FRONTLINE: Doing Good With the Dragon Boat Festival

Dragon Lady Carol Lee Linder

Dragon Lady Carol Lee Linder

She might be physically exhausted after each summer dragon boat practice on the Schuylkill, but Haverford’s Carol Lee Lindner is that much more “spiritually alive.” Lindner, 65, had never heard of the ancient sport prior to organizing the first Philadelphia women’s dragon boat team in 1997. She then went on to assemble the region’s first team of breast cancer survivors in 1999. A testament to her efforts, the fifth annual Philadelphia Inter-national Dragon Boat Festival kicks off Oct. 7 from Fairmount Park’s Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

Dragon boating began on China’s Milo River around 400 B.C. Today, the showy 39-foot vessels, affixed with dragon heads and tails, hold 20 paddlers, a steersman and a drummer. With over a million teams worldwide, it’s being considered as a 2008 Olympic exhibition sport.

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In 2002, news of the first Philadelphia festival followed 9-11. “I just really thought it was time to come together in our city,” Lindner says. “Some said it’d never work. I believed it would. I saw it in the eyes of our women’s teams. I saw it in my Down Syndrome daughter’s eyes.”

Since the festival began, participation has jumped from 43 to 128 teams. Corporations, community organizations, businesses and schools all pay between $1,000 and $2,500 to be part of the event, which already has raised $750,000 for Fox Chase Cancer Center.

Main Line teams include two each from Main Line Health & Fitness and Platoon Fitness in Bryn Mawr. There are also the Snap Dragons from Wayne, the Wild Things from Haverford, Agnes Irwin’s Owl Be Seeing You, Haverford School’s River Fords and Episcopal Academy’s two teams. “If no one came, it wouldn’t be a party,” Lindner says. “And this is a party.”

For more details on the festival, visit philadragonboatfestival.com.

Our Best of the Main Line Nomination Ballot is open through January 8!