Member 1974 - 1983
USMS National Records – 16 Lifetime
USMS All American Honors – 5 years, 27 Individual
USMS Top Ten Achievements – 68 Individual
NE LMSC Individual Records – 31 Lifetime
Doris (Fitzgerald) Hogan was born on September 1, 1900, brought up in Springfield, Massachusetts, lived most of her adult life in the greater Boston area, eventually retiring to Glastonbury, Connecticut.
From 1915-1921 she had great success in swimming contests when competitive swimming was a new sport. At age 13 she won her first swimming cup in a race in the Connecticut River in 1915. In 1918 Doris won the women’s 100-yard race at a swimming carnival held at the Riverside pool in Springfield with a time of 1:31.6.
At Sargent College in 1922 Doris “Fitzy” swam, dove and was manager of the varsity swimming team, which swam against Radcliffe at the Cambridge YMCA in the first women’s intercollegiate swimming meet held in America. Doris won first place in that meet and was elected captain of the 1923 Sargent team.
From 1923 through 1933 Doris was director of physical education of public schools, first in Virginia and then in Massachusetts. In 1933 she married attorney John M. Hogan and started raising a family.
Doris entered her first Masters meet in December 1973. She arrived at the meet at the Medford High School pool with a friend who had casually suggested that she bring her suit along. It was only after she arrived that she realized that she was meant to be a participant in the meet rather than just a spectator. Doris won two events she swam (70-74 age group) and both times set national records.
Doris competed at Masters meets from 1974 through 1983. She would wave to her fans as she swam, doing a racing dive for every race, saying that “there wouldn’t’ be staring blocks if we weren’t mean to use them,” answering the cheers of those urging her to keep going in a breaststroke race by saying at each breath, “I’m trying, I’m trying,” wearing her yellow terry-cloth sundress with her “All-American” patch displayed proudly on the front, her toenails painted red and showing brightly in her flip flops on the deck, her hugs of good luck wishes and congratulations, her giggle that one could see all over her face, her many ribbons, just about all of the blue, with every event, dated, time, and place written carefully on them, her team suit and loyalty to New England Masters.
In 1978 she was on “Evening Magazine” a show which inspired hundreds of adults in New England to get into the swim, no matter what their age. She was also the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, and even Morocco, where she went to visit her daughter and family. The press dubbed her “The Swimming Grandmother”
Masters swimming remained her greatest joy until her death in 2020 at the age of 87.