“My mind wandered. I thought about my kids a lot, When you are doing something like that, your mind goes to the things you love the most, it might be scripture, family, favorite meal, favorite memory and what went through my mind was that I thought a lot about literature. These jellyfish are very pretty and it’s not like seeing them in a book. Also, light under water refracts, when overhead things look closer. Early in the day the light comes in the water form the side and you see creatures and they are tremendously beautiful. No photo in a book could do justice.”
“You have no idea what is going to go through your head when you are in the water, you are in the wild and you are part of the world of the wild.”
“I was also thinking about the jellyfish,” he said. “There are six species of jellyfish common to the English Channel, one species is the Compass Jellyfish and that made me remember my 10th grade Geometry class with Mrs. Hahn, (Jean Hahn, now retired from GHS). It has been 35 years since I was in that Geometry class but I thought about how she used big wooden tools, like a compass, protractor. She had the giant size that held pieces of chalk and each of the students had small ones on our desks. She was the expert; she could do it without looking. That lady loved what she was teaching and that came through in her teaching. When I saw the jellyfish I knew the name of the Compass Jellyfish and suddenly I remembered being a kid sitting in a classroom learning Geometry when I would rather have been outdoors.”
HOW THE IDEA TO SWIM THE ENGLISH CHANNEL CAME ABOUT:
The idea to swim the Channel was an idea of Lassman’s in his childhood, and he explained....”When I was 13, I went to a swimming camp at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN) where I was among hundreds of kids who swam every day. One evening all of us were in the university cafeteria watching a documentary about a man named James Edward “Doc” Counsilman, a famous Olympic swim coach and Big 10 coach who set out to become the oldest man to swim the English Channel in 1979. The documentary ended, the light came on and there he (Counsilman) was standing in the room and answered our questions. I thought ‘how awesome,’ and that was the first time I had the idea.”
Growing up in Geneseo, Lassman spent lots of time in the summer at the Geneseo pool and was a member of a summer swim team coached by Dr. Bruce Fehlman and Dr. Max McCaw…”I was eight or nine years old and that is how I started swimming competitively,” he said. “Our family also was part of a group of six families who owned a recreational area with a lake outside of Geneseo where I first started swimming.”
Lassman said swimming has always been a love of his and a refuge…”It is something that makes me happy, helps to keep me healthy and gets me outdoors, where I love to be.”
His swimming became competitive when he became part of the Moline Blue Marlins. He said, “Only a handful of local kids did that and I swam with the club team until high school and when I got to high school I started practicing with the United Township High School Swim Team (East Moline). Even though I was not a member of their team, I could swim with them. I worked out with the team before and after school.”
He credited former GHS Athletic Director, the late Del Nicklaus, and former GHS principal Ted McAvoy, for making it possible for him to compete in the Sectional Swim Meets and represent Geneseo High School. He competed at the Sectional level all of his four high school years.
After graduating from GHS in 1992, when the school was named JD Darnall High School, Lassman moved to Washington DC and attended the Catholic University of America where he majored in philosophy and politics. He graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in 1996 and began working in Washington, DC.
A few years after graduating from college, Lassman completed The Great Chesapeake Bay Swim which he explained is a 4.4-mile swim near Annapolis in the Chesapeake Bay. He later became involved in triathlons in the area…”Eventually I was doing some big races that included swimming,” he said. That kept me in contact with the open water swimming community and as a result I did some ocean races near Ocean City, MD, and in 2016 I signed up to do the ‘Swim Around Key West,’ a 12 1/2 –mile swim. I just find myself doing the really interesting ocean swims.”
“Two and one-half years ago, in November of 2021, I decided I was going to try to swim the English Channel,” he said.
A month later he signed a contract with a boat captain to accompany him, and Lassman added, “I had two and one-half years to get ready for my swim.”
He became more focused on training, including traveling to California from Virginia to swim the Catalina Channel, a 21-mile swim, which Lassman said “is similar to swimming the English Channel.”
“I did the Catalina Channel swim to learn to swim at nighttime,” he explained. “There’s an ‘Oceans Seven,’ which is a list of seven challenging ocean swims around the world. Only about two dozen people in the world have done all seven. That is special in that each swim requires one skill set that makes it really difficult. That’s why I did the Catalina Channel swim to learn to swim at nighttime and to be really comfortable with that I had to learn to swim in cold water for hours on end, both requirements to swim the English Channel. Once I had that under my belt, I learned a few more skills.”
Lassman said the Catalina Swim and the English Channel are the most prestigious on the list of seven swims….”Both have the most history, like Mt. Everest, it takes a complete package of skills and luck, so if you get to do it, you are really happy about it.”
When Lassman was asked “What’s next?” he said, “Nothing is planned, but I will keep on swimming on a regular basis as it is part of my life. It’s my time, when I clear my head and I will be swimming as long as I am physically able.”
He and his wife, Dana Damico, live in Alexandria, VA, and the couple has two sons and two daughters.
Lassman is the son of Sheila Lassman, Geneseo, and the late Lee Lassman. He has a brother, Kurt Lassman, and two sisters, Kristine Hitzhusen, Geneseo, and Kelley Lassman, New York City.
