Posted: November 9, 2004

Athletics: USATF Hall of Fame Class of 2004 Interviews

INDIANAPOLIS - USA Track & Field on Monday announced that Michael Conley, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Michael Johnson, Joan Benoit Samuelson, Jack Davis, Otis Davis, Gerry Lindgren, John Pennel, Dr. Evie Dennis and Stan Huntsman will be inducted in the National Track & Field Hall of Fame. Below are interviews with each inductee.

MODERN ATHLETES

Michael Conley

Q: What does your election to the Hall of Fame mean to you?

A: It feels great. It puts a cap on the end of my career. In any sport it's the final frontier you might say in your career. To know that I've got the respect of those on the committee and in our sport is a good feeling.

Q: How did you get started in track and field?

A: I was a basketball player that could jump, and since jumping is a part of track and field I just began jumping in high school.

Q: How challenging was it for you to become one of the world's best in both the long jump and triple jump?

A: It was difficult. I would always be better in one than the other in a given year, and that was difficult. One thing that helped me was that I jumped on two different legs. One of my goals was to be known as the greatest jumper of all time, and that includes long jump, triple jump and basketball, or whatever it is. Whether we're talking vertical jump off two feet, where I could go 40 inches, or whether we're talking long jumping, triple jumping or dunking a basketball from behind the free throw line, I wanted to be known as the greatest jumper. One advantage I have is that I'm a little faster than most jumpers, which allowed me to stay in the sport a little bit longer.

Q: What advice would you give youngsters looking to excel at track and field?

A: Stay with it. Persistence and hard work pays off, sometimes it doesn't happen when you want it to, but work hard and try to achieve your goals.

Q: What is your greatest accomplishment as an athlete?

A: I have two of them. Obviously, winning the Olympic gold medal is one, which was one of my goals in the sport. It was one of the reasons I competed in track and field, and it may be my greatest accomplishment. My most satisfying moment was at the national indoors (1987) when I broke the world record (17.76m/58-3.25). I had a mediocre year and the Russian (Oleg Protsenko) had jumped further than the American record and left the stadium, and I went from 55 feet to 58 feet in one jump. That was probably my most gratifying moment.

Q: What are you doing these days?

A: I'm fulfilling another one of my aspirations by staying involved in the sport and trying to make a difference. As the Executive Director of Athlete Programs I've got the platform to try to do that.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Q: What does it mean to you to be elected to the National Track & Field Hall of Fame?

A: I'm excited and overwhelmed. I had thought about it, but once the news came I was very, very pleased.

Q: What's it like for you to look back at your humble beginnings in East St. Louis and realize all the accomplishments you've had in your life?

A: To look back on it, it's remarkable in the sense that I didn't realize when I was younger that I was going to end up where I am now. What I mean by that is that I just wanted to make my parents proud and have fun out there, but not knowing eventually that I would win gold medals and that people all over the world would embrace me. Still today, people ask me for autographs, which is unreal because all this came from athletics for a little girl from East St. Louis.

Q: How did the heptathlon become your specialty?

A: I was very fortunate that as a youngster at meets we would all compete in individual events and then compete in multi-events. When you're young and you don't know any better, you do what your coaches tell you to do. After I started doing the multis, I started setting national records and junior records. They didn't mean a lot to me because I didn't like all the events. When I went to UCLA and started working with Bobby (coach and later husband Bobby Kersee) he felt that I had a lot of talent and he felt that one day I could be a world record holder.

Q: Could you tell us what Bobby has meant to your growth as an athlete?

A: Having someone like Bobby, for me, it has been a blessing because he has been a tremendous force in my life, both on and off the field. Because of that I realized what all he's given to the sport and not just to me but to women trying to be successful. Every athlete he works with, he impacts their lives in more ways than just trying to be a great athlete. He gives his heart and soul in wanting to see his athletes perform at the ultimate level and at times that was misconstrued by other people, who thought he was being mean and we all understood that this was his way of coaching. It was like having a guardian angel over you all the time. What you didn't see, he saw for you. It was remarkable, even today with our relationship

Q: When might someone approach or break your heptathlon world record (7,291 points)?

A: Years ago I used to think that someone would break it and people would ask me if it would bother me if it happened. At those times I've always said, 'no, it won't bother me.' But the more I think about it, yeah, it would bother me if somebody were to break it (laughter). I think in due time it will happen. The key will be the consistency in going over 7,000 (points) and learning what it takes to be a 7,000 heptathlete. That's what I had to do. I think it's going to take three or four ladies competing at that level to push someone to the record.

Q: Could you talk about your many activities that are keeping you busy these days?

A: These days I have the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation. We built the community center (Jackie Joyner-Kersee Boys and Girls Club in East St. Louis, Ill.), where we run 80 programs for kids 6-18. We also have a program for what we call our alumni kids who've graduated from high school and come back to be mentors to the kids. This year we started a senior health and wellness program. Everything that I'm doing now is geared around the Foundation, and I still do a lot of corporate speaking and I'm an advocate for asthma, so I'm working with a lot of health-related issues throughout the country as well as East St. Louis. I'm also involved with USA Track & Field, hoping to see that we are looked upon as not only a powerhouse on the field, but also leaders off the field. It's very important that people respect us. My involvement with the AAC (USATF's Athlete's Advisory Committee), through the support of Sandra Farmer-Patrick (AAC Chair) and Mike Conley (USATF Executive Director of Elite Athlete Services), really has been very insightful and challenging.

Joan Samuelson

Q: What were your thoughts when you learned about your election the Hall of Fame?

A: It never really crossed my mind that I'd be elected to the Hall of Fame. Running is just what I do every day and it's something I'm very passionate about. I'm not really training these days, but any time a race presents itself, whether it's local or not, I still enjoy taking the opportunity to participate.

Q: How did you first get interested in running the marathon?

A: It was just one thing leading to another. I started with three-mile runs and then challenged myself with six-mile runs and then I'd challenge myself with a loop around the town, which was ten miles. I worked up to 12 miles, and then a half-marathon that later became a full marathon. It was all a progression.

Q: Were there any athletes who inspired you to become a great athlete?

A: Most of my heroes were in the sport of ski racing, because that was my first love and my true passion. As the story goes, it was through a skiing accident that I started to run as a form of rehab. As far as runners are concerned, Francie Larrieu, Mary Decker Slaney and Grete Waitz were athletes I looked up to.

Q: You had a surgical procedure just prior to the marathon trials for the 1984 Olympic. How tough was it for you to qualify for the team following surgery?

A: In training for the trials I guess I trained a little too hard and developed knee problems. I couldn't believe that was actually happening so close to the trials. I'd had Achilles problems before, but never problems with my knees. When I knew I was in trouble I went out to get help in Oregon. As an athlete, I thought it was a structural problem and not an inflammation because as athletes we're so in tuned with our bodies, but at the same time I was in the hands of a world-renown physician (Dr. Stan James) that I had great respect for. After five days of treating it with anti-inflamatories, Stan realized that it wasn't addressing the problem and that's when he suggested the arthroscopic procedure.

Q: How much time did you have between the surgery and the trials?

A: I make it 17 days, but I think it was more like 15 or 16 days. It was a 17-mile run I had with Lisa Martin three or four days before the trials that gave me the confidence to go the trials. I hung in there because I really felt there wasn't anyone out there trying any harder than I was and I wasn't going to pass up the chance to run in the trials.

Q: What was it like entering the stadium knowing that you had won the first-ever women's Olympic marathon?

A: I didn't know I had it really until I crossed the finish line. I came into the Coliseum all by myself, but I felt really wobbly on my legs at that point because I couldn't believe it was the Olympic marathon. I remember what Bruce Jenner said in his last event in Montreal, 'feet don't fail me now.' That's sort of what I said to myself. I just have to stand up and I'm okay.

Q: Besides running when you can, what else are you doing these days?

A: I have no job description, but I have very few idle moments. I do a lot of volunteer work. I do a lot of board work and I work in the schools. I'm co-chairing the Governor's Council for Physical Fitness, Sport, Health and Wellness, which probably takes up most of my time. I'm also on the Board of Trustees at Bowdoin College, which is my alma mater, and I've founded the People's Beach to Beacon 10K road race, which keeps me busy. I'm also the honorary this and honorary that for numerous organizations.

VETERAN ATHLETES

Jack Davis

Q: How does it feel to be elected to the Hall of Fame?

A: I'm thrilled. I hadn't thought about it much, but I was very happy.

Q: The U.S. has produced so many of the world's best ever 110m hurdlers, what's it like to be a part of such a great tradition?

A: It's a real pleasure to be recognized with so many great athletes. Since I ran 50 years ago, it's a real pleasure. It's something to be very proud of.

Q: How did you get started hurdling?

A: It started when I was in high school. We had an excellent high school track coach and an excellent team. We were state champions and so was I, and than all of a sudden I realized that track and field was a way for me to get an education and I decided that was the way to go. It gave me the opportunity to attend the University of Southern California and compete in two Olympics, which gave an opportunity to meet an awful lot of nice people and to take part in a wonderful movement.

Q: What do you remember most about your trips to the Olympics?

A: You never forget them. In both of the Olympic Games that I was in, the most outstanding part of the games, of course, was the opening ceremonies. The American teams marched in then and didn't just walk in, and all the other teams did as well and it was a real thrill when you hit that stadium full of the world's people, and they cheer you no matter who you are and that's a real thrill.

Q: What was it like to get on the awards podium each time you competed at the Olympics?

A: Actually, I think that maybe those were the only two races I lost in about four years. It really does give you a thrill. You work so hard for so long for such a small window of opportunity that you've got to feel like you're very fortunate to have stayed healthy, that there wasn't something that might have happened to put you out, like false starting twice or that sort of thing.

Q: What was the difference between you and the other hurdlers of your era?

A: Winning. I always felt I could win. I won the national collegiate championships three times in a row, and then once I started going for the world records, that was my goal. When I came into the sport, 13.6 was the world record, and when I left it was 13.3, which by the way, isn't much slower than they run today and that was on cinders, which is a different track and a different ballgame.

Q: What did you do following your athletic career, and what are you doing these days?

A: I went in the Navy for almost three years because I was in the ROTC in college. Following that I worked at ABC Television as a sales rep for Channel 7 in Los Angeles before becoming a real estate developer in California in things like golf courses and tennis clubs. I later went into the ski resort business in Park City, Utah, and I've been up there about 35 years. My son runs the resort businesses up there and I developed a marina here in San Diego and a golf course, and I went into that sort of commercial development. The last 15 years I've had a couple open heart surgeries, so I play a little golf and do a little running.

Otis Davis

Q: Were you surprised when you got the call informing you of your election to the Hall of Fame?

A: I was very excited. Very elated, and couldn't believe it. I said, 'your kidding.' That's the first thing I said. After a while it sank in. I've been thinking about it for so long and hoping for it to happen and I'm thrilled about it. Hopefully it will give me more opportunity to do things I'm trying to do with young people. I work with kids a lot and they need Olympians they can look up to, especially the father-figure type, and I'm trying to do that and this will help me to reach more of them. I'm president of the Tri-States Olympians of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, so it's not just kids I try to help, I try to lead Olympians and have the term Olympians mean something more to the public.

Q: What else do you do in working with children?

A: I've been a part of an after-school program until recently that is really innovative with games that I thought up that are a takeoff from some other original games that kids seem to like a lot. I take the ones that are not on varsity teams. I want the ones who are more physically challenged. Some are overweight, some are a little too small and I've had a lot of success with that. Some of those kids are on varsity teams now, and the program causes these kids to keep their grades up in order to participate. I'm excited about that and hopefully we can get that going again.

Q: Of all your athletic accomplishments, which one stands out the most?

A: Actually, the gold medals. Being a basketball player, I never imagined that I would get the calling to get involved in a sport that is so challenging. I learned that there is much more to being successful in this sport than just running.

Q: You're being inducted with another good 400-meter runner named Michael Johnson. What are your thoughts about that?

A: I didn't know that (laughter). That really makes me feel good. I've got a lot to tell that young man (laughter).

Q: How did you get involved with track and field?

A: I grew up playing basketball in a segregated school in Alabama and we didn't have a track team, so I had to pick that up later. I went on natural ability and didn't add fundamentals until I got to the University of Oregon. I knew I couldn't play both sports and still graduate, so I wanted to put my priorities in order and I wanted to make the right choice. Evidently I made the right choice.

Q: In addition to your work with children, what else are you doing these days?

A: Basically I do a little speaking, but I like to go out to these different schools. I'm trying to get the Olympic Committee to endorse this program, where I go and say a few words to the kids and show them some skills and then watch their progress from one year to the next, which would be great. I'm also a truant officer. I chase the kids and the dogs chase me in the neighborhood!

Gerry Lindgren

Q: What was it like for you when you were informed of your election the Hall of Fame?

A: I'm kind of a weird guy, I guess. My goal was never to win races, be a champion or be inducted into a hall of fame. It wasn't something that I strived to achieve. I only wanted to make running better. I was happy because it will help me to get my message to other people about running.

Q: How did your running career begin?

A: I started out as the slowest guy on my high school cross country team. I was the smallest, wimpiest guy. I always ran dead last and I kinda wanted to quit, and I probably would have, but my coach took me aside one day and told me that I could inspire greatness in other people. So I stayed on the team and did what I could to get the other people to run hard. I was kind of on a mission to get people to run more because they could see what I could do and that they could do better.

Q: Did you have any idea at that time that you would become an Olympian?

A: Never. Even in 1964 as a high school kid when I made the Olympic team it never sank in because the Olympics weren't such a big thing. The Russian meet was probably bigger than the Olympics when I was starting out, and even that didn't even sink in. I guess I was too naïve to understand what was going on around me at that time. I was too caught up on what I could do to help track and not enough on winning meets and things like that. So I never had the inkling that I could do better.

Q: You won 11 of the 12 NCAA Championship events you entered. How did you do that?

A: (laughter). I think I had people who were afraid of me because I had been in the Olympics and I had done so many things. I think a lot of times a guy would be in the lead and I would be in trouble, but something would always happen and I would come out with the victory.

Q: In 1964 you became the first American ever to win a distance race in a U.S. vs. Soviet Union dual meet. What was that I like?

A: It was like a dream come true for me. It was like the most amazing thing I could ever hope for. It really changed my life. It helped me to have a small hand in the distance running revolution that followed. Because of what I did in that Russian meet people could say that if this guy could do it, I can do it too.

Q: What are you doing these days?

A: I'm a property manager for one of the shopping centers in Honolulu now. I have a running group that I run with every night. I'm struggling now to break 19 minutes for a 5K (laughter). I keep saying I gotta be better than that (laughter). I still love it.

Carolyn Pennel (wife of 25 years to John Pennel, who died Sept. 26, 1993)

Q: Were you surprised when you learned about John's election to the Hall of Fame?

A: I was honored for my husband and honored as John Pennel's wife. It was very touching for me. I immediately called my son and we were both in tears. We are so excited. It's an honor to get something like this after him being gone so long. It touched both of us and we want to thank everybody. I want my son Shawn to accept anything with me because those who knew my husband are going to be so freaked out when they see my son because he looks identical to John. He is his clone. It's going to be weird for people to see this, but it's going to be very wonderful. Shawn used to pole vault at UCLA. He vaulted 15 feet at 15 years old, but the pressure became too great because everyone was coming up to him and saying 'oh Shawn, you're going to be just like your dad and go to the Olympics' (laughter). Although the expectations became a little high for him, he gave it a shot.

Q: For those of us who never knew John, what can you tell us about him?

A: He was the most incredible husband and most unbelievable father. He was a wonderful human being, very loving and very caring. He always smiled at everybody, and when someone asked him for an autograph he was always happy to. He was a delightful man. He donated a lot of his time to the schools and the community and couldn't do enough for people. My children (Shawn, Kevin, Kim, Shannon, Erin) have had the best upbringing from having a wonderful father. We were all very, very close.

Q: What qualities contributed most to making John such a great athlete?

A: He was a determined person. Whenever set his mind to do something he would do it. He was somewhat of a perfectionist. Whatever he set out to do he would accomplish in the highest respect.

COACH

Stan Huntsman

Q: How did you feel when you learned about your election to the Hall of Fame?

A: It's an amazing feeling. You just feel really good all over. To consider the people I'm going to be inducted in with and those that have been inducted in previously, it's a real honor to be included with those folks.

Q: How did you get started in track and field?

A: It seems that I've always been involved in track and field. My dad was a coach at Wabash College (Crawfordsville, Ind.) and Earlham College (Richmond, Ind.) and I ran for him. My mother was a teacher and a physical education teacher, so it was a natural thing for me to go into coaching.

Q: You had so many great accomplishments as a coach, which ones are you proudest of?

A: That would be difficult. I guess winning the first NCAA Championship title at Tennessee and Elmore Banton winning the NCAA Cross Country championship to become the first NCAA champion that I coached. Those two are probably the two tops.

Q: What was it like to be the men's head coach for Team USA at the 1988 Olympic Games?

A: The feeling you get out of that is hard to explain because most people think that coaches don't have a big job, but you get a strong feeling of accomplishment when you handle a team like that and work with a group of athletes like that. You take care of all the logistics and talk to each one of those athletes and it's a big thrill.

Q: What are some of the special qualities that you have that made you so successful?

A: I don't know. I think the biggest thing is getting up at 5:45 a.m. most days and working seven days a week. I didn't leave many stones unturned. I worked all angles of coaching and was completely dedicated to the profession.

Q: What have you been doing since your retirement from the University of Texas in 1995?

A: After that I coached a few post-graduate athletes and my wife has an antique business and I've been active with that. I read a lot, and I've traveled an awful lot and been all over the world and we built a cabin and I did a lot of manual labor on that. So I've been busy.

CONTRIBUTOR

Dr. Evie Dennis

Q: What does it mean to you to be elected to the Hall of Fame?

A: I think it is an honor. I wondered how long it would take because I had received many other awards and spent my time with track and field most of the time since the 1960s, and it's an award that I really wanted and thought it would never come, but I put it right beside the Olympic Order that I received in 1992 as recognition of the hard work that I had done over the years.

Q: How did you get involved in track and field?

A: I got involved because my daughter, who was in elementary school, said that she wanted to run track with this girl's team and I in essence said 'go away, I don't know what you're talking about.' Being the persistent child that she was she insisted and I told her to have that coach call me. From that day I got involved when he came to visit with me and we formed a little track club and the rest is history.

Q: How did that lead to you getting involved with the AAU and the administration of the sport?

A: By virtue of my involvement with her little club, we joined the Rocky Mountain AAU, and I became very active there serving in many capacities such as chairman of women's track & field and vice-president of the Rocky Mountain Association and chair or Region 10 that took in three states, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. I finally decided that I should go to AAU conventions to get a handle on the rules and things myself instead of people coming back to tell me. At those conventions I discovered that the organization was run by six men, not representative of the kids I was representing, and I thought they needed some help to understand that we were in a multi-cultural, multi-racial business, so I ran for vice-president and won for the first time they had a woman or a minority since their existence in 1896.

Q: You were instrumental in convening the first ever convention of The Athletics Congress (now USA Track & Field) in 1980. How challenging was that?

A: That was a challenge. When the 1978 act (1978 Amateur Sports Act) was past and we had to divest ourselves of the AAU, Dr. LeRoy Walker was the chair and I was the vice-chair assigned to do this. Dr. Walker got unhappy with the organization's decision to award the Olympic Trials to Eugene (Ore.) instead of Durham (N.C.). He announced that he was leaving the organization and it became my lot to do this. It was an interesting challenge and we had some good people along with me that were able to help us get going, so we convened the first constitutional convention to get it off the ground and running.

Q: Even though Dr. Walker was upset, didn't he later became the organization's president?

A: (Laughter). He got over it. I often tease him about leaving this awesome task to me and he says 'I knew you could handle it.' That's typical of Dr. Walker.

Q: You were the Chef de Mission for the entire 1988 U.S. Olympic Team in Seoul. What was that experience like?

A: It was a tremendous honor. Serving in that capacity I had a difficult assignment, with the whole North Korea and South Korea political situation, and having been again the first woman to hold this position was not easy. Some of the things I had to contend with were difficult. For example, the International Olympic Committee had indicated that they would only allow representatives from each country march in the opening ceremony and not the full teams. I went out on a limb and said that if my whole team couldn't march in the opening ceremonies, nobody could. Thankfully, they relented. It was things like that which were difficult, but we got through it.

Q: What do you do with your time these days?

A: Once you retire, people think that you have nothing but time. I'm learning, even in my old age, to say no to some situations. I'm still involved with the Olympic Committee. I was over in Athens helping with team processing. I went home and came back to Washington, D.C., to help process the Paralympic team. I do some things around Denver. I am heading up the capital campaign for my church, which is the St. Thomas Episcopal Church. I manage to keep busier than I really want to be.

For more information on the National Track & Field Hall of Fame, visit www.usatf.org.