A Charitable Stroke

By Stephen McKinley

Talk about taking a long walk of a short pier — Tom Gallagher is taking a long swim around a big island.

Three quarters of the way into his charity swim around Long Island for children with Down Syndrome, the 37-year-old Irish American has come across everything from schools of curious bluefish to the kerosene-scented waters off La Guardia airport. Then there was the storm whose eight-foot waves tore an inflatable raft off his support team’s vessel, not to mention the "surprisingly clean" waters of the East River as he stormed under the 59th Street Bridge.

But nothing prepared Gallagher for his encounter with Rikers Island prison guards who were chasing a missing inmate.

As he swam past Rikers Island on June 14, Gallagher and his team were blissfully unaware that a convict had escaped from his cell and guards were on high alert. The Irish-American’s strong strokes were spotted from the island prison, and in a few minutes, he and his team were surrounded by guards with high-powered rifles riding in motorboats, demanding to know exactly who the lone swimmer was and what he was doing.

"It was all over in 10 minutes," said Gallagher, "but it felt like an entire lifetime."

Satisfied that Gallagher wasn’t the escapee, who was later found still hiding on the island, the prison guards left him to continue with his watery crusade.

His ambition, which, if all goes well is due to end on June 29, is to raise $1 million for the school run by the Association for Children with Down Syndrome in Plainview, Long Island. Gallagher himself has a son, Tommy Jr., aged 4, who has Down Syndrome, so his knowledge of the condition is firsthand.

"ACDS is in trouble," said Gallagher, referring to the school’s reputed difficulty in finding adequate funding for its 400 children and 250 staff, "but they were there for us when we were in trouble."

ACDS chief executive Sebastian J. Muzio acknowledged that the school has been in debt, but said that Gallagher’s unprecedented swim would go a long way to raising extra money, as well as raising awareness of Down Syndrome generally.

"We both agreed that it was time for ACDS to start marketing itself," Muzio said. "I think Tom has a huge heart and he’s so dedicated and he’s so focused on his task. He’s already swam 200-plus miles."

And by June 29, Gallagher hopes to have completed the 300-mile swim that will have taken him counterclockwise around Long Island, back to his hometown of Seaford, where Tommy Jr. waved his dad off on May 18.

Cheering along with Tommy Jr. was a coalition of Down Syndrome children from the ACDS school, parents, families, grandparents and friends.

"We even have parents who graduated out of our school," said Muzio, speaking outside C.J. Sullivan’s bar in Bayside, Queens, last Friday, where the swim committee members were selling raffle tickets to a responsive crowd. Children with painted faces played between the feet of adults, and as dusk set in, the locals were waiting the arrival of Tom Gallagher’s personal friend, Ed K’rcher of The Band, who has written a song called "Reach Out" about a child with Down Syndrome.

Gallagher’s parents were there as well to welcome their son, who was taking a break before swimming onward on Saturday before a longer rest on Father’s Day. Catherine and Tom Gallagher Sr. have their roots in Donegal and Cork, and have been to Ireland several times.

"As Tom says, there’s more money on Long Island than nearly anywhere else," his father said. "We ought to be able to raise the $1 million." At the moment, the total raised stands at close to $200,000, and Gallagher said that what was needed was "some big corporations to get involved and to sponsor us." He went on to review his progress on the swim.

"The water out of Greenport, Long Island, is by far the cleanest," he said. "I’m swimming 8 to 10 miles per day, which takes about four to five hours. My main focus is the precision to get as much out of every stroke."

Using the American crawl stroke, the barrel-chested Gallagher manages five yards per stroke, but after eight hours, fatigue attacks his focus and reduces this to only two and a half yards. He makes fists with his hands rather than using open palms, which conteracts at least some of the pain that sets in after a few hours’ swimming. While water temperatures are now about 62 degrees, when he started he faced water as low as 51 degrees.

"The key is sleep, as much as 12 or 13 hours a day," he said. A diet of bananas, pasta and bagels, and other high-carbohydrate food, is fueling his marathon. Offering him all the immediate support is his team, friends Bruce Sprong, who is piloting the support vessel, Jim Gilmartin, who handles the inflatable raft, and Don Dobbin, who navigates for Gallagher from a kayak alongside the swimmer.

Each section of the swim is plotted out in advance, from a point A to point B, so that for most of the swim Gallagher is hugging the coast line.

Apart from the length of the swim itself, Gallagher has already set a record, being the first person to be allowed to swim Shinnecock channel, a dangerous lock gate channel in Eastern Long Island. He has also had to put up with salt water poisoning — the effect of long-term exposure of his face and arms to the sea, even though he wears a protective wetsuit and latex headgear.

Such privations haven’t deterred him, though. Last year, he swam the 50-mile flight path of downed TWA Flight 800, raising money for the relatives of the victims of the disaster. This time his employer, Sunrise Credit Services, allowed him six weeks off work on half pay to complete the 300 miles.

What was concerning Gallagher the most last Friday was his Monday swim, the section that took him under the Verrazano-Narrows bridge and out into the lower New York Bay. Here he would confront the Hudson River’s flow combined with the tidal East River, both countered by the Atlantic Ocean itself.

"No one can predict it. It’s the craziest convergence of water in the world," Gallagher said. "The force of water is insane." By Monday evening, this section of the Great Long Island Swim had passed off successfully.

As Tom chatted with his team, his father paused to watch him through the crowd.

"He’s out there risking his life and not a lot of people realize it," he said. "You just pray for him and hope for the best."

Information on Tom Gallagher’s progress or about donating to the ACDS can be found at the society’s web site, www. acds.org, or by calling 1 (866) LUV-ACDS.