dual personalities

So have you been watching the Tokyo Olympics? Me neither. I have just lost all interest since everyone went professional. But I did enjoy being reminded of Billy Mills, the only American to win the Gold Medal for the Men’s 10,000 meters long-distance running event at the Summer Olympic Games. A Native American from the University of Kansas who was a three-time NCAA All-America cross-country runner but not expected to distinguish himself at the Olympics, he surprised everyone when he won Gold in 1964 in Tokyo. It is exciting to watch him come from behind and blast over the finish line.

That is what the Olympics are all about to me. Amateurs who push themselves to do more than they think they can do and are proud to represent their country.

I had forgotten that they made a movie about Billy Mills called Running Brave (1984) which starred Robbie Benson. I have never seen it, but I may have to check it out if I can find it.

Jim Thorpe–All-American (1951), starring Burt Lancaster and directed by Michael Curtiz, tells the story of another great Native American athlete who won medals at the 1912 Olympics and distinguished himself in various sports, both in college and on professional teams. But the injustice of taking his medals away upset me a lot as a child when I first saw this movie and it still rankles, especially considering how everyone gets paid for everything now. (His Olympic honors were reinstated in 1983, thirty-two years after this film was released and thirty years after Thorpe’s death.)

Well, a toast to Billy Mills and to Jim Thorpe. And while we’re at it, I’m going to toast Buffalo Bill Cody, who was no Olympian, but could have been. When a scout for the U.S. Army, he performed an exceptional feat of riding as a lone dispatch courier from Fort Larned to Fort Zarah (escaping brief capture), Fort Zarah to Fort Hays, Fort Hays to Fort Dodge, Fort Dodge to Fort Larned, and, finally, Fort Larned to Fort Hays, a total of 350 miles in 58 hours through hostile territory, covering the last 35 miles on foot. Cody was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1872 for documented gallantry above and beyond the call of duty as an Army scout in the Indian Wars. It was revoked in 1917, along with medals of 910 other recipients dating back to the Revolutionary War, when Congress decided to create a hierarchy of medals. Good grief. His medal was reinstated in 1988.

Frankly, you can have your medals. This is how my mind works.

*Maxine Kumin, “Morning Swim”