By JoEllen Collins
I am sometimes tempted to honor in my column the lives of personal and public people I admire. Usually, I resist the impulse. I think my last paean was for Theodosia Wilkinson, my tiny dynamic high school English teacher.
I have had to say farewell to more of my contemporaries than I ever expected to mourn. They, not celebrities, have deserved my praise. However, this week I am compelled to share my feelings about a well-known and truly wonderful human being who recently passed away, Rafer Johnson.
After two years at the wonderful small liberal arts Occidental College, I attended UCLA, a very large and heterogeneous university, when Rafer was a star athlete and also Student Body President. He mastered his role as a leader in spite of some negative mail and reactions he received as the first black man to have that responsibility. One unfortunate white girl was even depledged from her sorority after having coffee with him. He always handled himself with dignity. Most students and faculty respected him and were proud that he chose that institution. It was another time, certainly, but I fear, as anyone of any age can surmise, that we have not overcome the racial tensions that he experienced, and I witnessed so long ago.
Rafer learned how to carry the weight of his being the first of many in pursuits in all of his life, most of them positive, some not. From a family who picked cotton, Rafer even experienced being in the first black family of the California town they moved to when he was only nine. I had the good fortune to meet with Rafer when he was chosen to be one of 14 students to go on UCLA’s Project India team of the summer of 1958, a predecessor of the Peace Corps. He would have been one of my seven members of the split team. After many months of training for our multi religious, ethnic and academic interest group (I was the representative WASP), Rafer was invited to participate in the US-USSR track meet. So, instead of India, he went to Russia and won the decathlon and the title of being perhaps the finest athlete in the world. As a rabid track and field fan (my high school boyfriend was a sprinter and Occidental had a top track team), I was overjoyed. In 1960 he won the gold medal in the decathlon at the Rome Olympics and was the honored athlete to light the torch at the L.A. Olympics in 1984.
Most people remember Rafer as the quintessentially good sport, but there was much more to admire of his generous life. In 1968 he grabbed away the gun that killed Robert Kennedy and then co-founded the California Special Olympics in 1969, the beginning of programs for athletes who had special needs. I found him articulate, gentlemanly, open and kind, my definition of a truly good man. During the current specter of bad sportsmanship, I am fortunate to cherish the memory of someone we all could emulate.