Newt Perry
| Newt Perry | |
|---|---|
Underwater photograph of Newt Perry in 1924.
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| Born |
January 6, 1908 Valdosta, Georgia |
| Died | November 22, 1987 (aged 79) Ocala, Florida |
| Education | University of Florida, B.A., M.A. |
| Occupation | Swimming coach, promoter, teacher, movie consultant |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret Jarmin August (1934-47) Dot (1950-82) |
| Children | Margaret Eileen (b. 1935) Newton Hudson Lee (b. 1940) Delee (b. 1951) |
Newton A. Perry (January 6, 1908 – November 22, 1987) was an American swimmer, attraction promoter, educator and swimming coach.
Perry was born in Valdosta, Georgia in 1908. After living in Tampa for several years, he and his family moved to the Ocala, Florida area in 1922. His father was a railroad conductor, and Ocala represented the midpoint of his train route. Perry was happy to discover that he could swim in the clean, clear water at Silver Springs, and he would walk the six miles from Ocala to the springs. In order to earn pocket change, he started teaching local residents to swim for twenty-five cents per lesson. In 1924, Perry became Ocala High School's swim coach and star swimmer; he was only 16 years old at the time. He once swam 25 miles in seven hours, 28 minutes.
Perry attended the University of Florida in nearby Gainesville, and was a member of the Florida Gators swimming and diving team in 1933 and 1934. He graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree in education, and later returned to complete a master's degree in education in 1958.
Perry learned all he could about swimming, diving and life-guarding. When the American Red Cross published their aquatics safety manual during the 1920s, they selected Silver Springs to shoot the underwater photographs for their manuals. Perry served as the model in many of the Red Cross manual photographs.
Silver Springs in the 1920s and 1930s was not that well known and the attraction owners, Carl G. Ray, Sr. and W. M. "Shorty" Davidson, would invite journalists from all over the country to come visit their attraction. Perry and his sisters would put on swimming exhibitions both the water's surface and under it. Some of those snapshots would appear in newspapers in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York, Jacksonville, Tampa, and other large cities. Life magazine published several articles on Silver Springs and the Perry family.
Ray and Davidson invited American sportswriter and short movie producer, Grantland Rice, to vacation in the Ocala area and to be their guest on a tour of Silver Springs. While Rice was visiting the springs, he witnessed the aquatic abilities of Perry and was interested in what he saw. Rice set up his motion picture cameras to record the interesting footage of the swimmer both on the surface and under the surface of the water. Perry demonstrated his powerful freestyle up stream and then dove underwater to perform swimming backwards, somersaults, eating a banana, drinking a soda and other unusual underwater skills. He had stayed underwater for three minutes and 45 seconds.
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