Brian Earley stood in his swim trunks on the shore of Sandy Point State Park on a cold, gray Sunday morning in June 1982 and scanned the choppy waters of the Chesapeake Bay. The currents spewed whitecaps 2 and 3 feet high, and a light, steady rain fell from dark storm clouds overhead.
“The warmest place, probably, was in the water,” Earley said, recalling that day nearly three decades ago when he swam about five miles across the Bay — the precursor to the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim, now considered one of the premier open-water swims in the nation.
The 21-year-old Annapolis native and Towson University student planned to swim across the Chesapeake in honor of his late father, who had died of complications from diabetes seven months earlier.
“I wanted to do something outrageous” to raise money for the American Diabetes Association, he said. “The only power I had was the power over the water, and I thought [I would] swim across something that would make some news.”
He chose the second week in June — it was warm enough and there were no jellyfish.
“We only had this window of one hour” when the Bay’s tides are calm and crossing the nearly five-mile expanse of water would be feasible. Outside that hour, “the tides can take you away in a matter of minutes,” he said.
“But when you are 21 and you are fast as hell in the water, this is something you are not afraid of.”
Earley dove into the Bay just after 8 a.m., and 2 1/2 hours and five miles later, he climbed ashore.
He made front-page news the next day, and he has returned every year to swim it again. By 1985, Earley’s annual swim had become an organized event attracting swimmers from across the nation.
In 1999, Earley began offering a $1,000 scholarship — in honor of his mother, Cynthia — to the student swimmer who raises the most money for the March of Dimes.
Earley now lives in San Diego and trains for the race six days a week. Sunday will be his 26th race.
Whenever he grows tired from fatigue in the water, he thinks, “This is nothing compared to what my father went through and what people with disabilities go through.”
