JOAN DODD

Richard Dunn

Growing up on Balboa Island in the 1940s, freestyle sensation Joan

Dodd didn’t have to travel far to attend daily workouts, swimming

from the island -- then known as a “village” -- to the Balboa

Pavilion and back.

Dodd ( now Joan Dan) would launch at a spot near the Balboa Ferry

and complete the bay voyage “two or three times,” depending on the

day, because the nearest pools were in Los Angeles County.

“In those days, the water was clean,” she said. “You could

actually see the bottom. But now it’s too polluted. I don’t think

anybody could (swim in it) now.”

Dodd, who attended Newport Grammar School and Newport Harbor High

(circa ‘49), played all the sports available to her growing up, and

especially enjoyed tennis and basketball. But Dodd, also a Newport

Harbor song leader, had a penchant for swimming and was encouraged to

pursue it further by then-Sailors swim coach Marge Adams.

Soon, Dodd began pool swimming at a YWCA in Santa Ana, then was

introduced to LA Athletic Club swim coach Alian Allen and her career

started to take off.

At the LA Athletic Club, Dodd swam in Amateur Athletic Union

competitions, earned at least 30 medals -- including one national

gold medal on a relay team -- and tried out for the 1948 U.S. Olympic

swimming team that went to Helsinki. She was 16 at the time.

Dodd, who attended Orange Coast College the second year it was

open (1949-50), didn’t make the U.S. Olympic team, but traveled

regularly with the LA Athletic Club for swimming exhibitions during a

groundbreaking time in Palm Springs, when resorts were sprouting up

with lavish swimming pools and proprietors wanted good-looking bodies

in them.

Dodd, who won her first swimming race at age 5 when kids swam from

Balboa Island to a sea wall and back, would often attend swim

workouts and meets with her father, Marion, who drove her to Los

Angeles and always kept a stopwatch in his pocket. “That made me more

nervous,” she said. “My father wrote everything down and kept track

of all my times. He enjoyed it. I guess I was his boy.”

Dodd had a sister, Dorothy, who was three years older, but wasn’t

interested in sports. Her father owned and operated Dodd’s Malt Shop

on Balboa Island from 1937 to ’49. And, on days when her father

couldn’t drive her to LA, she would walk across Balboa Island, take

the ferry over to the peninsula and catch the red car, which would

eventually drop her off in downtown LA.

“It was probably a two-hour bus ride each way. I probably slept

most of the way coming home,” Dodd said. “I don’t think I’ve been on

a bus since.”

Long before goggles and Speedo swimsuits, Dodd wore the thick

black nylon suits that would cling to your body after getting wet.

“We were always embarrassed -- it would show every ripple of your

body,” she said.

Dodd, who swam the 100-, 200- and 400-yard freestyle events, was a

member of both the Newport Harbor and OCC swim teams, but neither

program realized serious competitions and neither campus had a pool.

“It was tough, as you can see, because there was no place to work

out,” she said. “That one year at Orange Coast, I probably just swam

in the bay ... people don’t realize now that there was no pool (at

Newport Harbor High). They take it for granted. It’s a beautiful pool

now. My grandson swims there.”

She added it was easier to swim in the bay, because the salt water

would help keep her afloat.

“Now, I just swim in a bathtub,” quipped Dodd, the latest honoree

in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame. “Actually, I still swim laps.

I’m just not in a hurry anymore. I enjoy swimming. It’s very good

exercise.”

Dodd, 71, lives in Costa Mesa with her husband, Danny. She has

three grown children -- Deborah, Lori and Bob -- and three

grandchildren. “They like to swim,” she said of her grandchildren,

“but they’re not in as much of a hurry as I was.”