum, Duenkel has extensive knowledge of and networks throughout the aquatics world. He has worked hand-in-hand with Buck Dawson, Sam Freas and Bruce Wigo for years, helping build the reputation, archives and artifacts of the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame. With his non-assuming personality and low-key approach, he is a driving force behind the growth of Open Water Swimming throughout the world. He is the key element in the conduct of many Hall of Fame Activities and is the de factor meet manager for most of the meets hosted by the International Swimming Hall of Fame. He is the administrative liaison with the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame and has recently established a process of recording the marathon swims not under the jurisdictional authority of another body. His Swimming Camp Chickopee teams have participated and won AAU and U.S. Swimming National Championships. He was also the Head Coach for the III FINA Open Water World Cup team in Evian, France where the American team won the Team Championship.

Robert K. Barney is professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Canada. An American citizen, he served four years in the USAF during the Korean Conflict. A three sport athlete as an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico, he took his PhD there in 1968. He has published some 300 sport history pieces in his career, most of them on the Modern Olympic Movement, the best known of which are “Selling the Five Rings: The IOC and the Rise of commercialism” (2002) and “Tarnished Rings: The IOC and the Salt Lake City Bid Scandal” (2011). A former president of the North American Society for Sport History, he founded the International Centre for Olympic Studies in 1989, was awarded the Olympic Order in 1997,and received the Pierre de Coubertin Statue in 2008.

Dave Barney has coached interscholastic sport for more than half a century. He is an emeritus member of the English faculty at Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico, as well as the school’s varsity boys and girls swim coach of more than forty years. His writings on sport in general and aquatics in particular have appeared in numerous publications. He is also a member of the ISHOF’s Selection Committee.