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Home , Comet (dinghy), Fireball (dinghy), Lightning (dinghy), Yacht racing

Dr. Robert Griggs and Written by Susan Parsons, Fair Haven Historian

Dr. Robert Griggs was born in Rochester, NY. His father, Dr. Leon Griggs, local physician for the Sterling area, did not want to deliver his own child, so his wife, Barbara, who was near term, stayed in Rochester with relatives for a time. Bob came home about a week after being born. Bob’s parents lived on Main Street, Fair Haven, where Dr. Griggs had a waiting room in the house and a medical office in an attached shed. Bob and his family, soon including Bob’s younger sister, resided in the home until after Bob had completed first grade at Fair Haven School. Dr. Leon Griggs decided to specialize in dermatology so the family moved to Philadelphia while Dr. Griggs trained for two years. The family returned to Syracuse afterward, where Dr. Griggs became a professor of Dermatology at Syracuse Medical College. Bob spent his early years living near Little Sodus Bay. He recalled that his grandmother Griggs, who lived on Victory Street, and probably other residents, believed the Bay to be a commercial body of water. Fish nets were used to seine the Bay during the busy season. Ships traveled through the channel to pick up cargo, such as coal, wood and fish. Bob’s grandmother might go for a ride in a launch in the summer, but she would only go into the water up to her knees. When the Oswego Club folded and the Fair Haven formed in 1933, the Club hosted the LYRA (Lake Yacht Racing Association) regatta that year. That regatta planted the idea to the local populace that sailing and could be recreational and started a boom in sailing on the Bay. After his family moved to Philadelphia and later to Syracuse, Bob spent most of his summers and vacations at Fair Haven, either at the homestead or at his parents’. He recalled that his grandmother had a Flexible Flyer sled. She would do a “belly flop” onto that sled and Bob would jump onto her back. They would slide down Victory Street hill, steer right and continue onto Main Street and into his parents’ driveway near the Vought’s Creek Bridge. There was almost no traffic then. Unfortunately, it was a long walk back up the hill. The exception to his summers spent at Fair Haven was in 1939 when he went to with his aunt and uncle. World War II began in then. (Some of Bob’s relatives died during the London Blitzkrieg in 1940.) Bob said that his first sailing experience was on Roy Rasbeck’s . Roy lived on Victory Street but he owned a cottage with a hip roof north of the Pleasant Beach Hotel. Bob recalls that at about age ten, he helped with the roofing, to the consternation of his mother when she found out that her ten-year old had been roofing.

With Bob interested in sailing, his father bought a used , a 16 foot sailing dinghy. After a time, his sister decided he was hogging the too much, so Bob and his mother bought another boat, a , which was a rigged sailing dinghy 19 feet long. Dr. Joseph Riley owned one of the earliest ones, #120. Bob’s was #816. Tommy Burke (Burke’s Lumber) also owned a Lightning. The Skaneateles Boat Company had commissioned Sparkman and Stephens to design the boat. It was one of the first from this soon-to-be successful company. Unfortunately for the company, they sold the rights for $5,000. Bob stated that to date, 20,000 Lightnings have been produced. He recalled that the Workman family rented a cottage near the Yacht Club property. Lou Workman would start boat races that consisted of various of various sizes, a real hodgepodge of participating, presenting quite a sight on the Bay. World War II was an interesting time period in Fair Haven. Bob recalls that, for example, in 1942, almost no one visited the State Park because of gas rationing. He remembered riding his bike to the park and with some friends. They heard other people in the water, talking. They listened to hear the others speaking in German. It was a group of Prisoners of War taking a swim. When Bob graduated from high school in 1943, his father gave him what Bob calls his best advice. He told Bob to enter college and if he were drafted, the draft board would probably let him finish out the semester. That is what happened. He received a draft notice and volunteered to be in the US Navy. He reported to Sampson Naval Training Station (now a New York State Park) for boot camp in the winter of 1943-44. During World War II 800,000 sailors trained there. Bob remembered that he stayed in a two-floor barracks, 100 recruits to a floor. One of the officers asked who had graduated from college. None of the 200 had. The next question was “who has had any college?” Bob and another person raised their hands. The two became platoon leaders, each in charge of a floor. He would march his floor of 100 men to meals, to meetings and to the pool to learn how to swim. He would be stationed in the middle of the pool to aid the non-swimmers, many of whom were from farms and never exposed to large bodies of water. A naval requirement was to be able to swim. Another was to learn how to row a boat. In the winter of 1943-44, the men would don their wool clothing, put on life jackets over the wool coats, and head out to Seneca Lake. Several times they would take out the boats and row in the cold, snow and wind. Just as with learning to swim, boating and were common experiences for Bob, but not for the men who grew up in the Midwest. After the War, the Navy placed their men in the Reserves and Bob was sent to medical school. In 1950, he was called up to serve as a physician with the Army during the Korean War. He explained that 3/4 of the doctors in his Army Division were from the Navy because the Army had discharged their own physicians after the War. After seven months with the infantry in Korea, Bob was assigned to serve at a naval hospital in San Diego. Then, finally, after eight years, he was assigned to a ship. It was a command ship that never left the dock! After World War II, before he continued his schooling and before he was called up for the Korean War, Bob returned home and took a few months off. He sailed the Lightning in the first national regatta for Lightnings, held on Skaneateles Lake. He pointed out that he participated with Walter H. Phillips, son of Walter P. Phillips, who stayed in a cottage just south of the Pleasant Beach Hotel. The Vickers family, descendants of the Phillips family, owns the cottage now. 54 Lightnings sailed in the regatta in Skaneateles. Bob and his crew did very well, finishing third. The crew had told him to the boat as fast as he could and they would tell him where to go. In 1947 Bob and his crew won first place in the Lightning Race in Toronto, sponsored by ILYRA (Inter Lake Yacht Racing Association). Bob continued sailing Lightnings for several years. He married, practiced medicine in Cleveland and had had three children. He sailed out of Cleveland. Bob became interested in building boats. His grandfather had been a boat builder. Bob can remember helping him, whereby he would sit in the boat holding a device to bend the copper nails over as his grandfather nailed them into the boat from the outside. As an adult, Bob built a 9½ foot sailing dinghy. Later, he saw a story about a 16 foot called a . He built one of those as well. He sailed it and won the Fireball championship of North in 1969, which was held in that year. In 1970 he sailed the Fireball at Lake Luzerne, , representing the United States. The winds are “weird” because of the high mountains all around the Lake, said Bob. Bob helped build six other International Fireballs as well. He enjoyed building small sailboats. By 1975, Bob considered himself too old for sailing small boats, so he bought a 33 foot sailboat. He raced that boat on Lake Erie and a few times at the Main Duck Races on Lake Ontario. In 1988 and 1989 he had a family crew including his wife and two sons, plus another crew member, besides himself. In 1988 they won the Lake Erie Championships for 33 foot boats. In 1989 they won the overall championship for all sailboats. In 1990 he retired as a physician and quit sail racing. He sailed at Fair Haven during summers until 2011.

Bob pointed out that during some years he was able to sail as much of ten months per year. He has sailed in the Fair Haven area, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Skaneateles Lake, Switzerland, Nova Scotia, Cape Cod and up and down the east coast as far as Florida. Once he sailed in the South Pacific for six weeks from Tonga to New Zealand with his nephew and wife. He has sailed in large ocean waves, high tides and dense fogs. He recalls one time when he sailed into Halifax it was so foggy he could not see the man at the bow forty feet away! Certain habits have kept Bob relatively healthy up to his present age of 88. He has never smoked. He has always belonged to a fitness club, beginning in his early years in Cleveland. Today he is the longest surviving member of that Club as well as the Edgewater Yacht Club in Cleveland. He has always remained active. Today he is a senior member of the Fair Haven Yacht Club and still “messing about in boats.”