Paddlin' Professor's Birthday Swim a Success

NSU's Dr. Harry Briggs followed through with his pledge to swim 2 miles in Kincaid Lake to celebrate his 89th birthday.  While he was at it, he raised more than $1,300 for a scholarship benefitting Northwestern State University nursing and radiologic sciences students at NSU's CenLA Center in Alexandria.

Friends and colleagues are gathered at Tunk’s Cypress Inn to cheer Dr. Briggs as he emerged from the lake. To see pictures of the event, click here.

Known since the 1950s as “The Paddlin’ Professor,” Dr. Briggs, a political science instructor at Northwestern State University’s Leesville/Fort Polk campus, has initiated several scholarship endowments to benefit current and future students at Northwestern. The Dora Douglas Briggs Nursing and Radiologic Sciences Endowed Scholarship will benefit NSU’s Nursing and Radiologic Sciences programs at the Cenla Center.

Briggs is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame for his distance swimming exploits around the world as a young man. In recent years, he’s at it again. In 1998 on his 77th birthday he spent 14 hours crossing Tampa Bay, swimming seven miles against the current.

Briggs’ most notable feat in the water was becoming the first person to swim across Lake Erie in 1947. Briggs swam for 35 hours, 55 minutes and covered 32 miles from Sandusky, Ohio, to Point Pelee, Ontario. Acclaimed author Gay Talese, writing a profile of Briggs for the New York Times in the early 1950s, gave him the nickname “The Paddlin’ Professor.” He appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” after one swim and was featured in Sports Illustrated.

Briggs is a Marine Corps veteran of World War II battles in the Pacific Theatre at Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa. He has climbed the Matterhorn, worked in Alaska and is a native New Englander and graduate of Tufts University, where he also has created scholarship endowments. As a sportswriter and sportscaster, he traveled to Mexico and Cuba and interviewed luminaries such as Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams and Muhammad Ali.

If you weren't able to make it to the party, but would like to donate to the scholarship, click here.