A Beloved Coach Is Recalled

Swimmers, rowers and water polo players, Olympic champions and scrubs--many in their 50s, 60s and 70s--said goodbye to their old coach Friday.

The memorial service for Alva Milton “Pete” Archer was held, appropriately, by the water in Long Beach where he had coached countless rowers since the 1930s. Archer, who coached and taught at Long Beach Wilson High School for 41 years, died last week at age 97.

He was known as the Grand Old Man of Rowing. Many of the athletes he coached in other sports insisted he could also have been called the Grand Old Man of Water Polo . . . and Swimming . . . and Lifeguarding.

At the service at Memorial Stadium, an inland waterway where the 1932 Olympic rowing events were held, people spoke of his calm manner, the respectful way he talked to his athletes, the old-fashioned virtues he extolled. Unlike the current breed of dictatorial coaches, winning wasn’t everything to Archer. He emphasized sportsmanship and teamwork.

Pat McCormick, 71, who won Olympic gold medals in diving in 1952 and 1956, told those at the service that when she began diving at age 8, Archer was her first coach. In 1948, when McCormick just missed making the Olympic team, she immediately called Archer.

“He was very supportive,” she said. “He told me: ‘Look how close you came. I know you can do it.’ This man really believed in us.”

Bob Folger, 77, the coxswain for the Wilson High rowing teams in 1939, 1940 and 1941, said his old coach made only one demand from his athletes.

“He would tell you to just do your best,” he said. “That’s all he cared about.”

Steve Moseley, an all-American swimmer at Wilson in 1955 and 1956, said his brother was a top swimmer at Long Beach Poly--Wilson’s bitter rival.

“Before meets, he would always come over to my brother and encourage him,” Moseley said. “That’s very unusual. I don’t think you’d see that kind of thing today.”

Archer, who helped found the Long Beach recreation department in 1925, taught swimming lessons at the beach for 25 years. He was one of the city’s first lifeguards. Archer established rowing teams for several local high schools and colleges and created the Long Beach Rowing Assn.

After the memorial service, Archer’s daughter and granddaughter paddled a canoe through the channel and tossed flower petals into the water. At dusk, a lifeguard boat then saluted the old coach by spraying a single stream of water high into the air.