Johnson, Rafer 1934–

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Rafer Johnson 1934–

Athlete

Trained for Olympics

Classic Olympic Moment

“Their Own Dreams”

Second Generation of Olympians

Selected writings

Sources

When American athlete Rafer Johnson won the gold medal for the decathlon in the 1960 Olympics, he also earned the title of “world’s greatest athlete,” usually appended to the first-place finisher in this grueling track and field event. Johnson never competed again after his victory, but instead devoted his energies to a career in public service. In 2000 he was a spectator at the Sydney Olympic Games to watch his daughter compete—an honor he deemed more important to him than his gold- medal victory, he told Sports Illustrated writer Brian Cazeneuve. “My greatest joy is seeing how my children turned out,” declared Johnson.

The future Olympian was born in 1934 into a Texas family of cotton-field laborers, and spent his first few years in a house without electricity or running water. He was the oldest of five children in the family, which moved to Kingsburg, California, a small farming town in the San Joaquin Valley. Though the community was home to residents mainly of Swedish extraction, Johnson recalled that he enjoyed the advantages of living in a small town, and believed it inspired him later in life. “I knew every kid in school and they knew me,” Johnson told Los Angeles Times writer Eric Sondheimer. “You looked after your neighbor, after your friend. People helped me, people advised me, people corrected me. I always wanted to be this person willing to give something back.”

Trained for Olympics

At Kingsburg High School in the early 1950s, Johnson was encouraged by his track coach, Murl Dodson. One day, the student athlete complained to his mentor that he felt he was not fulfilling his potential, so Dodson took Johnson to watch another athlete prepare for a race. The track star was Bob Mathias, also from the San Joaquin Valley, who had won the 1948 Olympic decathlon and was at the time training for the 1952 Games.

It was a turning point for Johnson. “I decided I wanted to be the best in the world, too,” Betty Barnacle, a Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service reporter quoted him as saying. “It wasn’t ego. I just wanted to accomplish it and it was a giant step. It was one of the key things that happened to me. Once I told someone what I wanted to be, it freed me as an athlete.”

Johnson went on to attend the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was captain of both the track

At a Glance …

Born on August 18, 1935, in Hillsboro, TX; married Betsy Thorsen (a teacher), 1971; children: Jennifer Johnson-Jordan, Josh. Education: Graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Career: Olympic athlete. Affiliated with People to People International (an American goodwill agency); acted in films including Sergeant Rutledge, 1960; The Sins of Rachel Cade, 1961; Tarzan and the Great River, 1967; Free to Be … You & Me, 1974; License to Kill, 1989; also worked as a sports broadcaster, Peace Corps recruiter, and Democratic Party volunteer; published autobiography, The Best That I Can Be, 1998.

Memberships: Co-founder of California Special Olympics (governors’ board chair since 1992); member of California State Recreation Commission, Fair Housing Congress, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare’s Committee on Mental Retardation.

Awards: Gold medal, 1960 Summer Olympic Games (Rome, Italy), for the decathlon.

Addresses: Home —Sherman Oaks, CA. Office— Santa Barbara Speakers Bureau, P.O. Box 30768, Santa Barbara, CA 93130-0768.

and field teams, and president of the student body as well. He was also the first African American at the school to pledge a national fraternity. In 1956 his athletic talents qualified him for the decathlon event of the Summer Olympic Games, which were held in Melbourne, Australia that year. The decathlon was one of the Olympics’ most grueling tests: athletes took part in ten events over a two-day period that included a series of jumps and hurdles as well as the discus throw, shot put, javelin, and pole vault; they also ran a 400-meter race and the final 1500-meter. Johnson took second place and a silver medal.

Classic Olympic Moment

Johnson was such a standout athlete during his college career that Sports Illustrated named him “Sportsman of the Year” in 1958. Around this time Johnson began training alongside another standout UCLA track star, C. K. Yang, for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. At those Games, Johnson served as captain of the U.S. team, and carried the American flag in the opening ceremonies. His decathlon performance was a memorable one: in the final event, the 1500-meter race, Johnson crossed the finish line visibly exhausted, just steps ahead of Yang. Both men set world decathlon records in event, and Johnson decided to use the opportunity to exit gracefully—he never competed again.

Instead Johnson went to work for People to People International, an American goodwill agency, and acted in films. He was often cast as an African warrior in combat in Tarzan pictures of the 1960s, but also appeared in the 1979 mini-series Roots: The Next Generation. For a time, he worked as a sports broadcaster, and also devoted his energies to recruiting Peace Corps volunteers. Romantically he was linked to Gloria Steinern, a glamorous and well-known women’s rights activist at the time. Johnson also volunteered for Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy in 1968. When Kennedy won the California primary in June, he and his entourage were passing through the Ambassador Hotel. Shots were fired, and Kennedy fell. Johnson pushed Kennedy’s pregnant wife, Ethel, out of harm’s way, then lunged toward the gun—along with another unofficial bodyguard, gridiron star Rosey Grier—and disarmed the assailant, Sirhan Sirhan.

Johnson was devastated by the moment, but credited Kennedy’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, for helping him regain some perspective. Shriver and her husband—parents of television journalist Maria Shriver— had recently founded the Special Olympics, a competition for developmentally and physically disabled children and adults. Johnson became a founding board member of the California Special Olympics, and dedicated himself to helping the organization grow to a size of 25,000 participants in 68 programs across the state. Over the years, Johnson has also served on the California State Recreation Commission, a Fair Housing group, and a federal committee on mental retardation.

“Their Own Dreams”

Johnson married Betsy Thorsen in 1971, with whom he had two children. He kept his 1956 silver and 1960 gold medals in a bank vault, and on rare occasions took them out—for show and tell at children’s school, or at the school where his wife taught. He felt that to have them—or his other trophies and awards—on display at home might discourage his children from excelling themselves. “I wanted my kids to have their own dreams,” Johnson told Sports Illustrated’s Cazeneuve. “I’d already done so much.” The daughter and son knew little of their father’s fame until he drove them to the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Only then did Johnson reveal to the youngsters, then nine and 11, that he had been asked to light the torch, a great symbolic honor.

In the opening ceremonies, Johnson sprinted up the steep stairs, torch in hand, and lit the flame that marked the formal kick-off of the Games. The 49-year-old received rousing cheers. Recalling the moment, Johnson said that he felt less like himself than he did an “Olympian” instead, as he told Sports Illustrated writer Robert Sullivan. When he came out of the stadium tunnel of the Los Angeles Coliseum, he observed “something special going on. As I ran I could see tears in the eyes of some of the athletes. I felt a part of all those great Olympians on the field. I was tied to all those in the stands. I think the torch run may be the great legacy of these Olympic Games. I think it tied us together and made it all warm—a feeling of binding us all together,” he told Sullivan.

Still, the athlete recalled in another interview that it was a shaky moment. Johnson said that he “nearly fell off,” according to Independent Sunday journalist Ronald Atkin. “I would have done if they hadn’t put a fibreglass pole up there for me to hold on to. We had practised a few times but I had never seen the stadium all dressed up and full of people. It was an incredible sight.”

Second Generation of Olympians

In 1995 Johnson revisited the stadium in Rome where he won his gold medal when he took part in a documentary film on Olympic history. He and the silver medallist that day, Yang, have remained friends over the years, and Johnson is also close to his brother, Jimmy, who played for the San Francisco 49ers. Johnson’s children recalled that the 1984 torch-lighting honor ignited “Olympic fever” in both of them: both Jennifer and Josh attended their father’s alma mater, UCLA, where Josh excelled in javelin and almost qualified for the 2000 Olympic team. Jenny, wife of former UCLA gridiron star Kevin Jordan, became a standout professional beach volleyball, and competed in the 2000 Sydney Games. A proud father accompanied her to the Games. “I’ve never played volleyball, so I can’t tell her what to do, although she wouldn’t listen to me anyway,” Johnson said in an interview with Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service reporter Chris Tomasson. Johnson-Jordan noted that her father’s humble attitude had always been a positive influence in her life. “My dad never talked about what he had accomplished, and that took a lot of pressure off me,” she told Tomasson.

Johnson lives in Sherman Oaks, California, but returns to Kingsburg occasionally for events at Rafer Johnson Junior High School. He is the author of a 1998 memoir, The Best That I Can Be, in which he credited those who encouraged him or did not allow prejudice to stand in the way of helping him in his athletic career. He also, however, recalled certain hardships. His father was an alcoholic who sometimes came to his track events drunk. “I came to dread the weekends,” Johnson wrote in his autobiography. “It was as if there were two of him: The kind, hard-working family man who showed affection for his wife and children, and the hell-raising drunk who would stay out ’til all hours and come home with a chip on his shoulder, slamming doors and roaring at the top of his lungs, ready to pull my mother out of bed and beat her at the slightest provocation.”

The Best That I Can Be earned positive reviews. A Publishers Weekly review noted that while Johnson’s recounting of incidents of racism was “inevitable” in such a book, “his tone is candid, rarely displaying rancor when recalling even recent racism or when discussing the disapproval of his interracial marriage.” Booklist’s Wes Lukowsky noted that many contemporary biographies have an element of the scandalous that is publicized to boost sales, but Johnson’s story “will stand out as unique because it is the autobiography of an uncommonly decent, ethical, and likable man.”