American Experience - The Boys of '36

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In 1936, nine working class boys from the University of Washington took the rowing world and the nation by storm, when their eight-oar crew team captured the gold medal at the Olympics in Berlin. These sons of loggers, shipyard workers and farmers, overcame tremendous hardships--psychological, physical, economic--to beat not only the Ivy League teams of the East Coast, but Adolf Hitler's elite German rowers. The boy's unexpected victory, and the obstacles they overcame to achieve it, inspired a nation struggling to emerge from the depths of the Depression. The Boys of '36 recounts their remarkable journey.