REMEMBERING AL SCHOENFIELD

Swimming World Magazine, Jun 2005 by Whitten, Phillip

Al Schoenfield, founder of Swimming World and fiery swimming advocate, passes away at 90.

Al Schoenfield, who took Swimming World Magazine from a 12-page, photo-offset publication with a circulation of 300 and built it into the world's premier independent voice of the sport, passed away on April 18 at the French Hospital in San Luis Obispo, Calif., following a three-week bout with pneumonia. He was 90.

In 1959, Al was an advertising agency account executive with the firm of Honing Cooper in Los Angeles when he and his wife, Faye, were invited to dinner by Peter Daland. At the time, Daland was the head swimming coach at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where the Schoenfields' daughter, Nancy, then 11, was an age grouper.

Daland had acquired Junior Swimmer, another photo-offset publication, when he had been an assistant coach at Yale in the early '50s under the legendary Bob Kiphuth. Over dinner, Daland proposed that Schoenfield buy Junior Swimmer from him. When Schoenfield protested that he knew nothing about swimming or publishing, Daland, as persuasive then as he is today, disagreed. "You've learned a lot about swimming as an age group parent," he told his guest, "and as for publishing: you were a journalism major at Columbia and you are an advertising executive. What better qualifications for a swimming magazine publisher?"

Convinced, Schoenfield bought Junior Swimmer from Daland for $1,000, and in January 1960, the new, two-color, 32-page printed Junior Swimmer burst on the age group swimming scene in California and began to grow rapidly. One year later, Schoenfield acquired Swimming World for free from Kiphuth, whose secretary, Bobbi Watson, refused to type it any longer. Later in '61, Schoenfield combined the two magazines into one.

Along with his wife, Faye, Schoenfield published the magazine from his home in North Hollywood, the entire family taking part in proofreading each issue before publishing it. Meanwhile, Schoenfield served as publisher, editor, advertising manager, subscription manager and head reporter, traveling up and down the California coast, soliciting ads and selling single copies at 50 cents each or one-year subscriptions for $6. Record-keeping was hardly high-tech: the names of subscribers were hand-written on 3 x 5 cards and kept in shoe boxes.

Within a few years, the magazine had become the single most authoritative publication in swimming, gaining a reputation as "the Bible of the sport," a reputation that it still retains to this day Meanwhile, Schoenfield was creating a swimming publishing empire that permeated all aspects of swimming, diving, water polo and synchronized swimming. Through his books and magazines over a period of 18 years, he became the great communicator of swimming.

Even then, the office was a jerry-rigged affair. Senior Editor Bob Ingram, who joined the magazine in 1972 and always referred to Al as "Mr. Schoenfield," recalls that "desks" were fashioned from old doors held up by two filing cabinets, while the "phone system" connecting the two rooms in which the small staff then worked, involved tapping on the walls to let someone know he or she had a call: one tap for Ingram, two for Nick Thierry and three for anyone else.

Schoenfield not only edited and published the most influential swimming magazine the world has yet produced, but he was never afraid to take an editorial stand for or against the establishment on any issue he thought important to swimming progress. Dick Deal, who bought the magazine in 1978 and worked with Schoenfield for a year during the transition, calls his mentor "one of a kind."

"He was a great character, consumed with his passion for swimming, and I learned a tremendous amount from him, both about swimming and business," says Deal.

Schoenfield never gave up his active participation in the administration of his sport. He was president of the Southern Pacific Association of the AAU; a member of the National and International Swim Committees, the U.S. Olympic Committee and chairman of the FINA Technical Committee. He was also a frequent manager of international teams participating in Pan Am and other foreign trips. He organized the first and most successful swim-related Olympic and World Championship tours.

In 1986, Al Schoenfield became only the second journalist inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.