Wednesday, May 29, 2024

V 14 N. 29 Chasing The Ghosts of Summer 1953

May 28, 2024

Welcome Stadium 2024

Last week I attended a high school meet at Welcome Stadium in my hometown of Dayton, Ohio. It was on the track where I cut my teeth in the sport. As I watched the young high school athletes of today racing around the stadium, jumping into the pits, and throwing the implements I was reminded of times past.

Welcome Stadium was built in 1949 with donations from the citizens of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio. I remember my Dad telling me he had contributed $50, most of a week's pay at the NCR factory, to that project hoping in the future he might see his only kid play football or run track on the site. He and many other parents had their wishes fulfilled over the next 75 years.

Welcome Stadium, named after Perc Welcome, a beloved coach and administrator in Dayton Public Schools, recently underwent some renovations with a new track surface and other improvements. The stadium can hold 11,000 people. But the overall appearance and shape of things has not changed very much. The pole vault and long jump areas have been moved to the infield from outside the two straightaways. The old vault pit was very close to the first row of the spectators' seats and the occasional vaulter ended up in the front row with the fans. The discus was and still is outside the stadium.

Chasing the Ghosts of Summer 1953

When I watched today's high school athletes competing, I was reminded as well that twice in 1953 and 1959 the local sports people in the town were able to entice the officialdom of the Amateur Athletic Union to hold their national championship at the relatively new stadium. It was the first major league sports event in the history of the city. Ticket prices were $2.00 for a reserved seat and $1.25 for general admission. It might be argued that the barnstorming baseball team of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth putting on an exhibition might have surpassed the national track meet. Even the first National Football League game was held in Dayton between the Dayton Triangles and the Columbus Panhandles on October 3, 1920 with the Triangles winning 14-0, but that tradition faded quickly and is all but forgotten. Dayton has persevered in the track world and produced some world class athletes, the best of which include LaVonna Martin who won an Olympic silver medal in the 100 meter hurdles and of course Edwin Moses with multiple golds and world records in the 400 meter hurdles. Both ran at Welcome Stadium in their formative years.

Dayton also hosted the national women's track and field championships on June 5 and 6, 1969. Our former colleague on this blog, Steve Price, was instrumental in organising that event.

I was able to peruse newspapers.com and find the coverage of the 1953 National AAU meet in our local papers, the Dayton Daily News and the Dayton Journal Herald. Si Burick a beloved Dayton sports editor and Ritter Collett both had articles about the 1953 meet in their columns. I'm including three of Burick's articles and some pictures from those wonderful days. Hopefully I'll be able to gather the stories from the 1957 and 1969 meets for you in the future.

So here are some of the photos and clippings produced by the Dayton newspapers for that 1953 event. A world record in the high jump was set by Walter 'Buddy' Davis at just over 6' 11". Walter, an All American in basketball at Texas A&M would go on to play in the NBA in the 1950's. In Si's article it's noted that Buddy had survived a bout with polio and also that he had to get back to his job in Houston to support his family with three children. No European tour for him. Other greats who appeared in Dayton that year were Horace Ashenfelter, Andy Stanfield, Parry O'Brien, Wes Santee, Don Laz, Sim Iness, Jim Fuchs, Mal Whitfield, J.W. Mashburn, and Jack Davis. The kids who run tomorrow in the Ohio State High School Meet to be held in Dayton this year have probably never heard of these great men, but hopefully we will continue to remember and honor them.

Here is Si Burick's pre-meet column promoting the 1953 AAU Meet.

Photos from the Dayton Daily News photographer not named

Wes Santee about to pull away from field

He ran 4:07.5 Pre meet publicity suggested the

first sub 4:00 was possible, but the world wasn't

quite ready.

Wes Santee pre-meet publicity photo in Dayton paper

Some columns by Si Burick about the meet. Apologies but to get the print large enough we had to expand text and you will have to extrapolate a word or two at the end of each line.

David Albritton a member of the 1936 Olympic team and silver medallist in the high jump, lived and worked in Dayton for many years coaching at Dunbar High School and serving at a state representative in the Ohio Legislature.

First Day Results (Below)

Second Day Results (Below)

Individual Champions 1953 (Below)

Horace Ashenfelter and Warren Dreutzler on the water jump

Comments:

George, your blog here which covered that 1953 NAAU meet in Dayton brought back some memories of those speedsters who competed in that meet, and whom I would race against a few years later--Mike Larrabee, Charley Jenkins (a high school senior then), J. W. Mashburn, Mal Whitfield (national newscaster Frederica's dad--there's a good photo of that great 1948 and 1952 Olympic champion reporters had dubbed "Marvelous Mal" winning the 1953 race in this blog), Reggie Pearman, Ira Murchison, et al....

After clocking a photo-finish 46.8 440 with NAIA champion Bob McMurray of Morgan State in the NCAA in Texas the week before, I took the silver in the 440 at the 1957 NAAU meet in Dayton with a 46.5 clocking to Reggie Pearman's national record 46.4 on that dusty old dirt track when he caught me just before the tape--but our times got nullified when they discovered the lane-staggers had been mismeasured. -

Dr. John Telford

Great narrative that's a first class complex Mike Waters, Oregon

George:

Thanks for the memories. All of your articles brought back a lot. It was pure fun reading through the data. I still miss our dear friend, Steve Price. Joe Rogers

That’s the kind of history I really enjoy reading about. Nice work George. Darryl Taylor

George: Thanks so much for the info on Welcome Stadium. I spent many, many days there watching high school kids trying to recruit all of them to Miami University. I just remember how hot those darn aluminum seats would get as the sun pounded down on them all day long. Oh the good times. I hope you enjoy a great visit back to Dayton.

Rich

Dr. Richard J. Ceronie

Track & Field Historian/Statistician

Author: "Wolftracks: The History of UNM Lobo cc/track 1903-2023"

Department of Athletics

University of New Mexico

Albuquerque, NM 87131

Thursday, May 2, 2024

V 14 N. 28 Some Spirited Writing and Old Track Photos

I've recently discovered a writer James Runcie who has some serious gifts with the pen. His series on an Anglican priest named Sidney Chambers has been turned into a British TV detective series called "Grantchester". The book I'm currently reading is "The Great Passion" a novel about the German composer Johan Sebastian Bach and his composing of the St. Matthew Passion. "Why" you ask "does this have any place on a track and field blog?" My answer is that Runcie occasionally throws in sayings and metaphors that could only come from someone who has had some experience, no matter what the level, with the world of track and field or distance running. So as I promised earlier, I will continue to send some old photos your way and throw in some of James Runcie's quotes from "The Road to Grantcheser" (RTG) and "The Great Passion." (TGP). I've also thrown in quotes from a variety of other writers.

“to find stillness in the middle of movement.”― James Runcie, Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the

Night

Pat Daniels Winslow

Lucinda Williams

RTG P. 151 "It's meant to be. But you don't have to do everything all at once. People don't become marathon runners or surgeons or concert pianists overnight. You need training. And you can always apply and see how it goes. If it is not for you then you'll know soon enough. You can always go on and do something else, Olympic swimming, perhaps.....

Hans Harting and Wim Slijkhuis

“I don’t mean religious faith. I mean faith in our own abilities. We have to do the best we can with the talents we have, Geordie. The future is too unpredictable for anxiety.”
― James Runcie, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death

Wim Slijkhuis and hardware

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

— Tim Notke

Elias Gilbert

“The race was not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, he told himself. Time and chance happened to them all, and it was vital, above all, to hold a steady course.”

— James Runcie

Kathy and I watched the entire Grantchester series and loved it although we could never figure out why an Anglican vicar was always helping to solve murders. Most certainly James Runcie was a runner. His quotes are worthy of Grantchester.

I loved the picture of Elias Gilbert although I have seen pictures of him completely flattened out over the hurdles. Either this picture was early in his career or a split second before he collapsed atop the hurdles.

Just like almost every NFL player was at one time a T&F athlete, the same can be true for so many others not in athletics. Maybe it was just a grade school field day, but almost all of us gave this sport a try and found it more difficult than we anticipated. Bill Schnier

Coach Wehrner, the Ashenfelters and Curtis Stone

Some coaching advice?

TGP P. 131 'When we think of the behavior of other people,' he began, 'we have to remember that almost everyone is frightened of something. It might be a confrontation that we are worried about, a piece of work, a continuing illness or the death of a friend, but we should keep in mind that if nothing lasts in this world then the very thing that we dread the most cannot last either. All things must pass. The moment we have feared approaches. It takes place. Then it becomes the past: and only a memory. So, rather than dreading the moment, perhaps we should look forward to the memory of it instead? We must learn to think beyond our fears. Perhaps you are too young to contemplate this, but one day; I promise, you will understand.'

Bruce Dern U. Penn

“All this front’s a bluster. I spend most of my life acting.’ ‘I think we all do that; we play different parts depending who we are with and the situation we are in.’ ‘But don’t you ever want life to just stop, Sidney?”
― James Runcie, Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins: Grantchester Mysteries 4

Barbara Brown

“I can’t allow myself to tire. I’ve already run off the cliff. I just have to keep remembering not to look down.”

— James Runcie

Iffley Road Plaque

“Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.”

— Anonymous

Don Bowden in high school

“I like it when no one knows what I’m going to do next. It makes everything more exciting.”

— James Runcie

“Autumn was his favourite time of year, not simply for its changing colours but for the crispness in the air and the sharpness of the light. As the leaves fell the landscape revealed itself, like a painting being cleaned or a building being renewed. He could see the underlying shape of things. This was what he wanted, he decided: moments of clarity and silence.”

— James Runcie

RTG P. 154 '.....But if it feels that you should be doing it, then you must carry on and see where it takes you. It's almost impossible to know what God has in store for us or who we are going to become. That's part of life's journey. If we knew all along, life would be so predictable that it wouldn't be worth living.'

RTG P. 15 "The Lieutenant Colonel argues that the infantry is ultimately about hand-to-hand combat. It's all about the battle for the 'next hundred yards'. In junior athletics, Kendall had run that distance in thirteen seconds. Now, he says it's going to take them a week to cover the same length of ground."

Texas Longhorn team with Coach Clyde Littlefield, Publicity photo before

Texas Relays

“There was no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes.”

— James Runcie

George,

I love reading these inspirational quotes and passages!!! Thank you for your continuous research and bringing them to light. Carol Inskeep

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

V 14 N. 27 Tribute to a Young Warrior by Dr. John Telford

I recently received a note from Dr. John Telford in Detroit, Michigan. Many of you will remember John as one of the nation's top 440 yard runners in the late 1950's. He competed for Wayne State University in his undergrad days. His letter contains a poem he wrote about Giovanni Scavo, an Italian runner of great promise, who died prematurely in a car crash in Italy. John had raced against Giovanni only a short time before the accident.

Giovanni Scavo John Telford

Downtown Monitor

GREATER DETROIT'S ORIGINAL FREE PAPER THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2024 —

WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2024

p. 4

In 1957, in summer-time Bologna,

/ Upon *REUNIONE INTERNAZIONALE,

/ I defeated Scavo in the QUATTROCIENTO METRI.

/ I was twenty-one; he'd just turned nineteen

/ ATLETICA LEGGERA'S *ENFANTE IL TERRIBLE!

/ Before the race the sold-out crowd

/ Had chanted "Scah-vo!" really loud.

/ Afterward we traded pins and promised that we'd write:

/From ITALIA by slow freighter

/Came this letter two months later—

/ "John and Gio run one-two in

/ Rome Olympics, 1960!"

/ Just before, I'd read he'd driven

/Fast and far in his Ferrari

/ Toward the reaches of the Marches,

/ From the famed Eternal City—

/ Crashing high up on a mountain

/ Near the heights of the Abruzzi

/ And there died in his Ferrari.

/ ITALIA mourned her ***CAMPEONE—

/ The champion runner, Giovanni.

Pronunciation - *RAY-YOU-nee-OH-nay EEN-tair-NATCH-ee-oh-NAH-lay

**AIN-FON-tay EEL-tair-EE-blay

***KOM-pay-OH-nay

John Telford, Giovanni Scavo, and Lang Stanley

In late June of 1988, long after that hard 400-meter race

(see above post-race photo of me, Scavo, and my U.S. teammate

Lang Stanley), I was vacationing in Cancun with my wife and

daughter, and we were seated at a dinner floor show with an

Italian gentleman and his wife and daughters. He had been

in the crowd in Bologna when I raced against Scavo, and he

had kept a scrapbook on him. When I showed him my identi-

fication, he insisted on paying for our drinks and our dinners.

Back in early August of 1957 when I had arrived home to De-

troit from that European track tour, I read in the newspaper

of Scavo's death; then in September, the mailman delivered

his late-coming letter to me: it was like getting a letter from

a ghost.

-Dr. John Telford is a former superintendent of the Detroit Public

Schools. Read his columns in the Detroit Native Sun, hear him on WCHB

AM1340 Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. and Mondays at 6:30 p.m., on WJZZ TV

Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m., and on DETipTV.com all week 24/7.

Contact him at DrJohnTelfordEdD or at 313-460-8272

In researching this post, I found the following article (translated from Italian) about another untimely death of an Italian runner Giorgio Lo Giudice. Giovanni Scavo is also mentioned, and it sometimes gets confusing who the writer is talking about. The translation is not into the most understandable English. I've edited it a bit to help. George

Giovanni Scavo, a memory lasting 60 years

05 April 2019

Brilliant middle distance talent, probable protagonist of the Rome '60 Games, died at the age of 23 in a car accident on 9 April 1959

by Giorgio Cimbrico

“We met by chance in Bari, for a Intermilitary meeting, and he asked me if I could give him a hand with the (pacing in the )1500: he needed it to prepare for the 800 for the Athlete's Easter. 'Of course I'll give you a hand', I replied: I led up to 1000 and he won in a time that I think was around 4 minutes. Three days later I read in the newspaper that he was dead": this is the story of Giorgio Lo Giudice, the same age as Giovanni Scavo , swept away at the age of 23, like his old Vespa, hit by a car near the Stadio delle Palme, in Palermo , sixty years ago.

“The heroes are all young and beautiful”, sang Francesco Guccini. And those who are taken by destiny after a few, very few years spent on this earth end up conquering a special aura, counterpointed by a forest of "ifs", of unanswered questions, to be placed in dimensions unattainable except with imagination or affection: would it have been Giovanni Scavo who deprived Mario Lanzi of a historic Italian 800 record? Could he have troubled Peter Snell and Roger Moens in the Olympic final in Rome, which took place a year and a half after his death? Questions that are repeated by those who have retained a memory of the young man who saw the light in Ascoli Piceno, but he of paternal Sicilian roots (his father was a colonel), which is close to a cult, like one of the clubs in Velletri - a Roman town where I had moved - who associated that surname with the company name and is about to remember the sixtieth anniversary of that broken life.

In all human and sporting events there is a day of days: for Scavo it was June 21, 1957, in the Parisian stadium named after a champion who fell in 1914, in the first autumn of the war: Jean Bouin, known as the little Hercules of Marseille. At the start Giovanni found the Hungarian Lajos Szentgali, European champion three years earlier at the Wankdorf in Bern, and above all the Belgian Roger Moens who in '55, in the Bislett of Oslo, a crossroads of historical limits, in 1:45.7 had put an end , after sixteen years, to the long reign of Rudolf Harbig. That 1:46.6 at the Milan Arena, shortly before the storm of the Second World War began (which would devour the magnificent Saxon) was a dive into the future, exactly like Jesse Owens' 8.13. Mario Lanzi, a solid "Ligurian" (as Gianni Brera liked to point out) born on the banks of Ticino, ran 1:49, finding himself among the best ever.

In Paris Moens closed just above 1:47 ahead of Szentgali, 1:48.9, and Scavo who in 1:49.2 came close to one of the noblest limits of Italian athletics. Almost four months later, in the closing meeting of the season at the Olimpico (13 October of the 5000m world record, set by Vladimir Kuts at 13:35.6), Gianni would provide solid confirmation: 1:49.3, behind the Greek Depastas .

Just like Harbig and Lanzi, Scavo possessed, in addition to elegance, a strong ability to carry speed. This is demonstrated by his personal best in the 400m, 47.2, which he achieved the following year, the season that saw him come close to an important podium: at the European Championships, held at the Olympic stadium in Stockholm, fourth in the 4x400m, a few tenths behind bronze medalist Sweden, in the company of Nereo Fossati, Mario Fraschini and Renzo Panciera.

Inserted on the list of probable Olympians, Giovanni had left Rome after Assicurazioni Generali had guaranteed him a job as an accountant in the Palermo office. That day he had gone to book a seat on the flight to Milan. For that Easter that he didn't run.

Bill Schnier "These stories remind me of Pre and Ivo Van Damme. If you have ever been in Italy you know that they drive like maniacs, always taking major chances. Thanks for remembering these people thereby enabling others to realize they actually existed and their lives were not lived in vain."

In re-reading Dr. Telford's work, I'm reminded of two sculptures. First The Dying Gaul a Greek work copied over by the Romans. The Dying Gaul, also called The Dying Galatian or The Dying Gladiator, is an ancient Roman marble semi-recumbent statue now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. It is a copy of a now lost Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic period thought to have been made in bronze. Wikipedia

And then The Dying Warrior

From the Glyptotek in Munich

V 14 N. 26 Kenyan Marathon Team Announced and Some Old Photos to Prod Your Memories

Kenya has announced it's two marathon teams for the Paris Olympics, three men and three women and two alternates.

Here they are

Kenya Women’s Olympic Marathon Team

Peres Jepchirchir (2:16:16, London 2024)
Brigid Kosgei (2:14:04, Chicago 2019)
Hellen Obiri (2:25:49, New York City 2022)
Alternate: Sharon Lokedi (2:23:23, New York City 2022)

Kenya Men’s Olympic Marathon Team

Eliud Kipchoge (2:01:09, Berlin 2022)
Benson Kipruto (2:02:16, Tokyo 2024)
Alexander Munyao (2:03:11, Valencia 2023)
Alternate: Timothy Kiplagat (2:02:55, Tokyo 2024)

Eliud Kipchoge will be going for his third gold in the marathon and could not easily be denied a place on the team even though some young upstarts have been running faster lately. They will just have to be patient. Kipchoge started as a 5,000 meter guy in what seems like many years ago and paid his dues to be on the throne where he now resides. He's also a credit to the sport, to life, and to helping the next generation move up the ladder. Unfortunately some youngster who merits on performance this year will have to wait. Such is life, such is sport. It would have been an interesting selection process to witness as a fly on the wall.

Some old photos that some of you may even remember, but most likely none of you really. Over the fourteen years I've been doing this blog, I've collected a lot of historic and not so historic pictures which I will be sharing in future blogs. Here is the start.