Meeting Jesse Owens

The Winter Olympic Games begin next month.  Here’s the Olympic moment I remember best.  After all, it’s not every day you get to meet someone as incredible as Jesse Owens.

I missed something last year.

September 13, 2013, would have been the 100th birthday of the great Olympic champion Jesse Owens.

Owens died in 1980.  But he remains an intriguing figure in history for what he experienced and endured at the 1936 Olympic Games, and afterward.

One time, I had the distinct honor of meeting Mr. Owens in person.  It was in 1976, four years before his death.  Permit me to tell you the story.

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An extraordinary television show debuted during the summer of 1976 on PBS.  It was called The Olympiad.  Created by legendary film producer Bud Greenspan, the spellbinding 22-hour documentary (that’s right, 22 hours!) was shown nightly on public television for three consecutive weeks.  If you loved sports and history, you couldn’t get enough of the show.  The Olympiad is mostly forgotten now, but it stands as one of the most groundbreaking sports documentaries ever made.  It shaped and even changed lives, including mine.

That summer also featured something new, called the Junior Olympics.

Sponsored by the Atlantic-Richfield Oil Company (ARCO), the grand vision of organizers was to hold Olympic-style tryouts in more than a dozen major American cities for kids who weren’t quite old enough to actually compete in the Olympic Games.  I was 14-years-old at the time.

The top young athletes in each city would compete in various events.  The winners in each category would be awarded a free trip to Philadelphia to compete in the Junior Olympic Games, to be held at Franklin Field.  Well, I thought that was the coolest thing ever, so I decided to enter the local tryout.

There was only one problem.

I couldn’t run.  I couldn’t jump.  I couldn’t swim.  I was a terrible athlete.  Maybe I could fall down, or finish last.  That was about it.

Nevertheless, I showed up at a high school football stadium in Oak Cliff prepared to compete for the chance to go to Philadelphia.

The organizers must have done a terrible job advertising the tryouts.  Only a few dozen kids showed up.  When it came time for the competition to begin, I was asked which event I planned to enter.  I looked around and saw several tall, athletic-looking black kids, who all indicated they were running track and field.  There was no way I was going to beat any of them in a foot face.  Then, I noticed that no one had entered in something called the long jump.

The long jump means you get a running start and then leap as far as you can moving forward through the air, hoping to clear the greatest possible distance before touching down into a pit of sand.  As you can imagine, most long jumpers are tall and fast.  That wasn’t me.  That didn’t matter.  In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

I made three jumps in all.  I don’t remember my distances, but let’s just say the world record survived that day.  One of the judges approached me.  He said it looked like I’d win the competition by default since there were no other entrants.  That meant I’d get the free trip to Philadelphia.  Imagine me, representing Dallas in the long jump category.  What a joke.

Well, wouldn’t you know it?

Some punk around my age showed up at the very last second and decided to enter my event.  Basically, all he needed to do was run towards the line and not fall down, and my distances would be shattered.  And that’s exactly what happened.  The punk dusted me like a bitch.  So, he got the free trip to Philadelphia instead.

But I still managed to win something — a second-place trophy that was to be presented later at an awards ceremony.

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A few nights before the tryouts that day, The Olympiad featured the story of Jesse Owens competing in the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, which were held in Berlin, Germany.

I don’t believe I had never heard of Mr. Owens before.  There was no such thing as SportsCenter, or sports documentaries, or YouTube.  We just didn’t know as much about history back then.  I assume most kids my age had no idea who he was either, or what he did many years ago that was so memorable.

Mr. Owens won four gold medals in 1936 — three as a track and field runner and one in (you guessed it) the long jump.  Adolf Hitler reportedly stormed off the viewing platform and later refused to shake Mr. Owens’ hand following his four victories, a story which apparently is a myth.  It sure made for a memorable tale, however, and lingered on as part of the post-war Olympic mythology for decades.  Check out numerous sources which cite Mr. Owens being far more upset at his treatment once he returned to the United States (including a snub by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and being discriminated against in New York City) than anything he encountered in Berlin.  SOURCE HERE

At my awards ceremony, when each of the top three finishers from each event was receiving trophies, the stands were empty.  A few bored-looking photographers stood in front of a platform that had been set up haphazardly, likely commissioned by the oil company for their monthly newsletter.  Kids who got trophies stood around like they couldn’t have cared less.  The only happy kids were the ones headed to Philadelphia.

When it finally came time for the long jump winners to be recognized, it was just me and the punk who stole my trip to Philadelphia.  He got to stand on the top step.  I took second place, so I was positioned on the next platform a notch below.  No one claimed the third-place trophy, since there were only two entrants.  So, you could say I finished second, and also finished last.  Same thing.

An older black man stepped forward and posed with us while we were standing for a moment getting our picture taken.  He reached out his hand forward and we shook hands.  I had no idea who he was.

“Hi, I’m Jesse Owens,” he said.  “Congratulations.”

Well, I nearly fell off the platform when I heard that.  Jesse Owens!  I was shaking hands with Jesse Owens!

I was actually speechless for a few seconds.  Something about his story, and the way Bud Greenspan told it in the documentary, really touched me.  I instantly came to admire this man, and would feel even more strongly later, once I learned more about is life, which wasn’t always filled with moments of pride.

Following the ceremony, I approached Mr. Owens who was standing off to the side.  I’m sure this must have been unusual for him to be approached by someone young.  Most of the kids didn’t have any clue who he was.  He might as well have been some executive from the oil company that no one cared about.

As I spoke, I stammered something incoherently about seeing his story on The Olympiad.  I mentioned that he had been on television the night before, something which apparently wasn’t known to Mr. Owens.  He seemed a bit surprised and was happy that someone actually recognized him.

That was pretty much all that was said at that moment.  Mr. Owens probably didn’t think much of the conversation and forgot about it afterward.  But here I am now, 38 years later, writing about the experience as though it was yesterday.

I remember it well.

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We are all architects of our own destiny to a certain extent.  As the motto in my masthead (above) says, “Faber est quisque fortunae suae,” which means “Everyone is the architect of his own success.”

But as we continuously strive to move up and get ahead, there are indeed serendipitous moments.  In other words, lucky breaks.

For me, a lucky break was meeting Jesse Owens, and then being fortunate enough to know precisely who he was to appreciate the honor of that moment.

Which makes me now wonder.  How many other moments such as this one do we miss in our lives?  Because we don’t know things.  Because we weren’t paying attention.  Because we’re too busy.  Because most of us don’t know about our history or care about matters beyond our self-interest.  I suspect, quite a lot.

So, in the end, I didn’t get the free trip to Philadelphia.  But when it came to the long jump and the way things turned out — I’d say I was the real winner.

It’s not every day you get to meet someone as incredible as Jesse Owens.

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