[msb-alumni] Bobby Morrow, Who Ran to Stardom at the 1956 Olympics, Dies at 84 on May 30, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 17:30:03 -0400
BlankBobby Morrow, Who Ran to Stardom at the 1956 Olympics, Dies at 84. By
Richard
Sandomir.
With three gold medals in sprints in Melbourne, he matched what Jesse Owens had
memorably accomplished 20 years earlier in Berlin. Bobby Morrow, who sprinted
to
three gold medals at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia,
dominating his
competition as only Jesse Owens had done at the Berlin Games in 1936, died on
Saturday at his home in Harlingen, Tex. He was 84. His partner, Judy Parker,
said
that the cause was not known but that he had received diagnoses of anemia and
neuropathy.
By the time Morrow arrived in Melbourne in November 1956, he had harnessed his
speed -- which he had honed chasing jackrabbits on his father's farm in Texas
-- to a
preternatural ability to stay calm.
"Whatever success I have had is due to being so perfectly relaxed that I can
feel my
jaw muscles wiggle," he was quoted as saying by David Wallechinsky in "The
Complete
Book of the Olympics" (1984).
(available on Bookshare).
Morrow's races took place over a week on the track at the Melbourne Cricket
Ground.
First he won the 100-meter sprint in 10.5 seconds, a time slowed by a headwind.
(In
two early heats, he had tied the Olympic record of 10.3 seconds.) Then, in the
200-meter final, he won the gold in 20.6 seconds, matching the world record.
"Ever since I started sprinting, I wanted to duplicate the great Jesse Owens
and win
two Olympic championships," Morrow said, after he had won the 100 and 200-meter
races. But he had one more race to match Owens's 1936 feat: the 4x100-meter
relay.
Running the final leg after his teammates Ira Murchison, Leamon King and Thane
Baker,
Morrow extended the lead they had given him over the Soviet Union. Their
winning time
of 39.95 seconds broke the world record set by Owens, Ralph Metcalfe, Foy
Draper and
Frank Wykoff in 1936.
Morrow became the only Olympic runner to win the two sprints and the relay
since
Owens (who also won a fourth medal, in the long jump, in 1936). Only Carl
Lewis, in
1984, and Usain Bolt, in 2012 and 2016, have equaled that accomplishment.
"He was a great runner, an extraordinary athlete," Mr. Wallechinsky said of
Morrow in
an interview. "And he was also the last white sprinter from the United States
to win
the Olympic sprints."
Morrow's success in Melbourne propelled him into a year of national fame. He
was on
the covers of Life, Sport and Sports Illustrated, which named him its Sportsman
of
the Year. He visited the White House, appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and
received the James A. Sullivan Award in 1957 as the outstanding amateur athlete
in
the United States.
He had hoped to defend his titles at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. But, to
his
frustration, he never got there.
Bobby Joe Morrow was born on Oct. 15, 1935, in San Benito, in southern Texas,
and
grew up on a farm nearby, outside Rangerville, where his father, Bob Floyd,
raised
cotton and carrots. His mother, Mattie Lucille (Danley) Morrow, was a
homemaker.
Morrow's brilliance as a high school runner attracted college recruiters from
around
the country. But he chose to stay in Texas, at Abilene Christian College (now a
university), and became its star sprinter.
"Bobby had a fluidity of motion like nothing I'd ever seen," Oliver Jackson,
the
track coach at Abilene Christian, told Sports Illustrated in 2000. "He could
run a
220 with a root beer float on his head and never spill a drop."
In 1956, Morrow won the 100- and 200-meter races at the N.C.A.A. track and
field
championships. He earned his trip to Melbourne with victories at the same
distances
during the United States Olympic trials.
He wanted to compete at the 1960 Olympics, even though he was becoming
disillusioned
with the way amateur athletics were run, at a time before Olympic athletes
could earn
millions of dollars.
He had to donate the $250 in prize money he won from appearing on the
television game
show "To Tell the Truth" to Abilene Christian. He also had to cash in plane
tickets
to track meets and drive instead so he had money to eat, and to refuse $500 a
month
for a State Department trip to South America because taking the money would
have made
him a professional. He went anyway, at his own expense.
His chance of making the 1960 United States track and field team was diminished
when
a groin injury kept him from competing in the Olympic trials. He was told to
train
with the team in the hope of going to Rome as a reserve.
On the night before the team left for Europe, he was told to come the next day
to Los
Angeles International Airport, where he would be told his fate.
"So I met them out there and they said, "No, you're not going," he told The
Guardian
in 2016. He was crestfallen.
The United States team did not win gold medals in any of the three events in
which
Morrow had won them four years earlier. The 4x100 relay team was disqualified
because
of an illegal baton exchange between Ray Norton and Frank Budd.
In addition to Ms. Parker, Morrow is survived by two daughters, Vicki Watson
and
Elizabeth Kelton; a son, Ron; two stepdaughters, Alisa Matz and Lynn Zanca; and
several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His marriages to Jo Ann
Strickland and
Judy Bolus ended in divorce.
After missing out on competing in Rome, Morrow was, among other things, an
insurance
broker, a clothing store owner and a farmer.
He returned briefly to prominence in track when he testified to the Senate
Commerce
Committee in 1965 that the governance of amateur athletics poorly served
athletes and
did not build the best possible Olympic teams.
But he faded from the track world, often forgotten when great sprinters were
remembered.
"I don't get mentioned," he told The Guardian. "I get left out a lot. And I
think
that's because I was fighting them so much."
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