Former Lake Forester’s Memoir Recalls Olympic Glory Days

By David A. F. Sweet Nearly 70 years have passed since Jon Henricks captured two Olympic gold medals in swimming in Melbourne, kindling tremendous excitement in his home country of Australia. But thanks to the former Lake Forest resident’s memoir Life in Lane Four -- published in 2023 and available on Amazon.com -- stories and memories abound, not only of that splendid time but of an extremely interesting life before Olympic glory and after. Henricks’ description of his first race for a medal in Melbourne is mesmerizing. When he and his fellow Australians, Gary Chapman and Johnny Devitt, arrived on the pool deck in 1956, “the noise broke the sound meter,” Henricks wrote. But the race was at night, and klieg lights blinded Henricks – so much so that he almost scraped his face on the wall during a tumble turn. But the 21-year-old recovered to win the 100 meters in record time, with Devitt second and Chapman third.

Lane four had the smoothest water to swim in back in Jon Henricks' day. “We three had been mates all our lives,” Henricks wrote. “Then came the magic moment that, until now, had been my wildest fantasy. We watched three Australian flags being slowly, and proudly, raised to the strains of our national anthem.” Soon, his father Clyde arrived. As a child, Henricks felt so proud when his father first called him champ.“Dad’s eyes were moist,” Henricks wrote, “as he repeated the words he’d uttered so long ago: ‘Well done, champ.’” The exaltation of becoming a world champion was preceded by many arduous workouts in icy pools, followed by unheated showers. During high school, a man named Harry Gallagher noticed Henricks’ excellent swim stroke, along with his lack of conditioning. Henricks’ father drove his teenage son long distances to practice with Gallagher’s squad. Because of illness, Henricks did not qualify for the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, a big blow to him. But he soon swam in the Japanese Nationals, one of his happiest memories. “The always hero-worshiping Japanese treated me like a sports legend…reporters hung on my every word as if I was an oracle,” Henricks wrote. He credits an idea espoused by his father to increase his speed in the pool. Living next to the Henricks’ family in Rhodes was sailboat enthusiast Don Melrose.

Jon Henricks (center) gets together with Australian teammates Murray Rose and John Devitt.

“He worked on the hull of his boat all week, lacquering it, and my father asked why,” recalled Henricks. “He said, ‘By the end of a race, the wind drops. If I find that my hull is clean, I can go a knot faster than anyone else.’

“My Dad took a look at me. I was quite hirsute. He said, ‘Let’s clean your hull.’” Armed with a Gillette razor, Clyde shorn his son of body hair.

Shaven swimmers were unheard of at the time. As Henricks wrote, “During the next race, I felt like I was flying, not swimming.”

That race, the State Championships in Sydney, garnered the headline, “Schoolboy Swimmer Best Ever” as he broke the record in the 110-yard sprint (the book, in fact, features many newspaper headlines about Henricks’ exploits). Humorous stories are plentiful in the breezy Life in Lane Four (so named because lane four was once known to have the smoothest water in a pool). As a boy, Henricks’ parents were about to go out, and he heard his mother mention that she had put some cakes on a shelf. The youngster waited for a painfully long time for his parents to depart. Then, Henricks went to eat one -- and as he bit into it, found out it was soap. And let’s just say young Jon initiated creative ways to get into trouble. One example: Placing two pounds of gunpowder in his friend Alec’s mother’s stove (Alec was also a culprit) caused an explosion that prompted the wailing of sirens in Sydney. He also witnessed the tough side of life. His mother grew up poor, and Jon once visited the sawmill where his grandfather labored.“It appeared that most of the men at the mill were missing a finger or worse,” Henricks recounted. “They would hold up their hands up to me to display the missing finger and howl with laughter as they recounted the incident.”

Given his life of privation, it's unlikely his grandfather could have imagined the success of his grandson. During those 1956 Games, Prince Philip invited the young star to watch other Olympic swimming meets with him. Henricks’ name made headlines around the world. But as he stood on the victory dais, he asked himself: What do I do now? “My life, to this point, had been devoted to this end,” Henricks recalled in his memoir. “I really didn’t want to spend my entire life swimming.”

But he really hasn’t stopped. Though illness sidelined him during the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he married the love of his life, Bonnie Wilkie, there and, during their honeymoon, both swam quite a distance to a yacht off Capri to meet Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly. Today, the 90-year-old University of Southern California graduate still swims six days a week. Few alive know better how the Olympics have changed. Though that diving and swimming stadium Henricks competed in was the first indoor one in Olympic history, it held only about 6,000 fans that November. Believe it or not, during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the swimming pool will be placed in SoFi Stadium – home of the NFL’s Rams and Chargers – and is expected to seat 38,000. Said Henricks, who lives only about 90 minutes away from the stadium in Santa Barbara, “Watching the swimming would be a nice goal for me to achieve. Hope I’m able to make it.” This article first appeared in Classic Chicago magazine.