JOHNSON, Rafer Lewis

(b. 18 August 1935 in Hillsboro, Texas), 1960 Olympic decathlon gold medalist and three-time world record holder who became one of America's finest sports ambassadors.

Johnson was the oldest of five children of Lewis Johnson, a day laborer and handyman, and Alma (Gibson) Johnson, a domestic and homemaker. In 1945 Lewis Johnson moved his family from Dallas to Kingsburg, California (located about twenty miles south of Fresno in the San Joaquin valley), where the family, for one year, made their home in a railroad boxcar. As a child Johnson loved to play and compete. "Maybe I was simply born that way. I wanted to be the fastest kid … to say I did not like losing is an understatement," he said years later. Competitiveness and sports talent ran in the family; Johnson's younger brother Jimmy became a defensive back for the San Francisco Forty-niners and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

At Kingsburg Joint Union High School, Johnson had a remarkable athletic career, distinguishing himself in football (as a halfback averaging nine yards per carry), basketball (averaging seventeen points per game), and baseball (where he hit over .400). But track and field was his strong suit. His strength, speed, and agility made him a natural for the decathlon event. Johnson was handicapped by numerous injuries before and during his athletic career. At age twelve he caught his left foot in a cannery belt, which required twenty-three stitches, crutches, and rehabilitation.

In the summer of 1952 Murl Dodson, Kingsburg's track coach, drove his sophomore star to nearby Tulare, California, to watch the U.S. Olympic Trials, a meet in which Bob Mathias broke the world decathlon record. Returning home Johnson told his coach, "I could have beaten most of the guys in the meet." From that day on Johnson was primarily a decathlete.

The decathlon event is a mini track meet that tests speed, strength, spring, stamina, and spirit. Over two days the athlete must contest ten basic events: 100 meters, long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400 meters on the first day, followed by 110-meter hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, and 1,500 meters on the second day. Scoring tables evaluate each performance and individual event scores are totaled to determine the overall victor. Decathlon champions are known as the world's top all-around athletes.

Johnson won a pair of modified high-school decathlons in 1952 and 1953, and then tried the standard version at the 1954 national Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) meet after graduating from Kingsburg High. He placed third. Ironically it was the lowest placing of his career. That summer, after being highly recruited as an athlete by two dozen universities, he decided to enroll at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He chose UCLA because of its long-standing commitment to racial equality; offers of academic, not athletic, scholarships for "A" students; and exceptional track coach Elvin "Ducky" Drake. Johnson set aside football and dabbled at basketball at UCLA where, as a junior, he was a backcourt starter for the coach John Wooden. But he primarily concentrated on the decathlon, and his success was meteoric. As a nineteen-year-old freshman he won the Pan-American Games crown, then rewarded his family and friends by breaking Bob Mathias's world record in a June 1955 meet in Kingsburg.

Johnson won the 1956 U.S. Olympic Trials decathlon and also made the U.S. team in the long-jump event. A knee injury slowed him down at the Melbourne (Australia) Olympic Games. But he offered no excuses. Johnson said of the winner Milt Campbell, "I lost to a good man." His college classmates elected him as the president of the UCLA student body in 1958. By then he was training with his UCLA Bruin teammate C. K. Yang of Formosa. Drake realized that he was coaching perhaps the world's two best athletes, and matched Johnson and Yang in daily training sessions with an eye on the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. In 1958 Johnson again broke the world record with 8,302 (1950 tables) points at a dual meet against the Soviets in Moscow, Russia. In 1959, the year of his graduation from UCLA with a B.S. degree in physical education, he suffered a debilitating auto accident. Unable to run for the better part of a year, he headed to the weight room and built himself up for the throwing events. He recovered in time for the 1960 U.S. Olympic Trials/AAU meet where, against the ever-improving Yang, he set a third world record (8,683 points).

The Johnson-Yang decathlon battle in Rome was the stuff of legends. Not only was it the first Olympic decathlon ever televised, it was an incredibly close finish. After nine events, with Johnson holding a minuscule lead, the Bruin teammates had stopped helping one another. Yang, with far superior 1,500-meter skills, pushed the early pace. Yet lap after lap, in the darkness of Rome's Estadio Olympico, Johnson gamely hung on to C. K.'s shoulder, and he finished with a lifetime best, just 1.2 seconds behind Yang. Years later Johnson revealed, "I knew I had an advantage since that was the last race of my life, and there was no reason to hold anything back." Yang marginally won seven of the ten events head-to-head. Yet Johnson, with far superior efforts in the weight events, won the gold medal. The difference was only fifty-eight points. Drake walked to the infield, proclaiming, "Give them both the gold medal, give them both the gold medal."

At age twenty-five Johnson retired from amateur athletics and was able to claim three world records, two Olympic medals (one gold, one silver), three national AAU titles, and nine wins in an eleven-meet decathlon career. He was awarded the 1960 James P. Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete. That same year he was honored as the Associated Press Athlete of the Year. He also was elected to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame (1974) and to the Olympic Hall of Fame (1983).

Following his athletic career Johnson recruited for the Peace Corps, was a television sports analyst, and appeared in several dozen Hollywood films. He became a vice president of Continental Telephone. Johnson's life touched those of many well-known people. He was romantically linked with the feminist Gloria Steinem and played an active role in the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. On 5 June 1968, when Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Johnson wrestled the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, to the ground and pried the gun from his hand.

Johnson devoted countless hours to the mentally and physically handicapped. He became involved with the Special Olympics movement at its inception and served as the president of the California Special Olympics beginning in 1969. In 1984, to the surprise and delight of 100,000 spectators, he was the final torchbearer at the opening ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. He served on many boards and committees in the areas of sports, business, and community services.

Johnson married Betsy Thorsen on 18 December 1971. Their two children, without parental urging, became world-class athletes. Josh was a two-time National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) All-American in the javelin while at UCLA, and Jenny was the captain of UCLA's women's volleyball team and became a professional on the beach volleyball circuit.

A role model for all ages, Johnson won numerous awards for his athletic ability and community service. His uncommon poise and dignity made him one of the nation's most undervalued and underpublicized sports heroes, and he preferred it that way.

Johnson, in collaboration with Philip Goldberg, produced a straight-up autobiography, The Best That I Can Be (1999). Cordner Nelson, Track and Field: The Great Ones (1970), provides an expert's view of Johnson's athletic career and stature. For decathlon facts and a summary of Johnson's career the best source is Frank Zarnowski, Decathlon: A Colorful History of Track and Field ' s Most Challenging Event (1989). Bud Greenspan's popular television series Olympiad (beginning 1972) includes an hour-long video on the history of the Olympic decathlon, with particular emphasis on the Johnson-Yang struggle in Rome, and is the best source of video clips of Johnson's Olympic success.

Frank Zarnowski