Jump ahead three years. It’s 1986. Julie answers the phone and her mother’s quivering voice announces that she has been diagnosed with cancer. End of estrangement. And even more reason for Julie to ride and win—to give her beloved mother a reason to live.
In 1987 Krone became the leading winner at Gulfstream Park, Monmouth, and the Meadowlands. She excelled as a jockey and in 1989 had her best year, winning 368 races. But her greatest accomplishment was still to come. She rode Colonial Affair to the winner’s circle in the 1993 Belmont Stakes, the only woman to win a Triple Crown race.
Three months after her Belmont win, Julie Krone lost everything. Or almost everything. Riding Seattle Way in her third race of the day at Saratoga, she neared the top of the stretch and seemed poised for a winning charge. Then the horse beside her suddenly veered into her path, throwing her violently to the ground. Her legs twisted beneath her as she landed on her bottom in the path of a charging horse, who struck her in the chest and catapulted her onto another part of the track. She screamed in pain along with fellow jockeys Richard Migliore and Chris Antley, who fell nearby, the three a mess of sprawled limbs.
Julie spent eighteen days on a morphine drip. She survived two surgeries to repair her badly damaged ankle. Her punctured elbow and the throbbing cardiac contusion in her chest required constant monitoring.
“I went through a real bad depression,” she says. “The pain ate at me. For two weeks straight, I was up all night. I cried my eyes out.”
Three years later, riding at Gulfstream Park, her horse broke down and she hit the track, rolling and covering her head with her hands. Both hands were broken. At the time she was tied for leading rider at Gulfstream, but now the new injuries and the residual effects of the last one double-teamed her.
Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Julie was in a race for her life. Suicide beckoned when the devil appeared in her nightmares. Fear hammered her like the hooves of the horse she tangled with, and depression kept her from even leaving her bed. The girl who at two years old exhibited the innate skills of horsemanship now scared the animals. “Horses felt my anxiety,” she says. “They got weird.”
Gradually though her daring and dashing spirit began to return. In the summer of 1996, a casual conversation with an old friend in Saratoga, New York, who happened to be a psychiatrist, opened her eyes to the value of therapy. And there were, of course, her many fans to bolster her flagging self-image.
“I was on a roller coaster of emotion. People wrote me long letters about their injuries and sent pictures of me their kids did in crayon. It was overwhelming. It made me feel, like, fed. My lifeline was racing and winning. Then suddenly, it became my friends and fans. Thinking you don’t need anyone, that’s not real life.”
Through intense psychotherapy, medication, and the love and support of family and friends, Julie returned to racing with her old zest. She retired in 1999 and a year later, on August 7, 2000, became the first woman rider inducted into horse racing’s Hall of Fame. She finished her high school degree and is studying psychology to help others with their challenges.
Julie is considered by many to be the greatest female athlete of all time. Skilled, tough, daring, determined, and honest, she also knew fear. But when pushed beyond her human limits, she learned an important lesson—to let others care.
Welcome to the winner’s circle, Julie.
49
Travis Williams
Highs and lows are a part of life. Up, down—agony, ecstasy—good days, bad days—joys, sorrows. We are all familiar with the rhythms and tensions these opposites create in our day-to-day living. In the athlete’s life, winning and losing usually determine the highs and the lows and provide the push to do one’s best to win.
Every athlete I know can list the highs and lows of his or her career and can tell you what contributed to both. I have learned about another important quality in my career that I have been telling you about in the stories in this book—courage. It takes courage to deal with the despair of defeat and not be thrown by it. It takes courage to feel the thrill of victory and not be too inflated by it. It takes courage to learn from both winning and losing and to become a solid person who respects one’s teammates, opponents, and the game itself.
In truth, the game is only a form that teaches us to be courageous enough to learn a simple lesson—to love, to respond, and to share what we have with those who hurt.
When I played hockey, I didn’t play so I would learn that lesson. I played because I loved to compete, to skate, to juke and jive, to score, to make the perfect pass, or to win the game, the division, the playoffs, and the Stanley Cup. However, hockey taught me the importance of getting my priorities in order. I never played on a team that won the Cup. I played in the finals but we fell short. I was fortunate enough to play on the winning World Cup team in 1996. I regret that my name is not on the Stanley Cup, but I am very grateful for what I learned in my quest for it. I agree with both Grantland Rice and Vince Lombardi—how the game is played is more important than winning, but wanting to win is everything. A contradiction? I don’t think so. Playing well in victory and defeat has everything to do with what we learn from both.
Travis Williams and his teammates accomplished the ultimate high of personal, professional, and team success— a Super Bowl ring. Personally he achieved success—money, reputation, family, and influence. He also experienced the agony of losing everything he had.
Travis distinguished himself in track and field at Contra Costa College in California, where he set a national junior college record for the 100-yard dash—9.3 seconds. Now that is fast! The first time Travis ever carried a football in a game was his freshman year at Contra. In his two years there he played well enough to be drafted by the Green Bay Packers in the fourth round of the 1967 draft. During his rookie year Williams returned four kickoffs for touch-downs, the first time anyone had ever done that. It was a remarkable achievement considering that Travis was so nervous during rookie camp that Coach Lombardi taped a handle on the ball so he wouldn’t fumble so much. Because Travis had game-breaking speed, other defenses keyed on him. But in a playoff game against the Rams, he broke loose for two TDs from scrimmage, one a 46-yard sprint off tackle. The high point of Travis’s career came on his birthday, January 14, 1968. The Packers beat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II, 22–14.
Because of his speed and his ability to find daylight, Williams was nicknamed “the Roadrunner.” In 1971 he was traded to the L.A. Rams, where his highlight was returning a kickoff against New Orleans 105 yards for a touch-down. The next preseason Travis blew out his knee, starting a downward spiral that he didn’t reverse until the last years of his life.
He spent the next two years rehabbing his knee and trying to get back into football; however, his money ran out and the open spaces closed. He and his wife, Arie, had eight children to support.
“In 1967 I figured the money would last forever. Everybody thought I was rich and so did I,” said Williams.
He started working as a security guard with the Richmond, California, school district. He sold his five cars but the accumulated debt was too much. In 1977, Arie and Travis lost their home. Travis looked back on that time with frustration: “The thing that took a lot out of me was that I could have paid for the house when I bought it. But I thought I’d play ball forever so I only put a down payment on it.”
For the next few years, life spiraled out of control for the Williams family. They moved to San Francisco. An aborted dream of opening a restaurant; a job as a bouncer; an arrest for a felony battery; Arie’s arrest for contributing to a death while driving drunk; and finally the children being sent to live with their grandparents—all these trials broke their spirit. Travis and Arie separated after they finished their jail time and Travis took a job in a liquor store as a security guard, a combination that eventually put him on the street living out of his car. His depression worsened and so did his drinking. He was homeless.
His life had gone
from the ecstasy of a Super Bowl ring to the agonizing “security” of the “log”—a fifty-foot piece of timber on a Richmond side street, used by the homeless for shelter.
Travis finally listened to the pleas of his children and came “inside” in 1988. Their support helped him. It also enabled him to begin to make a difference in the lives of others. Homeless folk became his mission. He worked with Susan Prather, an advocate for the homeless. He invited his homeless brothers and sisters into his home when the Bay Area got cold. He never left the streets; he stayed to care. When Prather was asked about Travis and homelessness she said, “People either make it out of homelessness, or they die trying. Travis came a long way.”
Travis died in February 1991 as a man who had found contentment after the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I can’t say enough about Travis and the respect I have for him. He made mistakes; he lost everything this world has to offer, but he never lost his heart. He became an advocate for the people he understood. He moved beyond the highs and lows of life. He broke into the clear on his last run because he learned lessons from both places—the courage to respond to the love of his children and to respond with love that continues to soothe the pain of his homeless friends.
50
Hank Kuehne
The mystery of family dynamics fascinates me. My personal journey in therapy has deepened my conviction that a significant part of who we are today finds its roots in the family system. Commitment to my own family is one of my highest priorities. Marybeth and I want to challenge our kids to be independent and true to themselves and to balance that freedom with values that will support them throughout life. Loving and raising kids can be the most rewarding and frightening challenge we will ever face.
Ernie and Pam Kuehne of McKinney, Texas, must understand that. They have been there. They have felt the pride of success and the tears of the pain that accompany the struggle.
Ernie’s childhood in the poor, rural community of Otto, Texas, contributed to his development as a determined achiever. His self-sufficiency and take-charge attitude created in him a mix of strength and intense enthusiasm. After college and law school he found success as a trial lawyer. He quickly made senior partner and soon acquired a small bank and an oil-and-gas firm in Dallas. His intensity spilled over to his two sons and daughter. As he often said, “Ours is a family that wins and loses together. We’re 100-percenters. When we do something, the only rule we have is you have to give it your all.”
Trip, Hank, and Kelli played sports as the main course of life. Pam remembers, “They played everything. Kelli was into ice skating and tennis, and the boys were involved in baseball, basketball, and football. I remember when they got their first set of real golf clubs. They used ’em as hatchets, then as swords.”
Ernie’s philosophy of success centered on honest feedback. His love for the children and the hard-driving fiery attitude he stoked in them stood in striking contrast to Pam’s quiet, pleasant support. Ernie would observe, “Some people say, ‘Never say a negative.’ But I don’t believe you tell someone they played good when they didn’t. Hey, nothing personal. Kelli and Trip didn’t mind. Hank did.”
Trip sharpened his golf skills at Oklahoma State University and was a finalist in the 1994 U.S. Amateur. Kelli that same year won the Girls’ Junior and went on to consecutive U.S. Women’s Amateur crowns in 1995 and 1996. But the word around the community was, “They’re all good, but Hank, the younger brother, he’s the one to watch.”
Hank was different. He carried a few more clubs in his bag but also toted extra baggage. He had to come face-to-face with dyslexia, attention deficit disorder (ADD), depression, and alcoholism. That he also possessed enormous talent only added more pressure.
As a young man, Hank struggled with his grades. The insecurity every teenager comes to know struck him particularly cruelly. He fell into depression and at the age of thirteen began to use alcohol as an escape. Even though the major contributions to his academic problems were the twin devils of dyslexia and ADD, they were not diagnosed until later. The quiet desperation would fuel a serious drinking problem.
Hank began to live with the same abandon he would use to drive the ball over three hundred yards. Even though he was able to matriculate at Oklahoma State in 1994, Hank continued to abuse alcohol and live on the edge. Trip’s recollection: “He was a complete monster.”
Disaster caught up with Hank when, under the influence, he ran a stop sign and smashed into another car. Luckily, the only damage to life and limb was broken ribs in his own body and a broken leg in a passenger in the other car. Trip couldn’t take any more. “I told him, ‘Hank, I love you but you have to get better. Go take care of yourself.’”
Tough love can work.
“When I saw what my behavior was doing to me, my brother, and other people, I didn’t want to live like that anymore,” Hank says.
He checked in to Hazelden, a substance-abuse treatment center in Minnesota. He committed the next three and a half months to putting his passion into facing his alcoholism. With his family behind him, Hank was able to move out of his private hell, take ownership of his disease, and day by day, sometimes hour by hour, face the reality of a problem that had haunted him too long.
“It was so tough and he did it on his own,” Kelli says. “Before he did it, he’s lucky he didn’t kill himself or someone else.”
The support of the family that loved him came through. Kelli says, “He’s awesome, he’s a stud. He’s worked himself out of his problems brilliantly. We’ve always been a big support for each other.”
His victory at the 1998 U.S. Amateur capped a long and difficult road back.
“This is the second greatest victory of my life,” he says. “Sobriety is definitely number one, and no matter what I do for the rest of my golfing career, nothing can change that.”
SECTION 9
Senses and
Sensitivity
51
Kevin Hall
Ever notice how we associate sounds with sports? We all know the groans and grunts of football, the fierce whoosh of hockey skates chewing up the ice, a basketball sailing through the net.
Golf has its own unique set of sounds. The sweet thunk of a solid drive. That distinctive plink when the ball drops into the cup after a perfect putt.
Kevin Hall can make those sounds pretty well, enough to be named the 1999 Junior Golfer of the Year by the Minority Golf Foundation. He can make those sounds but he cannot hear them. Kevin Hall is eighteen; he lost his hearing at the age of two.
Neither Kevin nor his parents, Percy and Jackie, ever let his deafness come between him and achievement. Kevin was first academically in his class at St. Rita in Evendale, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, and earned a scholarship (part academic, part athletic) to Ohio State University.
“You have to find the positive in what happens and that’s what Kevin has done,” says his mother, who works for Ryder Transportation Services. “He has not let the loss of hearing dampen his spirits or kill his love of life.”
Kevin welcomes the platform his unusual combination of skills and traits affords him. He likes the idea of inspiring others to fight the good fight against whatever it might be that could hold them back.
“I see many African-Americans with no hope and no goals,” he says. “I feel if they see a person of their race succeed, they will feel they can do it too.”
Kevin’s struggle began when he was an infant. He spent a month in the hospital, burning up with a 103-degree temperature for two weeks after contracting H-flu meningitis. Once the fever broke, his parents quickly noticed a change in their only child.
“We’d pop a balloon behind him or call his name and he wasn’t responding,” Jackie says. “We knew almost immediately he’d lost his hearing.”
Percy was the first to learn sign language, and he and Jackie quickly read up on deafness and its consequences. They labeled all the objects in the house to help Kevin learn that these things had names and tried to
reach him through finger spelling. By the time he was three he knew his phone number and his address.
“The more we taught him, the more he wanted to know,” Jackie says. “He took off and never looked back.”
Kevin began playing golf when he was nine and captained the golf team at Winton Woods High in Forest Park, Ohio (St. Rita’s had no golf team, so Kevin was allowed to play elsewhere). As a senior, he won the individual section and division championships and finished fourth in the Division I state tournament.
One thing Kevin knows he must deal with is media pressure. When he played in the U.S. Junior Amateur in 1999, he drew crowds of reporters. He told his mother he wished he wouldn’t get so much attention and that he just wanted to be “normal.” Here’s what Jackie told him: “How many black kids do you see playing golf at the level you are? How many deaf black kids? Let’s make a decision. Do you want to quit or play?”
Kevin wants to play, no question. He met Tiger Woods at a clinic and got some tips on putting and adding more length to his drives. He says his goal is to one day defeat Tiger in a match.
Imagine that happening, and a crowd cheering, and Kevin taking all of it in. Not hearing anything, of course, but reveling in it anyway, soaking it in with his other senses.
“I don’t need to be able to hear those sounds to fully enjoy golf,” he says. “I use my eyes like hearing people use their ears. That’s enough for me. Feeling the club hit the ball and feeling the ground after the ball falls in the cup is wonderful and satisfying.”
52
Marla Runyan
She’s going to be mad at me. She hates for this story to be told this way. She can’t stand it when people get the idea that she exceeded the perceived limits placed on her rather than fulfilled her potential.
Companions in Courage Page 17