website death_place death_date birth_place name known_for article_title birth_name occupation
www.swim4peace.com grove city , ohio 06 june 2000 german village , ohio , u.s. walter poenisch endurance swimming walter poenisch
 walter poenisch swimmer , baker
walter poenisch

walter poenisch -lrb- july 11 , 1913 - june 6 , 2000 -rrb- was an american baker and long-distance swimmer .
in 1963 , at the age of 50 , poenisch began his professional swimming career by swimming in the jim moran lake michigan swim , a 30-mile professional marathon swim in lake michigan .
in june 1972 , poenisch tried to establish a long-distance ocean swimming record off of florida but was pulled from the water after sharks attacked his safety cage .
in 1976 , he swam 125 miles in the florida straits and was listed in the guinness book of world records for the longest ocean swim .
to memorialize his 65th birthday in 1978 , poenisch set out to be the first to swim from havana , cuba to the florida keys .
as then-president of cuba fidel castro watched , poenisch began his swim from cuba on july 13 , 1978 .
about thirty-three hours later , poenisch arrived at little duck key , a small island in the lower florida keys .
as a result of not filing for official recognition - he had no outside observer beside his own personal crew - his swim did not receive official recognition .
he subsequently sued three parties , including the international swimming hall of fame and diana nyad , a long-distance swimmer competitor who began her first cuba-to-florida swim on july 16 , 1978 - two days after poenisch arrived in florida .
poenisch claimed that nyad 's publicist and nyad had slandered him just before she left on her swim due to how they characterized his cuba-to-florida swim efforts .
poenisch received $ 5,000 from each of the three parties in an out-of-court settlement five years later in april 1983 .
poenisch died in june 2000 and , as of september 2013 , has not received official recognition for his 1978 cuba-to-florida swim .
