The Best that I Can Be: An Autobiography - Softcover

Johnson, Rafer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385487614 ISBN 13: 9780385487610

Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Rafer Johnson's story is the classic American dream: hard work leading to success, honor, and glory.  Here, he openly writes about his humble beginnings in an obscure African American Texas ghetto, his growing up in the all-white, sun-drenched Californian town of Kingsburg, and his time at UCLA as the president of the student body and an acclaimed athlete.  His talents brought him to dramatic athletic duels in Moscow, Melbourne, and Rome, and to the glamour of acting, broadcasting, and politics in Hollywood, Washington, D.C., and the rest of the nation.

Structured around the ten events of the decathlon, Rafer's memoir vividly describes an exceptional life.  It introduces remarkable people, both unknown and celebrated (the Kennedy family; Gloria Steinem; Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade; Tom Brokaw; and others), who befriended Rafer and affected his life.  It tells of obstacles and tragedies--crippling injuries, an alcoholic father, the assassination of his close friend Robert F.  Kennedy--and what it takes to overcome them.  With tact, integrity, and acute observation, Rafer Johnson shares the intimate moments that have shaped his life and the lives of others.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rafer Johnson won the gold medal in the decathlon in the 1960 Olympic Games, posting a new Olympic record in the event. After the Olympics, he devoted his time to his family, his career, and helping others. To this end, he became a sports commentator, worked with Robert F. Kennedy, and served as Chairman of the Board for the Southern California Special Olympics. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, and has two children.

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The Best That I Can Be

An AutobiographyBy Rafer Johnson

Galilee Book

Copyright © 1999 Rafer Johnson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780385487610

Chapter One

1

THE STARTING BLOCKS

Home is where one starts from ...

--T.S. ELIOT

      THE FIRST THING an athlete learns is the importanceof a good start. As a sprinter, I honed the ability tosettle comfortably into the starting blocks and focus my attentionradar-like, ready to explode the instant I heard the starter'sgun. If I hesitated for a split second I might be too far behind tocatch up; if I was overeager and tried to anticipate the gun, Imight bolt too early and have a false start. In the decathlon, agood start also means scoring well in the first of the ten events,the hundred-meter dash. Because it sets the tone for everythingthat follows, the race can have a disproportionate impact on theoutcome of the decathlon as a whole.

    My start in the race of life had mixed results. By all objectivestandards, growing up black in Texas in the late 1930s andearly 1940s would not be considered a good beginning. It was asif the starting blocks had been rigged and the running track inmy lane was ploughed up and uneven. Still, I somehow acquiredthe necessary tools to take advantage of the opportunitiesthat life would later present. Will I ever fully understandwhat made me a disciplined youngster and a determined adult?Looking back, I marvel at how I learned to give all I had toevery challenge; to compete hard and try to win, but to play thegame honestly and fairly.

    I was born in Hillsboro, Texas, a tiny town in a flat expanseof land about sixty miles south of Dallas. With rich soilfor growing crops and strong bodies to pick them cheap, thearea's economy revolved around farming. Most people livedand worked on farms; the rest provided services for the farmersand hired hands. My father, Lewis Johnson, was one of thosefarmhands. Six foot six, lean and handsome, he had learned atan early age to go wherever there was a day's pay to be earned--somethingthat was not easy to come by during the Great Depression.As a young man, he mostly picked cotton. People alwaysdescribed him as a hard-working, responsible, generousman who loved to have a good time.

    While working the fields around Hillsboro, he met a girlwith cheerful eyes and a round, endearing face with prominentdimples. Alma Gibson was three years younger and a footshorter than her beau, and his equal when it came to hardwork. When they got married, in 1932, unemployment was at anall-time high, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at an all-timelow, and candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt was pledginga "New Deal" for hard-pressed Americans. Dad was twenty,Mom was seventeen. Their first child, a daughter, became seriouslyill as an infant and did not survive. I was born next, in1935. My father named me after a childhood friend of his whohad died in grade school.

    For the first two years of my life, we lived in Hillsboro inthe home of my father's parents (my mother's parents hadpassed away before I was born). It was a good-sized house, butwith five of my father's nine siblings living at home, it wascrowded. Built on a corner property on the outskirts of town, itwas an old wooden structure with front and back porches and alarge back yard dominated by a vegetable garden. With no electricityor running water, we used oil lamps and an outhouse andpumped water from an outside well. Nearby was an open fieldand a network of dirt roads on which children could ride bicycles,run loose, and kick up storms of dust.

    A railroad worker in his younger days, my grandfather wasforced to retire early when he fell from a train and suffereddisabling injuries. To sustain the family, his children worked thecotton fields, chopping and weeding in the spring and pickingin the fall. My grandfather was a deeply religious man who hadread the Bible to his children on a regular basis. By the time Iknew him, though, his children were reading to him, for he hadgone blind from glaucoma. I used to marvel at how this sightlessman could work tirelessly and flawlessly around the houseand in his vegetable garden. The family work ethic was reinforcedby my grandmother, a strong, warm, loving woman whotook care of everything and everyone--including me, her infantgrandson, while my parents worked long hours in thefields.

    Drawn by the demand for farmhands as New Deal programsput some money into the pockets of hungry Americans,my father moved us briefly to Oklahoma. He picked sugar cane;my mother cared for me and gave birth to my brother Ed.When I was three and Ed was two we moved back to Texas,settling in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. There my brother Jimand sister Erma were born. My youngest sister, Dolores, wasborn in Houston, where we spent part of every summer at thehome of my mother's aunt, Dollie Ann, and her husband, Aubrey.Aunt Sweet, as we called her, had raised my mother afterher own mother died, and she raised Dolores as well until werelocated to California. As a child I did not understand why mybaby sister did not live with us in Dallas. I assume now that it wasbecause four kids and long working hours were about all myparents could handle at the time. It's an enigma that still lingers.

    An all-black neighborhood west of downtown Dallas, OakCliff was nestled in a little valley formed by the Trinity River.Most of the hard-working people who lived there had jobs in oilcompanies, filling stations, or the paper plant nearby. Othersdid domestic and yard work in the white sections of town. Stillothers labored on construction sites. There was a lot of work inDallas as the depression lifted and mobilization for World WarII increased the demand for oil. The poor families of Oak Cliffstruggled and scraped, but they always put food on their tables.

    Except for the main arteries that ran to other areas ofDallas, the streets of the neighborhood were unpaved and withoutsidewalks. We constantly dragged either mud or dust intothe house on our shoes. The fragile wooden homes in theneighborhood were built close together on small lots. Duringthe six years we lived there, we rented three different houses.One of the moves was forced by a fire, which began in ourwood-burning stove. I remember the terror I felt as my parentsscrambled to rush us out of the inferno, and how heroic myfather was when, out on the street, he realized someone wasmissing and ran back inside. A few heart-stopping minutes laterhe emerged, dragging my sister Erma by her nightgown.

    My father worked for a man named John Eastman, whoowned a company that made drilling implements and otherequipment used by the oil industry. Dad was basically an all-purposehandyman. He worked on Mr. Eastman's cars, cleanedup around the office, did some work in the fields, served as achauffeur, and helped out--as did my mother--at the Eastmans'private parties. By all accounts, he was fond of his employerand liked his job. Apparently he was well liked in return,and was paid a decent wage. As my uncle Leonard put it, "Ifwhite people in Texas didn't like you, they'd let you know. Ifthey liked you, they'd go the limit for you."

    In addition to helping out the Eastmans on occasion, mymother supplemented the family income by doing domesticwork and sometimes wrapping gifts at a downtown...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0385487614
• ISBN 13: 9780385487610
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland