Newspaper Page Text
The Augusta News-Review February 18,1984
Real gold has
eluded track stars
from page 1
good outlets and helped
sell Olympic coins, but
the real gold—the spen
ding kind—never got into
his hands as it had for
many Olympic winners, i
The late Ralph Met
calfe, one of a galaxy of
stars who were on the
same Olympic team with
Jesse Owens, twice
finished second in the
Olympics, behind Eddie
Tolan in Los Angeles in
1932 and behind Owens
jn Berlin in 1936. Met
calfe, who won a gold
medal as a member of the
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Milton Campbell
victorious relay team in
1932, became a
congressman from
Chicago.
One of the standout
Olympic double winners
who is still connected
with the Olympic
movement is Marvin G.
(Mai) Whitfield, who sin
ce 1964 has served as a
regional youth and sports
officer working in Africa
so. ‘he U.S. Information
Agency. Last spring,
Whitfield returned to the
U.S. for a special
ceremony at the Jesse
Owens Track and Field
Classic held at Ohio State
University annually. Mai
was inducted into the
Ohio Track and Field
Hall of Fame at the
ceremony.
Whitfield won two
Olympic gold medals
(800-meter run and 1600-
meter relay) in Helsinki in
1952. A middle-distance
runner on both indoor
and outdoor tracks,
Whitfield broke 18 world
records during his racing
career. A native of
California, Whitfield also
attended Los Angeles
State College.
During his 20-year
career with USIA, Whit
field has trained young
athletes throughout
Africa, promoted U.S.-
African sports exchanges,
and sought recognition of
outstanding African
athletes and
programs—imparting at
the same time a positive
image of American spor
tsmanship and athletic
prowess. Even in those
countries without close
ties to the U.S., Whitfield
has been able to sur
mount political barriers
to exercise his unique
skills as a trainer and a
coach.
Whitfield has
organized several visits a
year for the past decade
or more to Africa by
American sports
specialists at no cost to
the U.S. Government.
This year, he predicts
some 43 nations of the 52
countries in the
Organization of African
States (OAS) will par-
ticipate in the Olympics
at Los Angeles.
Although Black
athletes dominated the
track and field events in
high schools, colleges,
AAU meets and the
Olympics, there was one
event that the public un
der some form of
psychosis seemed to
disassociated with a
Black competitor—the
backbreaking decathlon.
The one individual who
cracked this myth was a
high school track and
field athlete from Plain
field, N.J. named Milton
Campbell who could per
form with excellence in
just about all of the
required ten events of the
decathlon. Although he
had not heard about the
decathlon previously, he
made the 1952 Olympic
Team at the age of 17 and
placed second to fellow
American Bob Mathias.
Campbell recalls that
prior to participating in
the Olympic trials he
researched the exploits of
the great Carlisle, Pa.,
Institute Indian, Jim
Thorpe.
Four years later Cam
pbell made headlines
when he captured the
decathlon with a blazing
score of 7,887 points at
the 1956 games.
If Campbell’s victory
in Melbourne, Australia
had any significant
meaning to anyone, it
came in the person of
another Black youth,
Rafer Johnson, who won
the decathlon in the 1960
Olympics in Rome, Italy
with a staggering score of
8,392 points. Rafer had
been runner-up in 1956.
The fact that he was
the first Black athlete to
win the decathlon has
followed Campbell, these
past 31 years. During all
pre-Olympic games
programs, news, and TV
airings, they will find
Milton Campbell and he,
like others, will in
varialbly be asked, what
changes a long ago vic
tory has meant in life.
Seldom has the spectre of
financial success sur
faced.
In recent years one of
the most visible faces on
television in both inter
views, commercials and
specials, is one of the
more recent decathlon
Olympic champs, Bruce
Jenner, the 1976 winner
at Montreal.
For Milt Campbell it
has been a see-saw
existence that included a
short stint as a pro
football player with the
Cleveland Browns, plus
15 years of professional
football in Canada. At
one time he was part ot a
“traveling panel” of
Page 3
prominent Black athletes
sponsored by a large cor
poration, that talked with
students and youth
groups.
Several years ago
Milton chose to do
something on his own.
With his focus on the
troubled youth of
Newark, N.J., he aquired
a huge three-story vacant
building. While much of
the focus was on
athletics, boxing, karate,
track and field, he put
together a general youth
program of special in
terest groups.
But the need of heavy
funding which he could
not aquire brought about
the demise of the Milt
Campbell Youth Center,
but the facility with im
provements has lived on.
It is now the Parent Child
Center, Inc. handling
several hundred children
daily along with
organized parent, par
ticipation.
Likewise, Rafer John
son has not hit the “jack
pot” but he has not been
by-passed. He has had
several lucrative movie
appearences in his post-
Olympic career.
Quite a few Black
Olympians in all
categories were obliged to
accept the rash of offers
from national liquor and
beer corporaions as either
“community relations”
or “special market”
representatives. They
came as fast as new names
emerged from the spor
ting ranks and new
generations sprouted with
new herores and dead
memories.
A sparse few hung on
and became proficient in
what they were doing.
One of them is Herbert
Paul Douglas Jr., known
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Edwin Moses
to the track and field
crowd as Herb Douglas.
Douglas, who lives in
Philadelphia, has risen to
vice president of Schief
felin & Co. of New York
City, and has been af
filiated with the importer
of Scotch and fine wines
for more than 20 years.
He was one of the first
post-World War II
Olympic medal winners
when he won a bronze
medal in the long jump in
London in 1948. One of
his teammates was the
astounding Harrison
Dillard who won two
gold medals in 1948 and
two in 1952 and was the
one time holder of 11
American, Olympic and
world records.
Herb’s feats that ear
ned him an Olympic ber
th began in junior high
school in Pittsburgh,
earning letters in basket
ball, track and gym
nastics. In 1936, the year
Jesse Owens earned the
“fastest human” gold
medal in the 100 meters,
Douglas was Pittsburgh’s
75-yard dash champion.
He was inspired by
Owens who later met him
and in subsequent years
they became close frien
ds.
In recent years,
Douglas has been in
strumental in keeping
liason with former Black
Olympic stars, all of them
regardless of the years in
which they participated
maintain a high degree of
comraderie. In recent
months, Douglas has
organized the Inter
national Amateur
Athletic Association that
is designed to keep alive
the competitive spirit of
the late Jesse Owens. He,
too, managed to maintain
a successful career in the
private sector, which he
attributes to his success in
the Olympics.
Andrew W. Stanfield a
former gold medalist is
executive director of the
Union Township Com
munity - Action
Organization, headquar
tered at the Myra E.
Kearse Center, Vaux
Hall, N.J. To Olympic
followers, he is Andy
Stanfield.
He has a staff of nearly
60 persons, some located
in several other sites in
the huge township,
probably one of the
biggest such areas of its
type in New Jersey. It has
been 31 years since he
won his first Olympic
gold medals at Helsinki,
Finland, but around his
desk are the photographic
memories of an
illustrious track career
launched at nearby Seton
Hall University.
Despite his busy
programs that involves
hundreds of kids in head
start, elders in senior
citizen projects, plus
varied community projec
ts, he is making plans for
a mammoth New Jersey
marathon, “Run for the
Poor” scheduled May
1984, with a goal ex
ceeding a million dollars
Another gold medal
winner who has made it
in the business world is
Hayes Jones, hurdler,
who is currently manager
of Market Development
for Stroh Beer Company,
working out of Detroit,
Mich. Jones has been in
his new post for more
than a year, but prior to
that served with
American Airlines.
Jones was a third place
finisher (bronze medal) in
the Rome Olympics in
1960 when his parents
from Michigan cheered
him from the stands.
Four years later, Jones
won the gold in his
specialty—the 110-meter
hurdles —in Tokyo.
Edwin Moses, the 1976
400 meter hurdling
champion, is still com
peting and is expected to
be an important cog in
the 1984 United States
Olympic team. Moses
now has a degree in
physics and works as an
athletic consultant and
spokesman for a film
firm doing promotions
and publicity for the
Olympic Games.
George Rhoden, a gold
medal winner in the 400
meters in 1952, is still in
volved in the Masters
Track Program. He is a
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George Rhoden
podiatrist and resides in
Oakland, Calif. Rhoden,
a former Morgan State
College track star under
Coach Eddie Hurt in
Baltimore, MD, ran in
the Olympic broad jum
the Olympics for
Jamaica, his native
home.
Mai Andrews, a 1956
Olympic broad jumper, is
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Budweiser salutes Black *
History Month with this special
series commemorating the Great •
Kings and Queens of Africa. Moshoeshoe-
King of Basutoland
(1815-1868)
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A senes ot 18 paintings has been created by noted black artists especially for the brewers of Budweiser For a complete set of re P'
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Offer expires December 31. 1084 Void where prohibited
Budweiser »• King of Beers «• Anheuser-Busch. St Louis. Mo © 1984
now a teacher at Cal-
State at Hayward, Calif.,
and George Brown, a
1952 teammate of
Rhoden’s is living in
Sacremento.
Dave Albritten, who
has been a coach, a 16-
year legislator and a
business man in his home
town of Dayton, OH,
won a silver medal in the
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Rafer Johnson
high jump in the Berlin
Games in 1936. Albritten
and the late Conny John
son, then of Compton
College in Calif., dueled
inch by inch with John
son getting the edge.
Johnson, incidentally,
died in 1947.
Perhaps the biggest
winners in post-Olympic
careers are the athletes
who win gold medals in
boxing. At least two of
them have become
millionaires and scores of
others have gained
economic security
through turning their
boxing talent to the
professional field.
The two who gained
millionaire status in the
boxing ranks after Olym
pic triumphs are
Muhammad Ali (known
as Cassius Clay when he
won the Olympic gold
medal in Rome in 1960)
The first woman to see her son inaugurated for a second
term as President of the United States was Sara Delano
Roosevelt, mother of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
and Sugar Ray Leonard,
then of Palmer, MD.,
who won a gold medal in
the boxing ring at Mon
treal in 1976. Both are on
the sidelines as far as
their fighting careers are
now, but there is little
doubt that Olympic
boxing provided their
pathways to pro boxing’s
highest spot and
economic security.
Ali, who has a street
named for him in his
native Louisville, KY.,
began his pro boxing
career shortly after win
ning the title at Rome. Ali
is a two-time winner of
see Fighters, page 6
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