Captain Manuel Garber and The Immigrants

Manuel Garber never considered himself a long-distance swimmer. In fact, as a college student, he did lots of short-distance swimming, in a pool, on the water polo team of Universidad Simón Bolívar, the premier public university of Venezuela.

But when he came to the US in the 1990s for his Ph.D. at Brandeis University, his water polo days were then behind him and he wanted a place to swim to stay active.

Some fellow Brandeis students turned him on to a little historic pond a half-hour away called Walden Pond. “Those were the days when you had to sneak in and swim out of sight of the lifeguards there,” he says. The state has gone back and forth on allowing cross-pond open water swimming in the historic body of water; nowadays, swimmers must use brightly colored buoys, swim early/late in the day, and use designated lanes.

It was the first time he had ever done any open water swimming, as the lakes where he lived in Venezuela were too polluted for swimming. But he really enjoyed it.

Post-Ph.D., Garber worked as a consultant and a software engineer before landing at the prestigious Broad Institute in Cambridge, an independent, non-profit research organization that discovers the causes of diseases. It was there he met Harris “Chad” Nusbaum.

Chad completed his first Buzzards Bay Swim in 2012. He loved the event so much that he recruited Garber to join him. Since then, Nusbaum and Garber have swum together many years, each trying to out-fundraise the other.

In 2017, Manuel amplified their efforts by forming a team called The Immigrants with his colleagues from his new place of work: UMass Medical School in Worcester. The team grew from three members in its first year to six members in 2018. The growth paid off as The Immigrants took home the event’s Top Fundraising Team prize, raising $5,000 for clean water in one triumphant swim.

The group has continued to grow.

Team member Lucio Castilla, a professor at UMass Medical School who is originally from Buenos Aires, has recruited Mary Pasquale and Lorraine Cote. Garber says they swim all together at Asnacomet Pond in Hubbardston, north of the medical school in Worcester County.

Manuel’s 23-year-old daughter Adriana, who had watched her father swim the event over the years and is now working in the medical field as well, has joined the team. She has brought on her friend Olivia Mooradian, a research technician at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Saeed Shakiba, originally from Iran, is also a trusty team member. The UMass Medical School post-doc research assistant is currently awaiting where his residency will be. Hopefully, he will be back in the area in June to participate. Andrea Ciaranello, a friend of Chad, is a professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Garber lives in Winchester. Now that he works in the Worcester area for UMass Medical School in his own bioinformatics lab (he’s a mathematician, not a medical doctor), he does most of his training at the YMCA in Worcester, as well as those in nearby Woburn and Waltham. But the reason why all the members of The Immigrants do the swim is because they love open water swimming.

He explains that he loves the Swim for three reasons.

“One, I love going across the Harbor,” he explains. Just like it was a thrill to swim in Walden Pond when it wasn’t allowed, it is fun to do an open water swim that opens up for swimmers only occasionally or once a year.

Secondly he likes to swim with a team and a large community of like-minded people.

Lastly, he believes in the cause of environmental restoration and care. He notes that cleaning the Bay and the Harbor in particular benefits a mostly underserved constituency in the city of New Bedford. It is the only fundraising swim in which he participates.

But the team building is what sets him and Nusbaum apart. They are constantly recruiting from their network or “web” of friends and colleagues, which have historically been either immigrants, medical professionals, or often both.

Then the cheerleader in Garber kicks in. “We’ve always been in competition to fundraise, Chad and I,” says Garber, then jokes, “We need some other heavy hitters.” Cote currently leads the team’s fundraising efforts. “Lorraine might step up and be our lead fundraiser,” says Garber.

It’s a healthy, friendly competition that keeps everyone’s eyes on the very real prize – a cleaner, healthier Buzzards Bay where the opportunity for hundreds of swimmers to jump in the water and swim the channel is very much appreciated by this team.