SWIMMING FOR MY LIFE Remarkable Story by an East County Champion
	NOVEMBER 2004

by Suzanne Heim-Bowen
Photos by Russell Byrne

When I was five years old I tried out for a swim team and didn’t qualify. I was embarrassed and humiliated by my failure. I had been swimming for a couple of years by that time but had been out of training and had failed to swim the required fifteen yards. I remember sitting in the back of the car on the way home, bawling.

I decided I had to make some changes. That decision marked a turning point in my life. I began getting into the sport of swimming in an important way and eventually became one of the top pool swimmers at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo.

Conquering Fear of the Water
My ability to thoroughly enjoy the sport of swimming was hampered by a crippling phobia about the ocean that came from a terrible experience I had as a child. While playing along the edge of the water I was suddenly taken by a rogue wave that tumbled me over and over. I still have awful visions of seeing the sand swirl around me as I helplessly rolled like a beach ball through the cold surf. From that time until now I have had a fear of ocean water.

When I was in college I would go to the beach with my friends and then spend the whole time sitting on the blanket. My friends would get confused. “You’re possibly the best swimmer in the county and you won’t get into the ocean because you’re afraid of the water?”

At that point I made the same kind of decision about swimming in the ocean that I had made as a five-year-old about swimming in general. I set a goal for myself of subduing my fears and conquering the ocean to the extent that I could.

I never completely got over my fear, but learned to swim afraid. I joined the San Francisco Dolphin Club and begin swimming at San Francisco’s Aquatic Park.

I eventually gathered sufficient courage to swim the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. I guess that feat doesn’t constitute conquering the ocean, since the actual opening is just short of a mile wide. However, swimming that distance was an important feat for a woman who was afraid of the water.

The water under the Golden Gate is never slack and is always cold. The tide is often running in one direction while the wind sometimes blows up waves that run contrary to the tide.

Besides the dangerous currents is that fact that a swimmer in that place might be run over by a tanker or eaten by a shark. But against all those odds I made the other side successfully. I felt so good about my accomplishment that a few years later I swam under the Gate again — six times in one day, in fact.

Six laps under the Golden Gate really did require a lot of effort, and not all of it was mine. I had a great support team calculating the tides and currents. They really worked hard to make it possible for me to complete the swim.

Yeah! I Can Do That!
Swimming across the Golden Gate led to other, even more difficult, challenges. I once swam four Bridges in one day, including the Golden Gate, San Rafael, Carquinez, and the Bay Bridge. The feat is especially noteworthy when you consider that, all by itself, the Bay Bridge is about five times longer than the Golden Gate Bridge.

Popular belief, stemming from the stories about Alcatraz escapees, is that it is impossible to successfully swim from Alcatraz to the mainland. However, I’ve swum the distance — called “The Foolish Prisoner’s Escape” swim — a number of times.

Much more difficult than that, I’ve swum from the Carquinez Straights to the Golden Gate, a course that must be ten times the distance from the prison to the mainland.

Since then I’ve swum across the English Channel three times. I almost swam it a fourth time as part of a single relay event, in which six of us took turns swimming across the channel a combined total of three times.

That relay was tough. We had a Japanese trainer, a swimmer from Great Britain, two Belgiums, a swimmer from Holland, a swimmer from Japan, and me.

The boat completely lacked civilized accommodations of any kind. The rail of the boat was our bathroom. (You learned to watch the wind direction!) Even worse, there was no warm place on the boat. After a swim, all you could do was wrap up in a blanket and shiver the North Atlantic cold out of your bones.

I guess Americans tend to be wimps in the minds of people from other parts of the world, since I was the only team member to even notice that nothing had been provided for our creature comforts.

That relay was unforgettable. It was far too tough to be fun even in my memory, but I appreciated the experience of getting to know the other members of the team. Also, I guess we were pretty good since the six of us set a world record that day.

Patience and Excess
Marathon swimming can be a very lonely sport but for me it never is tedious or boring. I think about my friends and students. I play mental games, such as writing letters in my head and counting off my strokes by the thousand. I keep working out the math involved in computing distances at approximately 80 strokes for a hundred meters. That works out to 800 strokes for a kilometer, 8,000 for ten kilometers, and 33,600 for the forty-two kilometers across the English Channel.

I actually never work out the math that far while I’m swimming. I have a hard time counting to 33,600, and it is far too discouraging.

Long distance ocean swimming requires a lot of patience in not looking too often at your destination since, for example, those white cliffs of Dover never will come any closer if you raise your head to look at them too often.

It turns out that I carried the theme of conquering the ocean one swim too far. I had done two of my solo channel crossings and the three crossings as a member of the relay team within a ten-day span. That was too much and I was ill for the subsequent seven months.

I actually tried to carry my conquer the ocean theme two swims too far, because even during the time I was trying to recuperate, I was in training so I could do another Channel crossing the next year. That next year I learned another lesson about my limits.

When I got on the beach I was confident of my chances because according to my philosophy, success includes excellence in five areas — swimmer, pilot, boat, weather, and luck. So I thought, “OK. We’re going to do this again.”

The plan was for me to get in the water at 8 p.m. and for me to swim all through the night. I didn’t have a trainer. Except for the boat and crew I was alone in that ocean. “I can do this,” I thought. But I discovered that I really needed the support of someone who knew me well and would be there for me. I needed a confidence builder.

At any rate, half way through that fourth solo crossing I said, “That’s it! I’m done!” I remember how amazed the crewmembers were. I still don’t know for sure how that happened. It had to do with hitting a psychological barrier, I think.

Staying in the Swim
I actually have a love-hate relationship with the ocean. On one hand, it really is to be feared and respected. The number of human beings who have died in salt water during the past one hundred years as the result of any number of terrible events is huge and growing every week.

On the other hand, I take some kids to Aquatic Park sometimes to introduce them to the ocean and am always delighted in how overwhelmed they are by the beauty of that place. The ocean and sea sides are full of beautiful vistas and panoramas.

In spite of my fears, I love ocean swimming. Competitions are often held in beautiful places, there is only one event, and no turns — which were never my strength. My husband and I are competitors in water sports, though never against each other. His sport is water polo. He always worried too much to go with me on my ocean challenges. The main thing he and I do in the water together is dive for abalone.

Even though I had enough of breaking ocean records for a while, I went into long-distance pool racing with USA Swimming, which is a competitive international racing organization. Pool swimming is much more technical than long-distance ocean swimming, with continual room for improvement in mastering the myriad of small details that go into championship-level performance, including those darn turns.

I became team captain of the USA Long Distance Swimming Team in 1988, and the next year took a Silver at the 18k World Cup race across Lake Geneva.

In 1993 I began training with the USA Swim Team, called the Terrapins, out of Concord and Brentwood, plus the Walnut Creek Masters team. I took a silver at the USA National in the 10k in 1998.

Just for the Record
My pool swimming has really taken off and I’ve done better than I ever expected. I have posted 29 world records and 50 national records in the past eight years. I credit a lot of this to the kids I train with. They create a very positive environment in which it is easy to excel.

My husband, Phil, accompanies me to pool meets, since he knows that I’m unlikely to drown or be eaten by something in a swimming pool. He has been very supportive, as well, and refers to himself as “Suzanne’s Towel Holder.”

My husband is my best friend so the best situation of all occurred for us at the World Championships in Italy last June because the games included both swimming and water polo.

During those days I sometimes got to hold the towel for Phil. His team earned a bronze. Water Polo played at that level involves a lot of rough-and-tumble competition so it was interesting watching Phil play that rough sport and for me to be worrying about him, for a change — about his health and safety. I got a small idea of the concern that he must have experienced during my open water swims.

At the World Championships I got six gold medals, including 3k ocean swim, 100-meter, 200, 400, 800 freestyle, and the 200-meter butterfly. We really had fun. Italy is beautiful and the international flavor is so delightful as we kept trying to communicate with people from other countries.

One custom at that meet is exchanging swim caps with other competitors, which seems to convey a bright message, something like, “Here, let’s exchange caps as a sign that we would have become friends if we could have figured out how to do so.”

My husband encourages me to keep swimming. I recently set a 5k pool record with him cheering me on by the sidelines. I actually broke the record by 4 minutes and 26 seconds.

Psychologist to Public Schools
My occupation is that of School Psychologist with the Contra Costa County Office of Education assigned to help support families, students, teachers, and staff. I work with students who have severe and intensive needs.

Trying to fit unique or special people into a public educational mainstream can present many challenges. I try to create behavioral teams working to identify and ameliorate the effect of learning needs that diverge too drastically from classroom norms.

I search for ways of providing special resources to students with special needs in order to develop abilities that can help them lead productive lives — identifying the critical skills that could make a big difference in their lives.

I never think of what I do as trying to force students to learn things they might or might not be interested in. Rather, I’m trying to find ways to help the students achieve their own goals — of forming their own identities and becoming productive members of society.

I’ve been working with students with special needs since I was 13, when I was a volunteer at a Marin County development center working with children with developmental problems of one kind or another. Later, while in high school, I worked as a Teacher’s Aid in helping children with special needs.

I eventually ended up in college studying child development at Cal Poly and finished my Masters course at Dominican University in San Rafael. I found I had a special love for working with children in the 3-8 age group and working in special education programs for severely disabled children.

Because I’m very much into promoting integration and mainstreaming of special needs, I got involved with the Rotary Club, applying for a teacher-of-handicap scholarship and ended up in the University of Auckland in New Zealand for ten months, in a Maori Studies class and getting tracked with the school psychology students.

“Why don’t you go be a school psychologist?” one of the students asked. The light bulb went on. I came home, enrolled in Cal State Hayward, and got another Masters degree.

Ever since my first contact with children facing special challenges, I’ve somehow been drawn to them.

I especially like to think of these people as being challenged. Challenges are good. After all, look at my trophies and gold medals. Facing up to challenges and overcoming them is what I’m all about.

You can’t hold 79 records in anything without having high expectations for yourself. I do the same for my students.

A child with autism, for example, is a person who is facing an enormous challenge — like swimming the English Channel. Darn it! I’m going to help the child meet that challenge! We’re going to figure out together how to get to the other side of this barrier!

Working with Special Children Who Really Are Special
I feel so lucky to be doing what I’m doing. I feel that my life is blessed. My associates and the families of my children are so great. Most especially, my beloved students keep me humbled and smiling. They often make me laugh.

I feel we are all moving forward, focused upon the best interest of our students, and working closely with their families. We’re generating a lot of positive momentum.

One of the classroom assistants recently asked me to bring my medals to school and said that the kids would enjoy it. I had always been reluctant to do this because I imagined it would have too much teacher-showing-off about it. However, I brought my medals in and as I showed them to the students, I talked about how hard a person had to practice to get one of them.

One of my students was especially delighted with the medals and wore one all day. The next day he brought his own gold medal that he had won in the Special Olympics. It brought joy to my heart to see him enjoying his special award since he lives in a world that, of course, gives him little encouragement to like anything about himself.

All my kids ought to like themselves even without medals, I think, because I love them so much myself. I admire them.

Children with special needs are always living in the present moment to a remarkable degree. They don’t have to try to get in touch with their feelings. Whether they are happy or unhappy, you can see it in their face and manner right away.

They aren’t complicated. You don’t have to unpeel layers of façade to try to get to the real person hiding inside. I love that.

The children I work with are just good people. Without any effort they reach levels of openness, emotional integrity, and vibrancy in their experience of life that most of us only wish for.

I wish more people could experience what I experience. They bring out the best in me. I’m a better person when I’m with them.

Preparing Students for Productive Lives
It requires a lot of creativity and resourcefulness to identify strategies that can help some of our students be successful.

The bottom line for me is that students can, in fact, learn. Not all of them learn at the same pace or in the same way, but everyone is capable of learning important skills and information if we can only figure out how to adequately facilitate the processes for identifying and delivering those things.

Most of our students have developed the strange idea that a schoolroom is a cheerful and happy place to be. One of our classrooms has a café, for example. Our students work together to put on meals. We also have a greenhouse and grow plants for an annual plant sale the kids put on.

We discovered that the kids love fashion shows. A number of Brentwood and Antioch businesses supported a fashion show that the students conducted last May. They dressed in clothes that they themselves had chosen. Volunteers came in to help them with makeup. Everybody had a great time. The kids were stars! They did beautifully. They looked great!

My co-worker, Joel Stinet, did a stellar job putting together the fashion show. She had a lot of help from the community; it was a team effort, and provided a good example of how our community supports our students.

Moving Ahead
I feel blessed and lucky. In the classroom while working and laughing with my students, or in the water while working towards another world record, my life is full of happy challenges.

I won all those gold medals in the games in Italy because I had just qualified for the 45-49 year old age group. I recently got my hands on a magazine with the hilarious name Geezer Jocks, which published an article about me and, without once talking to me, put into my mouth the words, “I’m looking forward to turning 50 so I can do this again.”

That really made me laugh. I’m actually concentrating on getting through my under-50 age group right now. However, when I do turn 50 the people in that next group better watch out!

I expect to be swimming for a long time yet. At 78 years old my mom is doing Masters Swimming and even she expects to be swimming for a long time yet because the 95-99 group is formed by some really awesome characters. We call them “Silver Bullets.”

I train six days every week, 2-2.5 hours every day. When I’m in hard training I add road biking and running, just for fun — and to change the view to something better than the black line on the bottom of the pool.

Swimming is a great therapy for me. It is important for me to have this personal time when I can focus completely on the present. I don’t think about anything else going on. My world has shrunk to the size of the pool. I’m in my groove and swimming for my life. And the life I’m swimming for is a good one!