by Terry Frei
Once aboard, Glenn let Walter Wood check the sheet with their room assignment and the map and lead the way. Comparing notes among the decathlon men and the discus throwers, they discovered that their three rooms were together. Discus throwers Ken Carpenter and Gordon Dunn were in one room, Glenn and Wood in the middle, and decathletes Jack Parker and Bob Clark in the third. So the six of them set off together.
After a few minutes and a lot of steps and turns, Dunn, the Stanford graduate, wondered, “Hey, guys, you think it’s a good idea to let a Cornell guy read a map?”
“Should be just around the corner, then at the end of the hall,” Wood insisted.
Jesse Owens was in a doorway, wearing a smart dark blue pinstriped suit. He grinned. “Welcome to third class, boys, where you’re colored, too! Know your place!”
Glenn stopped. Smiling and pointing, he said, “Nice suit, Jesse. You’re putting the rest of us to shame.”
Owens responded, “The fifth time you see me wearing this, you’ll figure out . . . it’s the only one I’ve got!”
Glenn laughed. “I got my first for my high school graduation,” he said. “I got my second for my college graduation. Don’t know when I’m going to be able to afford a third one, either.”
Owens said, “Brundage already asked me where I got this. Pretended he just thought it was nice and wanted to know where it came from. But I know the way he thinks. Dress too nice and he just assumes we’re taking money under the table.”
“He was laying that on thick in Milwaukee,” Glenn said. “We must be ‘pure’ amateurs and ‘sportsmen,’ untainted by professionalism.”
“I hope to be ‘tainted’ pretty damn soon,” Jesse said. “As tainted as I can get. I have a wife and a kid to support.”
As they turned the corner, Ken Carpenter said to Glenn, “He’s going to win three gold medals . . . right?”
“Four, if they put him on the relay.”
“Sounds like he thinks he’d be set for life.”
“Anything wrong with that?” Glenn asked.
“Hell, no,” Carpenter said. “But I wonder if he’d have offers coming at him like he thinks they will. You know . . . this still is America. For better or worse.”
Glenn wondered, too. This trip and the Olympic experience, in fact, would be his first extended interaction with Negroes. There hadn’t been any in Simla, and while there were rumors of a few attending college in Fort Collins, he had never seen any, and his teammates in every sport had been white boys. It had taken track and field to introduce him to Negroes, and he surprised himself with his acceptance of the sport’s integration. He was used to the questions from friends about competing with, or against, “monkeys,” “gorillas,” and “niggers,” and even the impertinence of whether he had to shower with the “bucks.” But judging from what he had seen and felt in New York, he was convinced being on an integrated team wouldn’t be a monumental issue.
Their cramped room reminded Wood and Glenn of a residence hall room for a couple of college freshmen, with small beds, two little writing tables that doubled as nightstands next to them and a shared closet. A box was on each bed, one with Morris’s name, the other Wood’s. On top of each box was a little white booklet. On the cover, “american olympic team” was above the U.S. Olympic shield and the notation, “s.s. manhattan, july 15, 1936.”
They both opened their booklets.
welcome olympians
We are proud and happy to have you aboard this ship and we extend a hearty welcome to every member of the 1936 American Olympic teams, to their officials and to their friends. We feel honored in being the link that bears you on your journey across the Atlantic. We will make every effort while you are aboard to help keep you fit and happy and ready for this greatest of sports events.
The captain, the officers and the crew of the Manhattan, as well as the staff ashore, extend you welcome and wish you Godspeed, joy and victory.
united states lines
Inside, pages listed the crew, headed by Commander Harry Manning, and the members of the Olympic traveling party, in alphabetical order, and not differentiating between athletes and Badgers.
Suddenly, Glenn realized what must be in the box.
“Our uniforms!” he exclaimed, ripping open the flaps and first pulling out a white double-breasted serge coat, with a red-white-and-blue shield on the left chest pocket. Another jacket was blue. The two pairs of slacks in the box were white and patterned gray. Wood watched, making no move to his own box. “Think it’s all going to fit?” he asked, the doubt evident in his voice.
“Why wouldn’t it?” Glenn responded. “They measured us five times!”
“Exactly. The more the Badgers do, the more they have a chance to get wrong!”
Glenn pulled on the coat. It was a little snug.
“See!” Wood chortled.
“Aw, it’ll work,” said Glenn, leaving the coat on and digging into the box, while Wood took a look at his own.
Their official team outfits, for the opening ceremonies and other appearances, also included white shirts and red-white-and-blue ties. They each had two long-sleeved sweaters—one white, one red—with USA across the chests, and a white sleeveless sweater with the USA Olympic emblem on the chest. Their two pairs of warm-up suits consisted of sweatshirts and sweatpants with innovative zippers down the outside of the ankles. When they came to the white satin uniforms they would wear in competition, the sensation was as if they were walking on the track in Berlin. The trunks had skinny red, white, and blue stripes running down the side; a tri-color sash ran across the front of the sleeveless shirt.
Bob Clark and Jack Parker were in the doorway.
“Hey, let’s go back up to the deck,” Clark said. “We’re about to shove off!”
Dunn and Carpenter joined them, too. As the six athletes squeezed into spots at the rail, the captains on the tugging steamboats sounded their whistles and a band on the docks played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The SS Manhattan moved out into the waters of the Hudson River. The men, women, and children on the dock—and the flags many of them waved—got smaller. Then so did the buildings on the Manhattan skyline.
Walter Wood and Glenn lingered at the rail the longest. The Coloradoan was thinking about what might happen before he saw America again when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Paul Gallico.
“Glenn, have a few minutes?”
“For . . . ?”
Gallico laughed. “Poker?” When Glenn didn’t get the joke, Gallico added, “Our interview. We do it now, that’s one less thing you have to worry about.”
“I guess that’s all right,” Glenn said.
Gallico gestured toward a couple of nearby deck chairs. They sat down and Gallico put his pipe down on a little table. He opened his notebook, put it on his thigh and said, “Let’s start with this: Everything I’ve seen says you’re from Colorado, but the roster says you were born in St. Louis.”
“My dad was in the feed business in St. Louis,” Glenn said. “He wanted to be a farmer. We moved to Simla when I was three.”
Gallico scribbled a couple of words, no more, and then asked, “Why Simla?”
“It was a maintenance stop on the railroad. Dad knew some guys who had worked there. They told Dad there were a lot of farms available to work.”
“What’d you raise?”
Glenn laughed. “I didn’t raise anything,” he said. “My parents and my brother—Jack, two years older than me—raised pinto beans. Our place was about three miles outside of town. I had my chores, I worked, but I killed more beans than I helped grow. I got carried away with the plow sometimes, let’s just say.”
Glenn explained that he and Jack had four sisters—Wilma, Theda, Virginia, and Betty, plus a younger brother, Wayne—so the house was crowded and bedrooms shared.
“I went to a country school—one room, all grades—out by our place for a year, maybe two, and then when that closed, went in town for school. But we did move to a little town called Quap
aw in Oklahoma when I was in sixth grade. Dad managed a grocery store. I liked it there. It was just big enough to have a theater, and we saw a lot of cowboy movies. Not sure I know the whole story, but we went back to the farm and Simla after a year.”
Gallico laughed. “Back to the snow? That okay with you?”
“It was back to my friends, so, yeah, I was fine with that. And the snow was bad only a couple of times a year.”
“That’s all? But you were in the mountains!”
“The mountains? Simla?”
Glenn decided Gallico was serious. It didn’t shock him, though, because he quickly learned over the previous three months that arrogant Easterners thought the entire state of Colorado was one massive mountain range from border to border, north to south, east to west.
“Mr. Gallico, Simla’s pretty much on the plains. Northeast of Colorado Springs, maybe fifty miles.”
The writer didn’t seem embarrassed. “How big of a town?”
Glenn chuckled. “Small. Great people, great place to grow up. Drive in on the highway, slow down for the stop sign, keep going . . . and that’s it. But you might want to say in your story, though, that my parents have moved to Washington State—near Seattle.”
Gallico offered a gentle nod that wasn’t a promise before asking, “How’d you get started with sports?”
Glenn thought back. He loved to run around the property, hurdling whatever he could use as barriers. During his jaunts, he pictured himself as a football halfback or end leaping over, skirting, stiff-arming or running through tacklers to reach the end zone. He didn’t mention all that, though, sticking with: “You can run around a farm a lot. That got me going, I guess.”
“Do all the sports in high school?”
“Football, basketball, and track, yeah. Not baseball.” He laughed. “I always liked the track guys when I was a kid. They had neat uniforms and they got to go to Colorado Springs and Denver for meets. I didn’t have a very good year in football my senior year because my hip was hurt, and I got more serious about track that year.”
Even took five first places in the state junior AAU meet!
“Any other interests?”
“I was the editor of the school paper.” Glenn grinned. “I had a good staff.”
“Did you at least like to write?”
“Oh, somewhat.”
“I take it you like to read, too.”
“Probably no more than average.”
Actually, he devoured the “Rover Boy” and Horatio Alger books as a youngster, and he was one of the few students in Simla who treated the assignments to read The Red Badge of Courage and Tom Sawyer with eagerness, not dread. A love of reading wasn’t something you advertised at Simla High, though. In Simla, that was for the homely girl who edited the yearbook and was destined to be a spinster teacher, not the star athlete. And now, he still enjoyed reading novels.
“Were you always going to go to Colorado Agricultural College?”
Glenn chuckled. “I thought I was going to have to go to work on the railroad,” he said. “Nothing wrong with that, but I—we—just didn’t have the money for college.”
“How’d you get there, then?”
“I thought if I was going anywhere, it was going to be to Greeley—Colorado State College of Education—where my brother was,” Glenn said. “But our basketball coach wrote a letter to Harry Hughes—he was the coach in both football and track at CAC—recommending me. He lined me up with a group called the Drugstore Quarterback Club that helps out athletes, and this really great man in it—Sparks Alford—pretty much sponsored me. They expected me to work, though, which was fine with me. I worked at the college’s printing plant. Did deliveries on a bike at first, and then operated a printing machine.”
“Played football four years?”
Glenn nodded, as he did to the next series of questions that took him through his career, as an all-league choice in football as a senior in 1933, and helping lead the Aggies to a share of a conference championship. In track, he set school records in both the high and low hurdles. He also earned the Aggies a few points when Hughes pressed him into service in the javelin and shot put during the ’34 spring season, and the coach tossed it out: If Glenn concentrated on full-time training in track for the ensuing two years, he might have a chance at the ’36 Olympics. “I’ve heard people say we were targeting the decathlon from then on, but that’s not true,” Glenn said. “We thought my best chance was going to be in the 400-meter hurdles. I was a good hurdler, a good quarter-miler, and that seemed to make a lot of sense.”
Looking confused, Gallico said, “But the Denver paper said you went to the Games four years ago in Los Angeles, saw Jim Bausch win the decathlon and told anyone who would listen that you could do better than that. You’re saying you weren’t thinking of the decathlon that far back?”
Glenn shook his head. “I went to L.A. with my buddy Red White and his family, and went to the track for a couple of days,” Glenn said. “That’s true. But that’s about it. I mean, four years ago, I couldn’t even have told you the ten events. I don’t know where that stuff about Jim Bausch came from.”
He didn’t mention the Denver Press Club.
Next, Glenn told Gallico that his academic disorganization worked to his advantage. His grades were good, but he had taken light loads some quarters and spread out his credits across departments, taking several English Literature courses before moving toward economics and sociology. Hughes helped him plot out a fifth year of study that would enable Glenn to graduate in June 1935 with a double major, and he assured Glenn the Drugstore Quarterback Club would continue its support.
“I saw that you were the student body president, too,” Gallico said. After Glenn nodded, Gallico grinned and added, “Tough campaign?” Glenn shrugged. “Well, I went to the fraternities, sororities and the dormitories and stuff and made a couple of bad speeches. I was in the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, and that helped.” He smiled. “I didn’t tell people I couldn’t afford to live there, though. I always was in the boarding house. Only five bucks a month!”
Gallico asked if Glenn could hold on while he made a bathroom visit. During the break, Glenn thought back to that student election campaign. One of the appearances was at a sparsely attended “candidate’s fair” at the student union building. His opponent, a bespectacled, pimply future engineer from Denver, outlined an eighteen-point plan to make student government more relevant, including saying it should take positions on world and national events and stage forums on such things as the Germans’ drum-beating and maltreatment of Jews under this queer new leader, Hitler, and how it might affect the European order. Glenn was even more sheepish when he ran into his opponent in the Student Union after the election, and the future engineer politely congratulated him and dryly said Glenn obviously was more in tune with the student body. He still could feel the bruises left by his opponent’s disdain—and remember his response.
“Jews in Europe don’t matter to any of you,” the opponent said. “There are maybe twenty Jews on this campus, and they’re damn near the only ones who care.”
“I don’t even think of it that way,” Glenn told him, genuinely exasperated. “I don’t think, ‘There goes a Jew.’ I’m from the country, this is the big city to me, and it took people to tell me it was supposed to be an issue for me to even know who’s Jewish. If that makes me some farm boy idiot, I’m a farm boy idiot.”
Glenn—then and now—also was thinking of the Aggies’ game his freshman year against Colorado Mines in football and several of his teammates were talking about needing to shut down “The Jew”—and it took them to explain to him that they meant Berg, the big Mines fullback.
Gallico was back from the bathroom. “Where were we?”
Glenn smiled. “You tell me . . .”
“That extra year at school?”
Glenn explained that he not only served as student-body president, but also finished up his requirements for a degree and helped coach in both footb
all and track, while spending much of his time training. He told Gallico that as his graduation approached in the spring of ’35, he sat down with Hughes on the South Field House steps. “He told me that if I wanted to try for Berlin, everything we had done to that point would seem easy compared to the next year,” Glenn said. “I said that sounded good to me. But we still were thinking the 400 hurdles first.”
“How’d you support yourself?”
“I coached some and the Denver Athletic Club agreed to sponsor me,” Glenn said. “When I had time, I helped sell Fords at a car lot. It wasn’t easy, but it was good enough.”
Gallico looked at his notes again.
“What did your girlfriend think about all of that? Karen, is it?”
Glenn nodded, then said, “She was all for it.”
“So last year, all the AAU meets?”
“Yeah, but in the 400 hurdles, mostly. Didn’t do that well. I decided God was telling me that I should give the decathlon a shot. It worked out for the best.”
For a few seconds, Gallico pondered what to bring up next. Deciding, he said, “But when you were trying to decide which event you would try to make the team in, we were talking about boycotting Berlin altogether. What were you thinking about all of that?”
The truth was, Glenn was elated when the Amateur Athletic Union’s national convention in December ’35 ultimately voted—barely—to endorse sending a U.S. team to Berlin. “I would have respected any decision we made,” Glenn said carefully. “But I still want to believe that the Olympics—no matter where they are—can bring us together.”
Gallico perfunctorily nodded. He checked his notes, then looked up again. “So anything else you want to tell me?”