Scanning my hometown newspaper The Dayton Daily News yesterday I saw a story about Edwin Moses, Dayton's third most famous, home towner after Orville and Wilbur Wright. And most track nuts will give me a hard time about that statement. A documentary on his life debuted last night at Moses' alma mater Morehouse College. The title is "Moses - Thirteen Steps" signifying his taking the 400 meter hurdles to a new level by reducing the number of steps between hurdles from fourteen to thirteen. As you probably already know, Edwin Moses was not sought after by college coaches as an athlete. His accomplishments were modest at Fairview High School. But his academics were not modest, they were outstanding. Tom Archdeacon, a long time sports writer with The 'News covered the story in his usual manner, very well. Tom tells the story much better than me, so.... Here is the link:
Moses - Thirteen Steps
Thirteen Steps Trailer
In the the article there is a picture of Edwin Moses sitting in a car with another person in a parade. I believe that person is the actor Rob Lowe, another Dayton native.
I watched Edwin Moses and a teammate clean up on our T-M (Trotwood-Madison HS) hurdlers at a meet at Trotwood in 1973. He had ability but was uncoordinated. He never qualified for the state meet in Ohio. The next I heard of him was after spring break in 1976 when Fairview distance runner, Harvey Woodard, said he was tearing up the track at Morehouse College in Atlanta, running 13 steps between hurdles. I saw him run at the Dogwood Relays in Knoxville that April and carefully counted his steps, and they were indeed 13. This remarkable transformation catapulted him to an NCAA championship in Philadelphia in June and the Olympic gold in Montreal in July of 1976, following his freshman year in college.
What he said about the West Dayton of the 1960s was true. It seemed as if all the kids were dressed up on Sundays after church in the morning and before more church in the evening. Both Dunbar and Roosevelt had Ph.Ds on their faculties. Many were disadvantaged but many were not including the Moses family. A feeling of despair and eventually hate surfaced under the veneer of happiness as blacks tried to emerge and whites tried to keep them down. The result was a devastation of both cultures. Today both the black West Dayton and the white East Dayton are now a shell of their former selves, both a victim of racism but Edwin Moses and many like him continue to stand tall. Bill Schnier U. of Cincinnati
Bill,
I can't remember that he ever came back to Dayton to run after he won the O's. You might have thought that the track folks of the time would have set up some kind of meet and draw a few names in to run against him. But I don't think that ever happened. They were capable as they had hosted the 1953 and 1957 national AAU meet there. George
I don't think he ever came back to run in Dayton because he was always elsewhere and there were no meets in Welcome Stadium to challenge him. He has been back from time to time but always for visiting family and friends or the usual activities related to one's hometown. However, last year they renamed the Dayton Relays the Edwin C. Moses Relays and he was back for that, talking with the athletes and giving out awards. The article you sent talked about a sold-out Dayton Relays when he ran (a bit of an exaggeration) but the one he attended last year was just one more track meet with him present. The winners of the hurdles were short and looked slow, a far cry from the heyday of Dayton high school T&F.
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