The Man Who Wept

Squat Russell Tongay could hardly wait to make a swimmer out of his first-born son. As a high-school boy in St. Louis, barrel-chested Russ was a sprint swimmer himself, and earned letters in almost every other sport. But fame & fortune eluded him. He became a coach at municipal pools and summer camps, was anonymously enduring World War II as a Coast Guard pharmacist's mate at Miami when Russell Jr. was born in 1944.

Misfortune halted Russ's plans for Russ Jr. almost before they had begun: the baby died from multiple brain hemorrhages at 18 months. An Army doctor testified at the inquest that he had heard an ugly little story from Russ's blonde wife that Tongay had been trying to teach the baby to float in the bathtub and had slapped him on the head because he did not obey. But Russ's wife testified that the baby was bruised in a fall down the stairs, and no charges were filed.

In the Shower. Mrs. Tongay eventually presented Russ with two more babies--another Russell Jr., who was nicknamed "Bubba," and, 18 months later, a girl whom they named Kathy. Russ began training them to swim before they could walk. He sprinkled water in their faces from the time of their first baths, turned showers on them at six months to teach them proper aquatic breathing. Kathy swam 20 feet under water when she was only ten months old. At 17 months the Tongay children paddled a quarter of a mile a day; at two years each did five miles.

Both were towheaded, wide-shouldered, active tots, bronzed by the Florida sun. Their ribs showed. Russ, who fed them protein baby food long after they were babies, said: "I keep them lean because they swim better." Eventually, both learned amazing stunts. Bubba would jump off a 33-ft. tower with his hands and feet tied and swim two lengths of the pool under water. Kathy swam seven miles every morning when training, and dived 20 feet blindfolded.

Down the Mississippi. Russ billed them as the "Aquatots," and was as proud as the owner of a top dog act. Bubba, he boasted, could hold his breath four minutes. The lad trotted 15 minutes on a treadmill, set to duplicate an 8 1/2% grade, to prove that his oxygen intake per pound of weight was more than that of any recorded human other than Runner Gil Dodds. Kathy caused Russ some embarrassment--sometimes she cried in public. In 1949, two Miami women complained to the police that he treated the little girl cruelly; while his car was stopped at a traffic light, they said, they had seen him hit her with his fist and rub a dirty rag in her face. He was acquitted. The same year. Kathy obliged him by twice swimming five miles down the Mississippi. Bubba made 22 miles.

In the summer of 1951, Russ and his wife took both tots to England, amid a gratifying fanfare of publicity, to swim the English Channel. Bubba was five and Kathy four. The British were horrified, and after debate in Commons, refused to countenance Russ's fondest dream. Russ took the kids to France, but the French turned him down, too. Eventually Russ gave up and brought them home. They starred in Florida water carnivals and branched out with bit parts in an Esther Williams motion picture, Skirts Ahoy.

Back to the Pool. One day last week, the roof fell in on Russ again. Kathy died. Russ had apparently thought she was well able to swim a few hours earlier.

Kathy, he said, began the day at Miami's Macfadden-Deauville Pool trying to do a difficult dive--a back one-and-a-half layout--off a 33-ft. board. She failed, hit "perfectly flat on her belly" and complained that her back hurt. Then he took her to the Treasure Isle Pool, where the children did conditioning work five days a week. Lifeguard Dick Kohler reported that she had "bruises all over her" and "wasn't feeling well." Russ fed her a can of baby soup. She vomited. Then Russ told her to go into the water. She did. the lifeguard recalled, although she cried while she was swimming and didn't stay in long.

The little girl went home at noon, went into convulsions at midafternoon and was dead at 6. After an autopsy, Homicide Detective Chester Eldredge announced that she appeared to have been brutally beaten, had died from a ruptured intestine, internal bleeding and an infection. Russ was charged with second-degree murder. He wept, and cried, "I blame myself." But he said he was sure that it was only the dive that caused Kathy's bruises.

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