True to Yale blue

In some athletic circles, the name “Pocock” stirs excitement, even awe. Rebecca “Becky” Pocock and her daughters, Isabel and Olivia, have experienced this firsthand.

Becky, registrar for Earth & Planetary Sciences, says that a few years ago a student came into her office, as had many before him, to ask whether it was true that she was a Pocock. She had already surmised from his physique that he might be a rower on the Yale rowing team. Confirmation came immediately when she called her husband, Jeff Pocock, and handed the phone to the young man. No surprise to Becky, but eye-opening to the student, Jeff rattled off the athlete’s stats from memory: where he was from, where he sat in the boat, how much he weighed, and how tall he was. Thrilled, the student ran downstairs and came back with a fellow rower to prove that he had just spoken with a member of the Pocock family.

Isabel, graduate student registrar at Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, remembers that after she had settled into her job, the dean, a former rower, emailed to confirm what he already suspected: that she and Olivia, a financial assistant at Yale Engineering, were Pococks. The deputy dean followed suit, also excited about the family connection.

This starts to make sense when you learn that Isabel, Olivia, and their father descend from two of the most famous makers of racing shells in the history of rowing: brothers George and Richard “Dick” Pocock, sons of the head boat builder for England’s Eton College. George, their great-great uncle and great uncle, respectively, and of “Boys in the Boat” book and movie fame, is considered the leading designer and builder of the fastest wooden shells in the 20th century. He was also a rowing coach and wise elder of the sport.

Dick, also a stellar boat builder, accompanied George when he left England to work in British Columbia. In 1912, they were both hired by the University of Washington in Seattle to build racing shells and help grow the university’s rowing program.

“We root for Yale”

It was 1923 when Dick Pocock arrived at Yale to become its official boatwright at the request of Ed Leader, who had been recruited from the University of Washington rowing program as head coach. Together, they led the Yale rowing team to an undefeated streak from 1924 to 1927, during which they didn’t lose a single race of any length.

The sweetest victory of all was the varsity eight’s gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games. In ’27, Dick described his winning shells to The Yale Daily News (and The New York Times) as “…60 feet 11 inches in length, with a beam of 23½ inches, having what one would call a good round mold. The planking (or hull) is made of Spanish cedar, one-eighth of an inch thick.”

With these championships in tow, Dick remained at Yale for the rest of his life, serving 16 years as principal boat builder and shell rigger and continuing to work as master boatman and coach for intramural crews until well into the 1960s. He and wife, Jessie, settled in Milford, Connecticut, where sons John, Richard, and James “Jim” were born. His youngest, Jim, an accomplished amateur oarsman and World War II and Korean War veteran, chose to reside in Milford, joining the Milford Fire Department and retiring as Battalion Chief.

While Jim never worked directly for the university, nor did his sons James and Jeff, he was a Yale sports fan through and through and lovingly passed the torch to his children. Son Jeff, who works for the United States Postal Service, says he’s been cheering for Yale’s heavyweight crew and football team since he’s been in diapers, more than 60 years ago. “My dad always told me, ‘We root for Yale because Yale does things right,’” he said.

Generations of blue

Jeff took his dad’s words to heart and shared their sentiment with his wife, Becky, and later with daughters Isabel and Olivia, all of whom have accompanied him not only to regattas, but also to football, basketball, hockey, and lacrosse games, home and away, with rosters in hand.

“Isabel’s first Yale-Harvard football game was when she was a year old,” says Becky. “My mother knitted her a sweater with her name in little blue letters and ‘Yale’ on the side.” “There’s a good reason,” she adds, “that Tom Beckett [retired Yale athletic director] always referred to my husband as ‘Yale’s number one fan.’”

Jeff is equally enthused that his wife and daughters work for Yale, and he gets a kick out of the fact that Isabel’s and Olivia’s offices are down the hall from each other at Yale Engineering. Becky and Isabel, both registrars, see each other at university-wide registrar meetings.

Olivia joined Yale Engineering first in March 2022 after graduating from college the previous December. She began as an administrative assistant in biomedical engineering and was promoted to a financial assistant in mechanical engineering, where she is today. Sister Isabel was hired in the fall of 2024 as an administrative assistant in the dean’s office, and when the registrar position opened, she thought she would really enjoy it.

“Our coworkers are great,” says Olivia. “We both love our departments and our teams. They really work hard to make the community here strong.”

Unlike her daughters, Becky has worked in several areas on campus since joining in 1983: the School of Medicine, the School of Art, the French Department, and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Currently as the registrar in Earth and Planetary Sciences, she closely interacts with the students. Becky relishes these interactions and says she has “a wonderful team as well.”

Beyond working for Yale, the Pocock women are often together with Jeff rooting for Yale athletic teams. “I’m a huge Yale sports fan,” says Isabel. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve read the ‘Boys in the Boat’ and seen the movie, and I think it is pretty cool that I work here now.”

Jeff wouldn’t disagree. “My passion for Yale sports runs generations deep,” he said. “I can still remember being with my dad at the 1967 Yale-Harvard game — I’m going to sound old now — when Brian Dowling threw a 67-yard touchdown pass to Del Marting in the last two minutes to win the game. My dad was jumping up and down cheering in the bleachers and tapping me on the head with the football program in his hand.”