MELTING POOL : The Jorgensen Stoey May Include Chapter on 1988 Olympics

SAN DIEGO —  “America is God’s crucible, the great melting pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!”

--Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot (1908), Act I

This is a story about a Danish man who worked for a Swedish automaker in Switzerland, married a German and raised two sons to be Olympic swimmers in the United States.

His name is Niels Jorgensen. His accent is as European as his dream is American. There are two Volvos in his Penasquitos garage and two more parked on the winding street in front of his quiet, landscaped, suburban yard.

One of the cars belongs to his eldest son, Daniel, who two years ago broke the American record of 1984 Olympic gold medalist George DiCarlo in the 400-meter freestyle. The car is older than Daniel. Remarkably, the record and the car are still intact.

The station wagon belongs to his youngest son, Lars, who will join his brother on scholarship at USC in the fall. Lars Jorgensen is a legitimate threat to make to U.S. team in the 1,500-meter freestyle at the Olympic trials next month in Austin, Tex. Lars’ car has more than 300,000 miles on it, which is almost as many as he and his brother swim each week.

Jorgensen’s wife, Roswitha, drives a white Volvo--back and forth from the hospital in Orange County where she works nights. She met her husband at English classes in Connecticut more than 20 years ago.

All of which proves two things: Zangwill’s melting pot is alive and well in Southern California. And the Jorgensens are driven.

They are human, too. Their dog’s name is Strudel. Strudel is part collie, part Pomeranian and part family mascot.

Strudel reluctantly posed for a Jorgensen family portrait recently in the backyard Jacuzzi. This was a new trick. Strudel is an old dog. Strudel can’t swim. Strudel can’t even drive.

Anyway . . . once upon a time in America, Niels Jorgensen was a highly paid executive and a highly demanding part-time wrestling coach in Baltimore. He had been the light-heavyweight national champion in Denmark and a sure bet to wrestle for his country in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. That was before a deadly outbreak of Typhoid fever in Switzerland hospitalized 93 people. Twenty-three did not survive.

“It just tore my stomach apart inside,” he said. “But I never thought I would die.”

Similarly, he never dreamed he would one day become a swimming coach.

Still, it was almost two months before doctors allowed him to leave the hospital. By then he looked more like a prune Danish than an Olympic wrestler. But he departed a changed man.

“While I was in the hospital, I learned for the first time in my life how beautiful flowers are and how beautiful grass was,” he says. “I learned how beautiful it was to watch the children. I learned a lot about life. I hear people complaining about life now. They don’t know how lucky they are.”

Jorgensen was so thankful about what he learned during his recuperation, he considered it a religious experience. There was almost a reluctance accompanied by wonderment on his part when it came time to leave.

“I walked out of the hospital backwards,” he said, describing an act of deference that had nothing to do with his medical condition.

“At first I was sorry I had missed the Olympics. But after I got out of the hospital I never thought about it. I was happy I could see the sunshine coming up every morning. I was just so happy to be alive.”

If you have just joined Niels Jorgensen’s Rancho Bernardo Swim Team, you will not be happy to be alive for long. You will be told to do pushups. You will be told to do situps. If your stroke deteriorates on the last lap of the day, you will be told it is because you are not fit enough. You will not be coddled. But you VILL get faster.

“He’s a very strict disciplinarian,” Daniel Jorgensen says of his father. “The workouts under him are more difficult than any other coach I’ve ever swum for. They might not be as long. But my dad will not just sit there and watch you work out. He keeps track of how the workout is going.”

“I’m the easiest guy in town,” Niels Jorgensen protests from across the living room.

“According to you,” Daniel shoots back.

It is approaching mid-day in the Jorgensen living room. But the morning swim has ended more than three hours ago. Less than four hours after David Letterman signs off, the Jorgensen men were out of bed preparing for the first of two daily workouts. They have been doing this six days a week for longer than they care to remember.

“You get used to it,” Lars says.

“It sucks,” Daniel says.

“It keeps the kids off the streets,” Niels says. “The government in this country should support swimming more.”

After Volvo moved Jorgensen to Connecticut in the mid-60s, he switched athletic allegiances from wrestling to swimming. He took classes in how to teach the sport. He met Roswitha. They started a family. Soon the good people of New London had convinced him to coach their boys.

Immediately, there were complaints that he worked the children too hard. They abated when the boys’ team began swimming faster than any other in the state.

Niels Jorgensen’s English wasn’t yet so good. But improvement was something these Connecticut Yankees understood. Where once Jorgensen had been a little too dogged for their taste, suddenly he was a great Dane. A pattern was developing.

It repeated itself in Chicago when Jorgensen left the security of Volvo for a full-time coaching job in suburban Palatine. Once again the parents’ complaints died down after the times dropped.

By now Jorgensen had determined his sons, too, had a future in swimming. And he decided he didn’t want to miss it.

“There is not much money in coaching,” he said. So he damned the expense.

“We had to learn to eat hot dogs instead of steaks,” he said. “And our lifestyle went down. But it was more of a healthy lifestyle. You want to see your kids grow up. You can’t do that when you’re 50 or 60 years old. You do it now, or you never do it.”

After his coaching successes in Chicago, Jorgensen was no longer a secret. He accepted a position on the coaching staff at the prestigious Mission Viejo complex. Mission Viejo hires ambitious coaches. It does not question them. At the age of 16, Daniel barely missed making the 1984 U.S. Olympic team while swimming for Mission Viejo.

He says he will be disappointed if he does not make the team this time. He will attempt to do so in the 200, 400 and 1,500 meters. The top two in each event make it. But he could finish as low as fifth or sixth in the 200 and still gain a spot on the 800 meter relay team. The Trials will take place in August in Austin, Tex.

“I will have nobody to blame but myself if I don’t make the team,” he says.

Actually he might have his brother to blame. Lars has also qualified for the Trials in the 400 and 1,500. They are the only active brother team ranked among the top 25 all-time U.S. ratings in any event, Daniel fifth in the 1,500 and Lars 21st (as of May). And it’s not inconceivable that the two could end up fighting for the second Olympic berth in that event.

It would be nothing new. They fight each other and the clock every day in the pool during workouts.

“It gets tense during practices,” Lars says. “If I beat him, he gets mad.”

The Jorgensens train in the 50-meter pool at NAS Miramar, the home base for their father’s Rancho Bernardo Bluefins. Unlike Mission Viejo, the Miramar pool has no crosses on top of the ends of the lane markers. That means Jorgensen’s swimmers have to guess when to start their flip turns.

And that is particularly maddening. Jorgensen’s reputation within the American swimming community is that of a coach who has insisted upon keeping up with the latest in technological advances.

“Niels Jorgensen is extremely intellectual in his approach to swimming,” says Jeff Dimond of United States Swimming, Inc., the national governing body for amateur competitive swimming in this country. “A lot of the older coaches will fight new developments.”

Two years ago, internecine politics prevailed and Mark Schubert, Jorgensen’s boss at Mission Viejo, left California for the Mission Bay Aquatic Center in Boca Raton, Fla. Schubert, who had built Mission Viejo into the winningest club program in American swimming history, asked Jorgensen to come with him.

But Daniel was already enrolled at USC, Roswitha had a steady job, and the family was tired of moving.

“Niels got caught in the political crossfire at Mission Viejo even though he was an innocent bystander,” says a U.S. swimming official.

The Rancho Bernardo opportunity presented itself. And Jorgensen didn’t hesitate. But the adjustment was not an easy one.

“I was used to coaching national champions and really fast swimmers for so many years,” Jorgensen said. “I came in here and at times had to turn my back and say, ‘Oh, nooo.’ ”

Just as he had to do in Connecticut and Chicago.

“When Niels gets mad, he will cuss you out in Danish and then talk to you in English,” Dimond says. “He’s a first-class character. But he’s a good guy.”

Steve Eisler, Mount Carmel High School’s swim coach, thought Jorgensen was a helluva good guy when he found out he was enrolling Lars in his school and sending him out for Eisler’s team. There had been talk of Lars training outside the school and not swimming on the team.

“Everybody on my team improved because of working with him,” Eisler said. “In fact, there has been a swimming improvement all over San Diego County thanks to the influence of Lars and Dan.”

Lars Jorgensen won two CIF San Diego Section championships for Mt. Carmel in the recently completed high school season. Daniel won the NCAA 1,650 yard freestyle for USC. Before that, he was The Times’ Orange County Swimmer of the Year his junior and senior seasons at Mission Viejo High.

Soon Niels Jorgensen will find out if one or both of his sons achieves the dream he never got a chance to realize--the dream of participating for his country in the Olympics. Their chief competition at the Trials will probably come from Florida’s Matt Cetlinski and California’s Sean Killion

Fortunately for the Jorgensen boys, their father has retained his perspective.

“I would be happy for them to make the Olympics,” he says. “You would always like your children to do the best they can possibly do. It would be nice to see them make the Olympics. But it is not the end of the world. I’d like them better to enjoy what they’re doing. You have to realize you win in life, and you lose in life. And you have to keep going.”

The important thing is to keep going in the same direction. Niels Jorgensen had to take an $18,000 cut in his annual pay when he became a full-time swimming coach. His wife supported the move. There have been tough times but few regrets. When the cars need repairs, Niels does the work himself.

“I like working with young people,” Jorgensen says. “I think it is more rewarding even though the money isn’t.”

At the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Chris Von Saltza won gold medals for the United States in women’s 400-meter freestyle, 400 free relay and 400 medley relay. The press dubbed her “Baroness” Von Saltza. Her grandfather, Philip, had come to this country from Sweden at the turn of the century. Chris Von Saltza is still listed in the Who’s Who of Swedish Nobility .

The Jorgensen family is more mobile than noble. They are more loyal than royal. They are decidedly more healthy than they are wealthy. All of this is by choice.

Neils Jorgensen’s sons know their father was supposed to be in the Olympics. But Daniel Jorgensen says, “He’s never really gotten into the details.” Maybe some day, when they are older, he will explain to them why he walked backwards out of that Swiss hospital.

In the meantime, the Jorgensens are a prototypical melting pot family living a rare American success story that isn’t dominated by a quest for financial gain.

They know the difference between fool’s gold and Olympic gold. And they are comfortable in that knowledge.