At the end of my interview with Joan Waldbaum, champion swimmer (See this month’s Profiles), she told me to rent a copy of Watermarks, a wonderful award-winning documentary about a small group of Jewish women who swam competitively. They were part of a Jewish Sports Club in Austria, started when Austria banned Jews from sports clubs as part of their anti-semitic campaign.

The documentary is actually a group of wonderful interviews by the producer. The women are now in their eighties, but still feisty. Each of them left when Germany took over Austria before the U.S. entered WWII.

Their stories are quite moving, and at the same time, very empowering. At the end, after all the interviews, the women fly to Austria to swim in the original pool where they first competed. One of the most decorated swimmers refused to go to the 1938 Olympics because they were held in Berlin under Hitler’s regime. She lost all future chances of competing and all her titles and records were expunged by Austria. Only in 1995 were her swimming records reinstated.

If you are interested in seeing a story of courage and challenge, go to your local library and ask for Watermarks. You should find it heart warming and heart wrenching and definitely worth viewing. For more information, check out the website http://www.kino.com/watermarks/

Jane Wyatt of Father Knows Best (with Robert Young) died recently at the age of 96. It was a corny show, but I loved Jane Wyatt, even though no mother I know ever dressed like that to clean house.

Actually, I loved her just as much as Spock’s “human” mother on Star Trek. His father was a Vulcan. She was very graceful in that role.

A little known fact about Jane: She was briefly blacklisted in 1947 because of her trip to Washington to protest the House un-American Activities Committee.

She won three Emmys for her role as the mother in Father Knows Best, which ran for six years in the 1950s. Was it that long ago?

The information on Jane Wyatt, perfect TV housewife, brings to mind one of my favorite poems, which is actually an epitaph found on an 1860 gravestone and printed in Helen Nearing’s Wise Words on the Good Life: An anthology of Quotations, Schocken Books: New York. 1980.

Here lies an old woman who always was tired,
For she lived in a place where help wasn’t hired.
Her last words on earth were, Dear Friends, I am going
Where washing ain’t done, nor sweeping, nor sewing,

And everything there is exact to my wishes,
For there they don’t eat; there’s no washing of dishes.
Don’t mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me never,
For I’m going to do nothing for ever and ever.