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On March 31, 1980 Jesse Owens, American athlete (4 Olympic gold 1936), died of lung cancer at the age of 66. From the article:
"American track and field athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. His long jump world record stood for 25 years.
Who Was Jesse Owens?
Jesse Owens, also known as "The Buckeye Bullet," was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals and broke two world records at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
Owens’ athletic career began in high school when he won three track and field events at the 1933 National Interscholastic Championships. Two years later, while competing for Ohio State University, he equaled one world record and broke three others before qualifying and competing in the 1936 Olympics.
Family and Early Life
Owens was born James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1913, in Oakville, Alabama. The son of a sharecropper and the grandson of enslaved people, Owens was a frail child who was often sick from battles with chronic bronchial congestion and pneumonia.
Still, he was expected to work, and at the young age of seven he was picking up to 100 pounds of cotton a day to help his family put food on the table.
At the age of nine, Owens moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where the young "J.C." discovered a world far different than the slower, Southern life he'd known. School proved to be one of the bigger changes. Gone was the one-room schoolhouse he'd attended in Alabama, replaced by a bigger setting with stricter teachers.
Here, Owens earned the nickname that would stick with him the rest of his life: One of his instructors, unable to decipher his thick southern accent, believed the young athlete said his name was "Jesse," when he, in fact, had said "J.C."
Rising Track and Field Star
At East Technical High School, Owens quickly made a name for himself as a nationally recognized sprinter, setting records in the 100 and 200-yard dashes as well as the long jump. After graduating, Owens enrolled at Ohio State University, where he continued to flourish as an athlete.
At the 1935 Big Ten Championships, the "Buckeye Bullet," as he was also known, overcame a severe tailbone injury and tied a world record in the 100-yard dash—and set a long jump record of 26-8 ¼ that would stand for 25 years. Owens also set new world marks in the 220-yard dash and in the 220-yard low hurdles.
His dominance at the Big Ten games was par for the course for Owens that year, which saw him win four events at the NCAA Championships, two events at the AAU Championships and three others at the Olympic trials. In all, Owens competed in 42 events that year, winning them all.
1936 Olympics
For Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were expected to be a German showcase and a statement for Aryan supremacy.
Hitler lambasted America for including Black athletes on its Olympic roster. But it was the African American participants who helped cement America's success at the Olympic Games.
In all, the United States won 11 gold medals, six of them by Black athletes. Owens was easily the most dominant athlete to compete. He captured four gold medals (the 100 meter, the long jump, the 200 meter and the 400-meter relay) and broke two Olympic records along the way.
Owens’ world record for the broad jump would last 25 years until being broken by Olympian Irvin Roberson in 1960. After Owens won the 100-meter event, a furious Hitler stormed out of the stadium, though some reports indicate that Hitler later congratulated the athlete on his success.
Jesse Owens and Racism
While Owens helped the United States triumph at the games, his return home was not met with the kind of fanfare one might expect. President Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to meet with Owens and congratulate him, as was typical for champions.
The athlete wouldn't be properly recognized until 1976 when President Gerald Ford awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The mild-mannered Owens seemed not the least bit surprised by his home country's hypocrisy. "When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," he said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the president, either."
Later Years
Following the 1936 Olympic Games, Owens retired from amateur athletics and started to earn money for his physical talents. He raced against cars and horses, and, for a time, played with the Harlem Globetrotters.
Owens eventually found his calling in public relations and marketing, setting up a business for himself in Chicago, Illinois, and traveling frequently around the country to speak at conventions and other business gatherings.
Death
Owens died of lung cancer in Tucson, Arizona, on March 31, 1980. He smoked up to a pack of cigarettes a day for a good deal of his life.
Movie
The 2016 movie Race depicts Owens’ budding track and field stardom in college through his wins at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, where he defied Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy.
Made in consultation with Owens’ three daughters, the movie stars Stephan James as Owens and Jason Sudeikis as Larry Snyder, Owens’ coach at Ohio State University.
Wife and Kids
Owens was married for nearly 48 years to Ruth Owens. The longtime chairwoman of the Jesse Owens Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting the development of young people,
Ruth died in 2001 of heart failure. The couple had three daughters together: Gloria, Beverly and Marlene."
COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen F. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Woody Bullard 1SG Steven Imerman SFC William Farrell Lt Col Charlie Brown Col Carl Whicker SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SP5 Geoffrey Vannerson MSG Felipe De Leon Brown LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price PO1 H Gene Lawrence LTC Jeff Shearer ] LTC Wayne Brandon PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SPC Douglas Bolton PVT Mark Zehner
"American track and field athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. His long jump world record stood for 25 years.
Who Was Jesse Owens?
Jesse Owens, also known as "The Buckeye Bullet," was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals and broke two world records at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
Owens’ athletic career began in high school when he won three track and field events at the 1933 National Interscholastic Championships. Two years later, while competing for Ohio State University, he equaled one world record and broke three others before qualifying and competing in the 1936 Olympics.
Family and Early Life
Owens was born James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1913, in Oakville, Alabama. The son of a sharecropper and the grandson of enslaved people, Owens was a frail child who was often sick from battles with chronic bronchial congestion and pneumonia.
Still, he was expected to work, and at the young age of seven he was picking up to 100 pounds of cotton a day to help his family put food on the table.
At the age of nine, Owens moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where the young "J.C." discovered a world far different than the slower, Southern life he'd known. School proved to be one of the bigger changes. Gone was the one-room schoolhouse he'd attended in Alabama, replaced by a bigger setting with stricter teachers.
Here, Owens earned the nickname that would stick with him the rest of his life: One of his instructors, unable to decipher his thick southern accent, believed the young athlete said his name was "Jesse," when he, in fact, had said "J.C."
Rising Track and Field Star
At East Technical High School, Owens quickly made a name for himself as a nationally recognized sprinter, setting records in the 100 and 200-yard dashes as well as the long jump. After graduating, Owens enrolled at Ohio State University, where he continued to flourish as an athlete.
At the 1935 Big Ten Championships, the "Buckeye Bullet," as he was also known, overcame a severe tailbone injury and tied a world record in the 100-yard dash—and set a long jump record of 26-8 ¼ that would stand for 25 years. Owens also set new world marks in the 220-yard dash and in the 220-yard low hurdles.
His dominance at the Big Ten games was par for the course for Owens that year, which saw him win four events at the NCAA Championships, two events at the AAU Championships and three others at the Olympic trials. In all, Owens competed in 42 events that year, winning them all.
1936 Olympics
For Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were expected to be a German showcase and a statement for Aryan supremacy.
Hitler lambasted America for including Black athletes on its Olympic roster. But it was the African American participants who helped cement America's success at the Olympic Games.
In all, the United States won 11 gold medals, six of them by Black athletes. Owens was easily the most dominant athlete to compete. He captured four gold medals (the 100 meter, the long jump, the 200 meter and the 400-meter relay) and broke two Olympic records along the way.
Owens’ world record for the broad jump would last 25 years until being broken by Olympian Irvin Roberson in 1960. After Owens won the 100-meter event, a furious Hitler stormed out of the stadium, though some reports indicate that Hitler later congratulated the athlete on his success.
Jesse Owens and Racism
While Owens helped the United States triumph at the games, his return home was not met with the kind of fanfare one might expect. President Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to meet with Owens and congratulate him, as was typical for champions.
The athlete wouldn't be properly recognized until 1976 when President Gerald Ford awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The mild-mannered Owens seemed not the least bit surprised by his home country's hypocrisy. "When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," he said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the president, either."
Later Years
Following the 1936 Olympic Games, Owens retired from amateur athletics and started to earn money for his physical talents. He raced against cars and horses, and, for a time, played with the Harlem Globetrotters.
Owens eventually found his calling in public relations and marketing, setting up a business for himself in Chicago, Illinois, and traveling frequently around the country to speak at conventions and other business gatherings.
Death
Owens died of lung cancer in Tucson, Arizona, on March 31, 1980. He smoked up to a pack of cigarettes a day for a good deal of his life.
Movie
The 2016 movie Race depicts Owens’ budding track and field stardom in college through his wins at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, where he defied Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy.
Made in consultation with Owens’ three daughters, the movie stars Stephan James as Owens and Jason Sudeikis as Larry Snyder, Owens’ coach at Ohio State University.
Wife and Kids
Owens was married for nearly 48 years to Ruth Owens. The longtime chairwoman of the Jesse Owens Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting the development of young people,
Ruth died in 2001 of heart failure. The couple had three daughters together: Gloria, Beverly and Marlene."
COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen F. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Woody Bullard 1SG Steven Imerman SFC William Farrell Lt Col Charlie Brown Col Carl Whicker SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SP5 Geoffrey Vannerson MSG Felipe De Leon Brown LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price PO1 H Gene Lawrence LTC Jeff Shearer ] LTC Wayne Brandon PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SPC Douglas Bolton PVT Mark Zehner
Jesse Owens
Posted from biography.com
World History
American History
Track and Field
Olympics
Ohio State Buckeyes
Posted 3 y ago
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Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics in 1936
Owens won 4 gold medals: 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump and 4 100 meter relay. All copyrights belong to their respective owners
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on March 31, 1980 American track and field athlete Jesse [James Cleveland] Owens (4 Olympic gold 1936), died of lung cancer at the age of 66. His victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics shamed Adolph Hitler and Nazi elites who believed and advocated Aryan supremacy.
Rest in peace James Cleveland 'Jesse' Owens
Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics in 1936
Owens won 4 gold medals: 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump and 4 × 100 meter relay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1inifMJ0xio
Image
1. Jesse Owens (second from right) on the winners' podium after receiving the gold medal for the running broad jump (long jump) at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
2. Jesse Owens, 1936
3. August 10, 1935 Jesse Owens married the love of his life Minnie Ruth Soloman - they stay together until his death 48 years later.
4. Place of triumph - Jesse Owens returns to the Olympic Stadium in Berlin in 1965
Background from {[http://jesseowens.com/about/]}
"About Jesse Owens Biography
Jesse Owens, the son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, achieved what no Olympian before him had accomplished. His stunning achievement of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin has made him the best remembered athlete in Olympic history.
The seventh child of Henry and Emma Alexander Owens was named James Cleveland when he was born in Alabama on September 12, 1913. "J.C.", as he was called, was nine when the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where his new schoolteacher gave him the name that was to become known around the world. The teacher was told "J.C." when she asked his name to enter in her roll book, but she thought he said "Jesse". The name stuck and he would be known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life.
His promising athletic career began in 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio where he set Junior High School records by clearing 6 feet in the high jump, and leaping 22 feet 11 3/4 inches in the running broad jump, now known as the long jump. During his high school days, he won all of the major track events, including the Ohio state championship three consecutive years. At the National Interscholastic meet in Chicago, during his senior year, he set a new high school world record by running the 100 yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the accepted world record, and he created a new high school world record in the 220 yard dash by running the distance in 20.7 seconds. A week earlier he had set a new world record in the long jump by jumping 24 feet 11 3/4 inches. Owens' sensational high school track career resulted in him being recruited by dozens of colleges. Owens chose the Ohio State University, even though OSU could not offer a track scholarship at the time. He worked a number of jobs to support himself and his young wife, Ruth. He worked as a night elevator operator, a waiter, he pumped gas, worked in the library stacks, and served a stint as a page in the Ohio Statehouse, all of this in between practice and record setting on the field in intercollegiate competition.
Jesse gave the world a preview of things to come in Berlin, while at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935, he set three world records and tied a fourth, all in a span of about 45 minutes. Jesse was uncertain as to whether he would be able to participate at all, as he was suffering from a sore back as a result from a fall down a flight of stairs. He convinced his coach to allow him to run the 100-yard dash as a test for his back, and amazingly Jesse recorded an official time of 9.4 seconds, once again tying the world record. Despite the pain, he then went on to participate in three other events, setting a world record in each event. In a span of 45 minutes, Jesse accomplished what many experts still feel is the greatest athletic feat in history...setting 3 world records and tying a fourth in four grueling track and field events.
His success at the 1935 Big Ten Championships gave him the confidence that he was ready to excel at the highest level. Jesse entered the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Nazi Germany amidst the belief by Hitler that the Games would support his belief that the German "Aryan" people were the dominant race. Jesse had different plans, as he became the first American track & field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad. This remarkable achievement stood unequaled until the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, when American Carl Lewis matched Jesse's feat. Although others have gone on to win more gold medals than Jesse, he remains the best remembered Olympic athlete because he achieved what no Olympian before or since has accomplished. During a time of deep-rooted segregation, he not only discredited Hitler's master race theory, but also affirmed that individual excellence, rather than race or national origin, distinguishes one man from another.
Jesse Owens proved in Berlin and thereafter that he was a dreamer who could make the dreams of others come true, a speaker who could make the world listen and a man who held out hope to millions of young people. Throughout his life, he worked with youths, sharing of himself and the little material wealth that he had. In this way, Jesse Owens was equally the champion on the playground of the poorest neighborhoods as he was on the oval of the Olympic games.
Athletes didn't return from the Olympics to lucrative advertising and product endorsement campaigns in those days, and Owens supported his young family with a variety of jobs. One was of special significance - playground director in Cleveland. It was his first step into a lifetime of working with underprivileged youth, which gave him his greatest satisfaction. After relocating to Chicago, he devoted much of his time to underprivileged youth as a board member and former director of the Chicago Boys' Club.
Owens traveled widely in his post-Olympic days. He was an inspirational speaker, highly sought after to address youth groups, professional organizations, civic meetings, sports banquets, PTAs, church organizations, brotherhood and black history programs, as well as high school and college commencements and ceremonies. He was also a public relations representative and consultant to many corporations, including Atlantic Richfield, Ford and the United States Olympic Committee.
A complete list of the many awards and honors presented to Jesse Owens by groups around the world would fill dozens of pages. In 1976, Jesse was awarded the highest civilian honor in the United States when President Gerald Ford presented him with the Medal of Freedom in front of the members of the U.S. Montreal Olympic team in attendance. In February, 1979, he returned to the White House, where President Carter presented him with the Living Legend Award. On that occasion, President Carter said this about Jesse, "A young man who possibly didn't even realize the superb nature of his own capabilities went to the Olympics and performed in a way that I don't believe has ever been equaled since...and since this superb achievement, he has continued in his own dedicated but modest way to inspire others to reach for greatness".
Jesse Owens died from complications due to lung cancer on March 31, 1980 in Tucson, Arizona. Although words of sorrow, sympathy and admiration poured in from all over the world, perhaps President Carter said it best when he stated: "Perhaps no athlete better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty and racial bigotry. His personal triumphs as a world-class athlete and record holder were the prelude to a career devoted to helping others. His work with young athletes, as an unofficial ambassador overseas, and a spokesman for freedom are a rich legacy to his fellow Americans."
Jesse's spirit still lives in his three daughters, Gloria, Marlene, and Beverly, and their work with the Jesse Owens Foundation. The Foundation continues to carry on Jesse's legacy by providing financial assistance, support, and services to young individuals with untapped potential in order to develop their talents, broaden their horizons, and become better citizens. There is no doubt that Jesse would be proud.
Accomplishments & Awards
Jesse set or tied national high school records in the 100 yard dash, 200-yard dash, and the long jump.
After a stellar high school career, he attended Ohio State University.
On May 25, 1935, at the Big Ten Conference Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Owens broke three world records (long jump, 220-yard dash and 220-yard low hurdles) and tied a fourth (100-yard dash), all in a 45 minute span.
In his junior year at Ohio State, Owens competed in 42 events and won them all, including four in the Big Ten Championships, four in the NCAA Championships, two in the AAU Championships and three at the Olympic Trials.
In 1936, Jesse became the first American in Olympic Track and Field history to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad by winning four gold medals: 100 meter dash in 10.3 seconds (tying the world record), long jump with a jump of 26' 5 1/4" (Olympic record), 200 meter dash in 20.7 seconds (Olympic record), and 400 meter relay (first leg) in 39.8 seconds (Olympic and world record).
In 1976, Jesse was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award bestowed upon a civilian, by Gerald R. Ford.
Owens was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush."
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CSM Charles Hayden
Rest in peace James Cleveland 'Jesse' Owens
Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics in 1936
Owens won 4 gold medals: 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump and 4 × 100 meter relay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1inifMJ0xio
Image
1. Jesse Owens (second from right) on the winners' podium after receiving the gold medal for the running broad jump (long jump) at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
2. Jesse Owens, 1936
3. August 10, 1935 Jesse Owens married the love of his life Minnie Ruth Soloman - they stay together until his death 48 years later.
4. Place of triumph - Jesse Owens returns to the Olympic Stadium in Berlin in 1965
Background from {[http://jesseowens.com/about/]}
"About Jesse Owens Biography
Jesse Owens, the son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, achieved what no Olympian before him had accomplished. His stunning achievement of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin has made him the best remembered athlete in Olympic history.
The seventh child of Henry and Emma Alexander Owens was named James Cleveland when he was born in Alabama on September 12, 1913. "J.C.", as he was called, was nine when the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where his new schoolteacher gave him the name that was to become known around the world. The teacher was told "J.C." when she asked his name to enter in her roll book, but she thought he said "Jesse". The name stuck and he would be known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life.
His promising athletic career began in 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio where he set Junior High School records by clearing 6 feet in the high jump, and leaping 22 feet 11 3/4 inches in the running broad jump, now known as the long jump. During his high school days, he won all of the major track events, including the Ohio state championship three consecutive years. At the National Interscholastic meet in Chicago, during his senior year, he set a new high school world record by running the 100 yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the accepted world record, and he created a new high school world record in the 220 yard dash by running the distance in 20.7 seconds. A week earlier he had set a new world record in the long jump by jumping 24 feet 11 3/4 inches. Owens' sensational high school track career resulted in him being recruited by dozens of colleges. Owens chose the Ohio State University, even though OSU could not offer a track scholarship at the time. He worked a number of jobs to support himself and his young wife, Ruth. He worked as a night elevator operator, a waiter, he pumped gas, worked in the library stacks, and served a stint as a page in the Ohio Statehouse, all of this in between practice and record setting on the field in intercollegiate competition.
Jesse gave the world a preview of things to come in Berlin, while at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935, he set three world records and tied a fourth, all in a span of about 45 minutes. Jesse was uncertain as to whether he would be able to participate at all, as he was suffering from a sore back as a result from a fall down a flight of stairs. He convinced his coach to allow him to run the 100-yard dash as a test for his back, and amazingly Jesse recorded an official time of 9.4 seconds, once again tying the world record. Despite the pain, he then went on to participate in three other events, setting a world record in each event. In a span of 45 minutes, Jesse accomplished what many experts still feel is the greatest athletic feat in history...setting 3 world records and tying a fourth in four grueling track and field events.
His success at the 1935 Big Ten Championships gave him the confidence that he was ready to excel at the highest level. Jesse entered the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Nazi Germany amidst the belief by Hitler that the Games would support his belief that the German "Aryan" people were the dominant race. Jesse had different plans, as he became the first American track & field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad. This remarkable achievement stood unequaled until the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, when American Carl Lewis matched Jesse's feat. Although others have gone on to win more gold medals than Jesse, he remains the best remembered Olympic athlete because he achieved what no Olympian before or since has accomplished. During a time of deep-rooted segregation, he not only discredited Hitler's master race theory, but also affirmed that individual excellence, rather than race or national origin, distinguishes one man from another.
Jesse Owens proved in Berlin and thereafter that he was a dreamer who could make the dreams of others come true, a speaker who could make the world listen and a man who held out hope to millions of young people. Throughout his life, he worked with youths, sharing of himself and the little material wealth that he had. In this way, Jesse Owens was equally the champion on the playground of the poorest neighborhoods as he was on the oval of the Olympic games.
Athletes didn't return from the Olympics to lucrative advertising and product endorsement campaigns in those days, and Owens supported his young family with a variety of jobs. One was of special significance - playground director in Cleveland. It was his first step into a lifetime of working with underprivileged youth, which gave him his greatest satisfaction. After relocating to Chicago, he devoted much of his time to underprivileged youth as a board member and former director of the Chicago Boys' Club.
Owens traveled widely in his post-Olympic days. He was an inspirational speaker, highly sought after to address youth groups, professional organizations, civic meetings, sports banquets, PTAs, church organizations, brotherhood and black history programs, as well as high school and college commencements and ceremonies. He was also a public relations representative and consultant to many corporations, including Atlantic Richfield, Ford and the United States Olympic Committee.
A complete list of the many awards and honors presented to Jesse Owens by groups around the world would fill dozens of pages. In 1976, Jesse was awarded the highest civilian honor in the United States when President Gerald Ford presented him with the Medal of Freedom in front of the members of the U.S. Montreal Olympic team in attendance. In February, 1979, he returned to the White House, where President Carter presented him with the Living Legend Award. On that occasion, President Carter said this about Jesse, "A young man who possibly didn't even realize the superb nature of his own capabilities went to the Olympics and performed in a way that I don't believe has ever been equaled since...and since this superb achievement, he has continued in his own dedicated but modest way to inspire others to reach for greatness".
Jesse Owens died from complications due to lung cancer on March 31, 1980 in Tucson, Arizona. Although words of sorrow, sympathy and admiration poured in from all over the world, perhaps President Carter said it best when he stated: "Perhaps no athlete better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty and racial bigotry. His personal triumphs as a world-class athlete and record holder were the prelude to a career devoted to helping others. His work with young athletes, as an unofficial ambassador overseas, and a spokesman for freedom are a rich legacy to his fellow Americans."
Jesse's spirit still lives in his three daughters, Gloria, Marlene, and Beverly, and their work with the Jesse Owens Foundation. The Foundation continues to carry on Jesse's legacy by providing financial assistance, support, and services to young individuals with untapped potential in order to develop their talents, broaden their horizons, and become better citizens. There is no doubt that Jesse would be proud.
Accomplishments & Awards
Jesse set or tied national high school records in the 100 yard dash, 200-yard dash, and the long jump.
After a stellar high school career, he attended Ohio State University.
On May 25, 1935, at the Big Ten Conference Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Owens broke three world records (long jump, 220-yard dash and 220-yard low hurdles) and tied a fourth (100-yard dash), all in a 45 minute span.
In his junior year at Ohio State, Owens competed in 42 events and won them all, including four in the Big Ten Championships, four in the NCAA Championships, two in the AAU Championships and three at the Olympic Trials.
In 1936, Jesse became the first American in Olympic Track and Field history to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad by winning four gold medals: 100 meter dash in 10.3 seconds (tying the world record), long jump with a jump of 26' 5 1/4" (Olympic record), 200 meter dash in 20.7 seconds (Olympic record), and 400 meter relay (first leg) in 39.8 seconds (Olympic and world record).
In 1976, Jesse was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award bestowed upon a civilian, by Gerald R. Ford.
Owens was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush."
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CSM Charles Hayden
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LTC Stephen F.
Jesse Owens: Enduring Spirit chronicles the life and times of a Big Ten icon. This 30 minute documentary takes a look back at the trials and triumphs of one ...
Jesse Owens: Enduring Spirit chronicles the life and times of a Big Ten icon. This 30 minute documentary takes a look back at the trials and triumphs of one of Ohio State University's greatest athletes. Interviews featuring Bill Cosby, Archie Griffin, and Stephanie Hightower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn-Xg158TcQ
Images:
1. 1976 President Gerald Ford presents Jesse Owens with the Presidential Medal of Freedom [highest civilian honor given by the U.S. government], Betty Ford, Jesse, POTUS Gerald Ford, Minnie Ruth Owens.
2. 1950 Named the best track athlete of the first half of the 20th century, Jesse Owens receives his trophy from Ed Sullivan.
3. Jesse Owens poses with Kenosha city councilmen Edward Wavro, Gilbert Petzke, Gordon McAleer and Kenosha Postmaster Paul Saftig at the American Legion Post Clubrooms, 1954.
4. Day job - Owens worked as a gas station attendant (a role he recreated in this publicity shot once he was famous)
Background from {{https://library.osu.edu/site/jesseowens/growing-up/]}
Growing Up
A replica of a small, wooden house stands in Jesse Owens Memorial Park in Oakville, Alabama to commemorate the birthplace of the four-time Olympic gold medalist. It was there on Sept. 12, 1913, that James Cleveland (J.C.) Owens was born, the last of 10 children raised by Henry and Mary Emma Owens. At that time, Jesse’s parents were sharecroppers and the family lived on a meager income. By the early 1920s, though, Jesse’s older sister, Lillie, had moved north to Cleveland and wrote home how the city offered plenty of jobs in its factories and other businesses. So, the Owens family moved to Cleveland, settling on the east side.
In Cleveland, Jesse enrolled in Bolton Elementary School, where, the story goes, one of his teachers, misinterpreting how he pronounced “J.C.” because of his southern accent, started calling him “Jesse.” The name stuck.
After Bolton Elementary, Jesse attended Fairmount Junior High, where he met Charles Riley, the gym teacher and track coach. Riley had noticed Owens in gym class and encouraged him to start training for the track team. Riley had great influence on Owens, both technically and mentally. It was Riley who taught his athletes that training for longer races would help them in the 100- and 200-yard dashes. At the same time, Riley taught the mental aspect of competition. His motto, “Train for four years from next Friday,” emphasized long-term rather than short-term gains.
In 1930, Owens enrolled in Cleveland’s East Technical School where he was encouraged to focus on track, under the guidance of Edgar Weil, East Tech’s new head track coach. But Weil had little experience in the sport, having coached football before arriving at East Tech. Weil then asked Riley to help him train Owens, and under their tutelage, the young athlete soon dominated every race he entered. Only two years later, his coaches were preparing him for a tryout on the U.S. Olympic Team and competition at the 1932 Summer Games in Los Angeles. At the Midwestern preliminary trials at Northwestern University, however, Owens lost all three events he entered: the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and the long jump.
Owens returned to school for his senior year, and he was elected president of East Tech’s student council as well as captain of its track team. In the spring of 1933, his last in high school, he placed first in 75 of the 79 races he entered, and he set a new record in the long jump at the state interscholastic finals. The pinnacle was the National Interscholastic Championship in Chicago where he won the long jump, set a world record in the 220-yard dash and tied a world record in the 100-yard dash. When Owens returned to Cleveland, city officials gave him a victory parade, the first of many honorary events over the years celebrating the track star’s achievements.
Owens and The Ohio State University
Owens’ achievements on the track in high school were so phenomenal that he caught the attention of several Big Ten universities, including The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. It came down to which school had the best offer, and in the end, OSU’s proposal that Owens could work part-time as a freight elevator operator at the State House while training and going to classes was the winning one. After passing a series of exams that summer to qualify him to enter college (he was a few credits shy of graduating from high school), Owens started classes at OSU in the fall of 1933.
At the time of Owens’ matriculation, The Ohio State University had only one men’s dorm, and Owens was barred from it because of his race. He instead shared a boarding house with several other African-American students on East 11th Avenue, where they cooked their own meals and sometimes ate in the student union. No restaurant along High Street would serve them, nor were they allowed to go to most movie theaters. Owens, though, made the best of the situation, focusing on his studies and training with the OSU track team under coach Larry Snyder.
Snyder, who thought Owens’ race starts were too slow, made the athlete repeatedly practice starts that had him crouching tightly at the starting line. He also altered Owens’ long-jump style, teaching him to move his legs in mid-air. By May 1935, Owens was showing the nation a glimmer of what was to come at the 1936 Olympic Summer Games: That month, at the Big Ten Finals in Ann Arbor, he set world records in the 220-yard dash, the 220-yard low hurdles and the long jump.
While Owens was logging many victories on the track – he was even chosen team captain, the first African American elected to that position on a Big Ten team – he had few such highlights in the classroom. His grades were so poor his junior year that the University made him academically ineligible to compete in any winter indoor meets in 1936. He had brought his grades up sufficiently by spring quarter to compete in the regular outdoor season, but that was the last full academic year Owens spent at Ohio State. After doing so well in the 1936 Summer Games, he decided to take advantage of the financial opportunities his fame offered. He did go back to OSU the fall of 1940, but he once again was placed on academic probation. In December 1941 he withdrew from OSU and never finished his degree. Thirty-two years later, however, the University awarded him an honorary doctorate of athletic arts “for his unparalleled skill and ability” as an athlete and for “his personification of sportsmanship ideals.”
The Owens Family
By the time Jesse Owens traveled to Berlin for the 1936 Olympic Games, he was already married with a baby daughter. Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon had met at Fairmount Junior High School in 1930 in Cleveland when he was fifteen and she was thirteen. They dated steadily throughout high school, and Ruth gave birth to their first baby daughter, Gloria, on Aug. 8, 1932.
Five years later, in 1937, the couple’s second daughter, Marlene, was born, and Beverly, the youngest daughter, was born in 1940. Gloria and Marlene both later attended Ohio State, and Marlene became OSU’s first African-American Homecoming Queen in 1960.
Jesse supported his new family at first with various odd-jobs, such as pumping gas at a Cleveland gas station, while Ruth quit school to work in a beauty parlor in Cleveland, where she lived with her parents. It was the first of many long periods of time spent apart over the years, as Owens traveled first for athletics, then to speaking engagements and philanthropic events around the world.
In the early 1970s, with the children grown, Ruth and Jesse left their Chicago home of more than 20 years for the warmer climate of Scottsdale, Arizona. In late 1979, Owens, a lifetime smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Three months later on March 31, 1980, he died at the age of 66.
After Jesse’s death, Ruth carried on his philanthropic work through the Jesse Owens Memorial Foundation, and watched over the family’s interests when commercial enterprises arose, such as the production of The Jesse Owens Story, a four-hour television movie that coincided with the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. She traveled extensively to numerous dedications, ground-breakings, and other honorary events held in Jesse’s memory. Memorial events included the renaming of the road leading to the Berlin Olympic Stadium and the creation of a sculpture garden outside Ohio Stadium at The Ohio State University. Ruth died in 2001 at the age of 86.
In 2009, Owens’ three daughters returned to OSU to testify at a field hearing before state lawmakers who were considering the Olympic athlete to be chosen for a statue to be placed in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. At the hearing, Marlene said her father was “a husband, father, son, grandfather, friend, athlete, humanitarian, motivator, American and role model. He was loyal to each of these roles beyond expectation.”
1936 Olympics
After the end of the spring quarter at Ohio State, Owens traveled to the Olympic tryout finals in New York, where he won all three of his events. He and the 381 members of the U.S. Olympic Team then boarded the SS Manhattan on July 15 for its voyage to Europe. Along the way, Owens, who had been getting a significant amount of press for his track achievements, signed hundreds of autographs for fellow shipmates. After nine days of rough seas and stormy weather, the ship docked at the German port of Bremerhaven; the athletes were in Berlin enjoying the opening ceremonies barely a week later on August 1st.
Participating as a sprinter at the Olympic Summer Games of 1936 was a far different experience than it is today. There were no starting blocks, their shoes were made of heavy leather, and instead of running on a contemporary turf track, they sped down a course composed of cinder, which became uneven and messy when it rained. It was, in fact, raining intermittently during the first week of Olympiad XI, yet Owens won four Olympic gold medals. Along the way, he tied the world record of 10.3 seconds in the 100-meter dash; set new Olympic records of 20.7 seconds in the 200-meter race, and 26 feet, 5 1/4 inches in the long jump; and he ran the first leg in the finals of the 400-meter relay, an event in which his team set a new world and Olympic record of 39.8 seconds.
His triumphs before a worldwide audience were serendipitous; Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, who had been widely condemned before the Games for his anti-Semitic policies, openly anticipated a great showing of Aryan athletic supremacy. With his victories in track and field, Owens had proved the Nazi dictator’s racist theories wrong, and in doing so, had become not only an Olympic gold medal winner but an American hero.
Owens’ Legacy: a National Icon
Back home, amid the hoopla over his Olympic achievements at the 1936 Berlin Games, there were plenty of opportunities for Owens to take advantage of his fame. Soon enough, Owens signed on with a New York agent and was making money as a one-man show, running before baseball games and other athletic events against a hometown’s fastest athlete. In late 1936 in Cuba, that turned out to be a thoroughbred horse, after that country’s fastest runner, Conrado Rodrigues, pulled out of the event. With a 40-yard head start, Owens won the race and $2,000.
After a whirlwind of post-Olympic promotional activities and a brief return to Ohio State University in 1940, Owens settled into a life of nearly constant travel. Whether it was encouraging physical fitness among African Americans during World War II or promoting the Olympic ideals during the Winter and Summer Games, Owens was often on the road. He did take time to start several businesses, the first of which was the Jesse Owens Dry Cleaning Company, founded in 1938. That firm was in debt after about a year, however, and in 1939 Owens filed for personal bankruptcy. He also owed money to the Internal Revenue Service for failing to pay taxes on income earned after the Berlin Olympics. Decades later, he would be in trouble with the IRS again for failing to file income tax returns for several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Owens was much more successful with several public relations firms, through which he worked on various promotional and advertising projects. Much of his income was earned on the road, however, from various appearances around the country, ranging from automobile dealers’ conventions to Kiwanis Club meetings to university symposiums. He also appeared in advertising and at promotional events for such corporations as Ford Motor Company and Sears, Roebuck and Company.
Owens also made many appearances for various nonprofit causes and government programs. In the 1950s, for instance, as part of a Cold War effort to promote democracy aboard, the U.S. State Department asked Owens to tour Asia as a goodwill ambassador. Owens stayed involved as well in advancing the Olympic cause. In 1956, for instance, he and several other former U.S. Olympic champions attended the Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, as personal representatives of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1973, he was appointed to the board of directors of the U.S. Olympic Committee. In that position, he spent much of his time pushing for funding to equip and train U.S. athletes.
Meanwhile, Owens spent a lot of time working with charity groups, mostly serving as a role model for youngsters through his work with Boys’ Clubs of America and through his association with the ARCO Jesse Owens Games. Along the way, he was showered with statues, plaques and other mementoes to honor him. Four years before his death, in 1976, President Gerald Ford presented Owens the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given by the U.S. government.
In 1970, his memoir, Blackthink: My Life as a Black Man and White Man, was published. In it, Owens criticized the tactics used by African-American militants as being counterproductive. Though Owens had suffered discrimination as an athlete – his family was refused accommodation at a number of New York hotels when they traveled there to welcome him home from Berlin, for example – his message was that anyone could achieve his dream through hard work and perseverance. Critics said his fame had sheltered him too much from the harsh reality faced by most African Americans at the time.
Still, Owens had many fans, even those who were far too young to remember the 1936 Berlin Games. He drew crowds at all of his appearances, and he received many letters and cards over the years, some from people just looking for an autograph, but many from those who had been inspired by Owens’ achievements. In a mailgram decorated with teddy bears and dated Dec. 17, 1977, Andy Monfried of East Brunswick, New Jersey, told Owens: “Every time I go running I always think of you. When I come home from school I pretend I am you. … I have you in a Picture autograph in the safest place in the house. When I get older I will show my children and say one time this man was the best athlete in the world. It is a honor to have Jesse Owen (sic) Picture Autograph. Someday I will do what you did. And you’ll be proud of me.”
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn-Xg158TcQ
Images:
1. 1976 President Gerald Ford presents Jesse Owens with the Presidential Medal of Freedom [highest civilian honor given by the U.S. government], Betty Ford, Jesse, POTUS Gerald Ford, Minnie Ruth Owens.
2. 1950 Named the best track athlete of the first half of the 20th century, Jesse Owens receives his trophy from Ed Sullivan.
3. Jesse Owens poses with Kenosha city councilmen Edward Wavro, Gilbert Petzke, Gordon McAleer and Kenosha Postmaster Paul Saftig at the American Legion Post Clubrooms, 1954.
4. Day job - Owens worked as a gas station attendant (a role he recreated in this publicity shot once he was famous)
Background from {{https://library.osu.edu/site/jesseowens/growing-up/]}
Growing Up
A replica of a small, wooden house stands in Jesse Owens Memorial Park in Oakville, Alabama to commemorate the birthplace of the four-time Olympic gold medalist. It was there on Sept. 12, 1913, that James Cleveland (J.C.) Owens was born, the last of 10 children raised by Henry and Mary Emma Owens. At that time, Jesse’s parents were sharecroppers and the family lived on a meager income. By the early 1920s, though, Jesse’s older sister, Lillie, had moved north to Cleveland and wrote home how the city offered plenty of jobs in its factories and other businesses. So, the Owens family moved to Cleveland, settling on the east side.
In Cleveland, Jesse enrolled in Bolton Elementary School, where, the story goes, one of his teachers, misinterpreting how he pronounced “J.C.” because of his southern accent, started calling him “Jesse.” The name stuck.
After Bolton Elementary, Jesse attended Fairmount Junior High, where he met Charles Riley, the gym teacher and track coach. Riley had noticed Owens in gym class and encouraged him to start training for the track team. Riley had great influence on Owens, both technically and mentally. It was Riley who taught his athletes that training for longer races would help them in the 100- and 200-yard dashes. At the same time, Riley taught the mental aspect of competition. His motto, “Train for four years from next Friday,” emphasized long-term rather than short-term gains.
In 1930, Owens enrolled in Cleveland’s East Technical School where he was encouraged to focus on track, under the guidance of Edgar Weil, East Tech’s new head track coach. But Weil had little experience in the sport, having coached football before arriving at East Tech. Weil then asked Riley to help him train Owens, and under their tutelage, the young athlete soon dominated every race he entered. Only two years later, his coaches were preparing him for a tryout on the U.S. Olympic Team and competition at the 1932 Summer Games in Los Angeles. At the Midwestern preliminary trials at Northwestern University, however, Owens lost all three events he entered: the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and the long jump.
Owens returned to school for his senior year, and he was elected president of East Tech’s student council as well as captain of its track team. In the spring of 1933, his last in high school, he placed first in 75 of the 79 races he entered, and he set a new record in the long jump at the state interscholastic finals. The pinnacle was the National Interscholastic Championship in Chicago where he won the long jump, set a world record in the 220-yard dash and tied a world record in the 100-yard dash. When Owens returned to Cleveland, city officials gave him a victory parade, the first of many honorary events over the years celebrating the track star’s achievements.
Owens and The Ohio State University
Owens’ achievements on the track in high school were so phenomenal that he caught the attention of several Big Ten universities, including The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. It came down to which school had the best offer, and in the end, OSU’s proposal that Owens could work part-time as a freight elevator operator at the State House while training and going to classes was the winning one. After passing a series of exams that summer to qualify him to enter college (he was a few credits shy of graduating from high school), Owens started classes at OSU in the fall of 1933.
At the time of Owens’ matriculation, The Ohio State University had only one men’s dorm, and Owens was barred from it because of his race. He instead shared a boarding house with several other African-American students on East 11th Avenue, where they cooked their own meals and sometimes ate in the student union. No restaurant along High Street would serve them, nor were they allowed to go to most movie theaters. Owens, though, made the best of the situation, focusing on his studies and training with the OSU track team under coach Larry Snyder.
Snyder, who thought Owens’ race starts were too slow, made the athlete repeatedly practice starts that had him crouching tightly at the starting line. He also altered Owens’ long-jump style, teaching him to move his legs in mid-air. By May 1935, Owens was showing the nation a glimmer of what was to come at the 1936 Olympic Summer Games: That month, at the Big Ten Finals in Ann Arbor, he set world records in the 220-yard dash, the 220-yard low hurdles and the long jump.
While Owens was logging many victories on the track – he was even chosen team captain, the first African American elected to that position on a Big Ten team – he had few such highlights in the classroom. His grades were so poor his junior year that the University made him academically ineligible to compete in any winter indoor meets in 1936. He had brought his grades up sufficiently by spring quarter to compete in the regular outdoor season, but that was the last full academic year Owens spent at Ohio State. After doing so well in the 1936 Summer Games, he decided to take advantage of the financial opportunities his fame offered. He did go back to OSU the fall of 1940, but he once again was placed on academic probation. In December 1941 he withdrew from OSU and never finished his degree. Thirty-two years later, however, the University awarded him an honorary doctorate of athletic arts “for his unparalleled skill and ability” as an athlete and for “his personification of sportsmanship ideals.”
The Owens Family
By the time Jesse Owens traveled to Berlin for the 1936 Olympic Games, he was already married with a baby daughter. Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon had met at Fairmount Junior High School in 1930 in Cleveland when he was fifteen and she was thirteen. They dated steadily throughout high school, and Ruth gave birth to their first baby daughter, Gloria, on Aug. 8, 1932.
Five years later, in 1937, the couple’s second daughter, Marlene, was born, and Beverly, the youngest daughter, was born in 1940. Gloria and Marlene both later attended Ohio State, and Marlene became OSU’s first African-American Homecoming Queen in 1960.
Jesse supported his new family at first with various odd-jobs, such as pumping gas at a Cleveland gas station, while Ruth quit school to work in a beauty parlor in Cleveland, where she lived with her parents. It was the first of many long periods of time spent apart over the years, as Owens traveled first for athletics, then to speaking engagements and philanthropic events around the world.
In the early 1970s, with the children grown, Ruth and Jesse left their Chicago home of more than 20 years for the warmer climate of Scottsdale, Arizona. In late 1979, Owens, a lifetime smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Three months later on March 31, 1980, he died at the age of 66.
After Jesse’s death, Ruth carried on his philanthropic work through the Jesse Owens Memorial Foundation, and watched over the family’s interests when commercial enterprises arose, such as the production of The Jesse Owens Story, a four-hour television movie that coincided with the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. She traveled extensively to numerous dedications, ground-breakings, and other honorary events held in Jesse’s memory. Memorial events included the renaming of the road leading to the Berlin Olympic Stadium and the creation of a sculpture garden outside Ohio Stadium at The Ohio State University. Ruth died in 2001 at the age of 86.
In 2009, Owens’ three daughters returned to OSU to testify at a field hearing before state lawmakers who were considering the Olympic athlete to be chosen for a statue to be placed in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. At the hearing, Marlene said her father was “a husband, father, son, grandfather, friend, athlete, humanitarian, motivator, American and role model. He was loyal to each of these roles beyond expectation.”
1936 Olympics
After the end of the spring quarter at Ohio State, Owens traveled to the Olympic tryout finals in New York, where he won all three of his events. He and the 381 members of the U.S. Olympic Team then boarded the SS Manhattan on July 15 for its voyage to Europe. Along the way, Owens, who had been getting a significant amount of press for his track achievements, signed hundreds of autographs for fellow shipmates. After nine days of rough seas and stormy weather, the ship docked at the German port of Bremerhaven; the athletes were in Berlin enjoying the opening ceremonies barely a week later on August 1st.
Participating as a sprinter at the Olympic Summer Games of 1936 was a far different experience than it is today. There were no starting blocks, their shoes were made of heavy leather, and instead of running on a contemporary turf track, they sped down a course composed of cinder, which became uneven and messy when it rained. It was, in fact, raining intermittently during the first week of Olympiad XI, yet Owens won four Olympic gold medals. Along the way, he tied the world record of 10.3 seconds in the 100-meter dash; set new Olympic records of 20.7 seconds in the 200-meter race, and 26 feet, 5 1/4 inches in the long jump; and he ran the first leg in the finals of the 400-meter relay, an event in which his team set a new world and Olympic record of 39.8 seconds.
His triumphs before a worldwide audience were serendipitous; Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, who had been widely condemned before the Games for his anti-Semitic policies, openly anticipated a great showing of Aryan athletic supremacy. With his victories in track and field, Owens had proved the Nazi dictator’s racist theories wrong, and in doing so, had become not only an Olympic gold medal winner but an American hero.
Owens’ Legacy: a National Icon
Back home, amid the hoopla over his Olympic achievements at the 1936 Berlin Games, there were plenty of opportunities for Owens to take advantage of his fame. Soon enough, Owens signed on with a New York agent and was making money as a one-man show, running before baseball games and other athletic events against a hometown’s fastest athlete. In late 1936 in Cuba, that turned out to be a thoroughbred horse, after that country’s fastest runner, Conrado Rodrigues, pulled out of the event. With a 40-yard head start, Owens won the race and $2,000.
After a whirlwind of post-Olympic promotional activities and a brief return to Ohio State University in 1940, Owens settled into a life of nearly constant travel. Whether it was encouraging physical fitness among African Americans during World War II or promoting the Olympic ideals during the Winter and Summer Games, Owens was often on the road. He did take time to start several businesses, the first of which was the Jesse Owens Dry Cleaning Company, founded in 1938. That firm was in debt after about a year, however, and in 1939 Owens filed for personal bankruptcy. He also owed money to the Internal Revenue Service for failing to pay taxes on income earned after the Berlin Olympics. Decades later, he would be in trouble with the IRS again for failing to file income tax returns for several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Owens was much more successful with several public relations firms, through which he worked on various promotional and advertising projects. Much of his income was earned on the road, however, from various appearances around the country, ranging from automobile dealers’ conventions to Kiwanis Club meetings to university symposiums. He also appeared in advertising and at promotional events for such corporations as Ford Motor Company and Sears, Roebuck and Company.
Owens also made many appearances for various nonprofit causes and government programs. In the 1950s, for instance, as part of a Cold War effort to promote democracy aboard, the U.S. State Department asked Owens to tour Asia as a goodwill ambassador. Owens stayed involved as well in advancing the Olympic cause. In 1956, for instance, he and several other former U.S. Olympic champions attended the Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, as personal representatives of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1973, he was appointed to the board of directors of the U.S. Olympic Committee. In that position, he spent much of his time pushing for funding to equip and train U.S. athletes.
Meanwhile, Owens spent a lot of time working with charity groups, mostly serving as a role model for youngsters through his work with Boys’ Clubs of America and through his association with the ARCO Jesse Owens Games. Along the way, he was showered with statues, plaques and other mementoes to honor him. Four years before his death, in 1976, President Gerald Ford presented Owens the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given by the U.S. government.
In 1970, his memoir, Blackthink: My Life as a Black Man and White Man, was published. In it, Owens criticized the tactics used by African-American militants as being counterproductive. Though Owens had suffered discrimination as an athlete – his family was refused accommodation at a number of New York hotels when they traveled there to welcome him home from Berlin, for example – his message was that anyone could achieve his dream through hard work and perseverance. Critics said his fame had sheltered him too much from the harsh reality faced by most African Americans at the time.
Still, Owens had many fans, even those who were far too young to remember the 1936 Berlin Games. He drew crowds at all of his appearances, and he received many letters and cards over the years, some from people just looking for an autograph, but many from those who had been inspired by Owens’ achievements. In a mailgram decorated with teddy bears and dated Dec. 17, 1977, Andy Monfried of East Brunswick, New Jersey, told Owens: “Every time I go running I always think of you. When I come home from school I pretend I am you. … I have you in a Picture autograph in the safest place in the house. When I get older I will show my children and say one time this man was the best athlete in the world. It is a honor to have Jesse Owen (sic) Picture Autograph. Someday I will do what you did. And you’ll be proud of me.”
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(5)
(0)
LTC Stephen F.
Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin Olympics 1936
Narrated by Jesse Owens, one of the best sports documentaries ever, VHS transfer from an old television broadcast.
Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin Olympics 1936
Narrated by Jesse Owens, one of the best sports documentaries ever, VHS transfer from an old television broadcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soOm36ZzCwI
Images:
1. Jesse Owens and Minnie Ruth Owens marriage on 10 August 1935
2. Jesse Owens and his lifelong friend Luz Long lie on the stadium floor
3. 1950s husband & wife Jesse and Minnie Ruth Owns seated on a sofa
4. The Owens family posing for pictures after their daughter Marlene's Homecoming Queen win at the Ohio State University, 1960
Biographies:
1. imdb.com/name/nm0654389/bio
2. Timeline from telegraph.co.uk/films/race/jesse-owens-timeline
1. Background from {[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0654389/bio]}
Jesse Owens Biography
Overview (5)
Born September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama, USA
Died March 31, 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA (lung cancer)
Birth Name James Cleveland Owens
Nickname Black Magic.
Height 5' 10" (1.78 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Jesse Owens, arguably the most popular American track and field star in history, was -- along with his contemporary, world's heavyweight champion Joe Louis -- one of the first African Americans to change white society's perception of both black athletes and, more importantly, people of color. The future Olympic champion was born James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama, the youngest of 10 children born to sharecroppers Henry and Emma Owens. When young "J.C." as he was called was eight years old, his parents decided to abandon their small hometown and flee the sharecropper's life of peonage (legal in the U.S. until a 1938 Supreme Court decision outlawed it) by moving north to Cleveland, Ohio to find a better way of life, far away from the Jim Crow segregated south. J.C. was enrolled in a public school, and on his first day of school, the teacher heard his name as "Jesse", which was what he would be known as instead of J.C. for the rest of his life.
Prosperity did not come with the move to Cleveland as southern blacks were to find that racism was prevalent up north too, and Owens had to work while attending school to help support his family. Because he had to work after school, his high school track coach would meet him in the mornings to train him, due to his great talent. He was recruited by many colleges, but decided to go to the University of Ohio, but without a scholarship, he had to again work his way through school. In addition, he had to face discrimination daily on campus and during the travels to track meets, as America was still in the throes of legal segregation.
Owens married his high school sweetheart, Ruth Solomon, in 1935, and they eventually had three daughters together. At the Big Ten meet in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935, Owens set three world records and tied a fourth in less than an hour. Owens tied the record in the 100-yard dash at 9.4 seconds, and set records in the broad jump (26 feet 8 1/4 inches), the 220-yard dash (20.3 seconds) and the 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds). The stage was set for Berlin.
The Berlin Olympics of 1936 were held in Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and Hitler's Nazi Party used the event as a soapbox to promulgate the theory of "Aryan" racial superiority. Hitler was spectacularly shown up by Jesse Owens and other African American athletes, members of a so-called "inferior" race. Despite the hostile atmosphere, Owens triumphed in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and the broad jump. He replaced a Jewish-American member of the 400-meter relay team that went on to win the Gold Medal. In three of his events, Owens -- who became the first American in the history of track and field to win four gold medals in a single Olympics, a feat not duplicated until 1984, when Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at the Warsaw Pact nations-free 1984 Summer Olympics) -- established Olympic records. It is disputed whether Owens shook hands with Hitler. By the end of the games, the German fans cheered for him. In fact, in his 1970 autobiography "The Jesse Owens Story", Owens claimed that the Fuhrer himself waved to him.
Owens' life after the Olympics was marred by the lack of opportunities provided to all African Americans, not just athletes. Although he came back to a ticker-tape parade held in in his honor by the City of New York, Owens had to ride the freight elevator to attend a reception for him at the posh Waldorf-Astoria hotel. In his autobiography, Owens remembered, "When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."
Like many African Americans in the first half of the 20th Century, Owens was a Republican. The Democratic Party traditionally counted on the votes of the "Solid South", politicians who were anti-black and pro-segregation, while the Party of Lincoln traditionally was the party of civil rights legislation, which died in committee under long-serving Southern Democratic pols in Congress. It was not until the 1960 Presidential election that a majority of African Americans voted for the Democratic candidate rather than the Republican. Thus, it is not surprising that Owens endorsed Republican Presidential candidate 'Alf Landon' over incumbent President 'Franklin D. Roosevelt' in 1936, who would lose, crushed under the massive landslide racked up by FDR, who began to form a "New Deal coalition" that would embrace African Americans.
After the Olympics, Owens had difficulty making a living and turned to sports promotion, essentially turning himself into an entertainer. Though boxing was integrated, the number of African American contenders was regulated as to not alienate white fans, and the pro sports of baseball, football and basketball were segregated. Black athletes, even those as popular as Owens, did not begin winning serious promotional contracts until the 1970s.
To make an income, Owens engaged in many exhibitions, such as running against race horses before Negro League professional baseball games. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he became a radio disc-jockey. He was extremely well-liked, and became an in-demand public speaker. Owen's popularity grew with the time, as he was seen after the war as the man who showed up Hitler and his discredited policies of racial superiority, thus becoming an important public figure in a society that, beginning with the Supreme Court decision desegregating schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954), was facing the painful process of overcoming its own racial hatreds and sordid past.
Owens started his own public relations firm, and traveled around the country speaking on behalf of corporations and for US Olympic Committee. His speeches stressed the importance of religion, hard work and loyalty. He also sponsored and participated in youth sports programs in inner-city neighborhoods. In 1976, President Gerald Ford bestowed the Medal of Freedom on Jesse Owens, the highest civilian honor the United States government can award.
Jesse Owens, one of the more remarkable Americans to grace the world stage, died on March 31, 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona from complications of lung cancer, likely caused by his pack-a-day cigarette smoking habit. He was buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. Owens was 66 years old. His Owens's memory is kept alive by his widow Ruth and his daughter Marlene, who operate the Jesse Owens Foundation, which provides financial assistance and support to deserving young people s from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Honors continued to accrue to Owens, even after death, testament to his greatness as a symbol of overcoming adversity. In 1984, a street in Berlin was named after him, and a school was renamed Jesse Owens Realschule/Oberschule (Secondary School). On March 28, 1990, Owens was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, which was presented to his family by President 'George H. W. Bush'.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
Spouse (1)
Ruth Solomon (10 August 1935 - 31 March 1980) ( his death) ( 3 children)
Trivia (13)
1. Won 4 gold medals in Track & Field (100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4 × 100 meter relay) at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
2. Even though he defeated the top German athletes in the 1936 Olympics, the German people liked him. Crowds of 110,000 cheered him in Berlin's glittering Olympic Stadium - fans sought his autograph and picture when he walked the streets. In 1982, Berlin renamed the avenue leading to the Olympic stadium "Jesse Owens Allee" (Parkway) in his honor. His widow and family attended the dedication ceremony as guests of the German government.
3. Inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, 1983 (charter member).
4. During the 1968 Mexico City games, he was called in to talk to the black athletes to try to ease the tension created after the banishment of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. After he met with the athletes, he was seen leaving the meeting in tears because he felt that he was unable to reach the more radical athletes who saw him as nothing more than an "Uncle Tom".
5. Was invited back to Berlin in the 1960s, to the same stadium where he'd won his Olympic medals, and was given a hero's welcome. The mayor addressed him: "The last time you were here, Adolf Hitler refused to shake your hand. Today, I'm proud to give you both of mine." Owens and the mayor embraced, then Owens ran one last ceremonial lap around the track, with the crowd cheering.
6. Became famous for beating horses in a 100-yard dash - but there was a trick to it: They used a starting gun, which would startle the horse long enough to give Owens enough of a head start to win.
7. Was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African-Americans.
8. The runner he beat in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Summer Olympics was Jackie Robinson's brother, Matthew "Mack" Robinson, who also beat the world record at the time while taking the silver medal.
9. Owens once worked for exploitation titan Kroger Babb, traveling the road with the movie Mom and Dad (1945) with an all-black crew serving African American theaters. Owens would deliver a lecture on "sex hygiene" during an intermission.
10. Ironically, he was not intended to be part of the relay team in the 1936 Olympic Games. He and Ralph Metcalfe replaced Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jewish members of the 1936 Olympic track team.
11. While Adolf Hitler was not fond of Jesse Owens as a black man per se, he never snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand. Hitler shook hands with only the German winners on the first day of the Olympics. When the Olympic officials demanded that going forward Hitler either shaken the hand of every medalist or none at all, he chose not to publicly greet any medalist regardless of nationality.
12. Jesse Owens carried a photograph of Adolf Hitler shaking hands with him at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in his wallet. It is unknown if the photograph still exists.
13. In 2014, Eric Brown, British fighter pilot and test pilot, the Fleet Air Arm's most decorated living pilot, stated in a BBC documentary: "I actually witnessed Hitler shaking hands with Jesse Owens and congratulating him on what he had achieved." Additionally, an article in The Baltimore Sun in August 1936 reported that Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself.
Personal Quotes (15)
1. [When asked about how he felt years after Adolf Hitler refused to shake his hand at the Olympics] I'm here. He's not.
2. We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.
3. Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
4. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
5. The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at.
6. Although I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either.
7. Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.
8. One chance is all you need.
9. Life doesn't give you all the practice races you need.
10. For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
11. The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
12. I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.
13. If you don't try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody's back yard.
14. Some people say Hitler snubbed me. But I tell you, Hitler did not snub me. I am not knocking the President. Remember, I am not a politician, but remember that the President did not send me a message of congratulations because, people said, he was too busy.
15. Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave. It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters. But before he left I was on my way to a broadcast and passed near his box. He waved at me and I waved back. I think it was bad taste to criticize the 'man of the hour' in another country.
2. Timeline from{[.telegraph.co.uk/films/race/jesse-owens-timeline/]}
Jesse Owens: the life and times of a 20th century icon
1913 Owens born Oakville, Alabama
The tenth and youngest child of Henry Cleveland Owens and Mary Emma Owens is named James Cleveland, known as “JC”. His father is a sharecropper, his grandfather was a slave. From the age of six, he picks up to 100lb of cotton a day despite serious bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia.
1922 A misheard name sticks
The family moves to Cleveland, Ohio, in search of opportunities during the Great Migration. When James enrols at Bolton Elementary School, his teacher writes down “Jesse” for “JC” in the register, reputedly because of his strong Southern accent. The name stays with him for life.
1928 Early sporting achievements
At Fairmount Junior High, Owens is spotted by Charles Riley, lifelong coach and mentor. Owens works at a shoe repair shop and trains before school, setting records in high jump at more than 6ft, and leaping nearly 23ft in the long jump. He meets his future wife, Minnie Ruth Solomon.
1930 Starting to build a stellar reputation
Owens moves to East Cleveland Technical High and Riley follows as volunteer coach. Victories ensue at the Ohio state and national championships; he equals the world record in the 100-yard dash (9.4s), sets a new one over 220 yards (20.7s), and wins the long jump.
1933 New mentor at university
The high-school athletics star is showered with offers but chooses Ohio State University, which has no track scholarship programme. He works as a lift operator, at a petrol station, as a waiter and an Ohio Statehouse page. Larry Snyder, one of the few US track and field coaches to allow black athletes to compete in university sports, teaches him a new focus and discipline.
1935 Breaking more records
Nicknamed “The Buckeye Bullet” after the team’s informal title, Owens foreshadows Olympic glory by breaking three world records and matching a fourth in 45 minutes at the Big Ten Competition in Michigan, despite a back injury. He marries Minnie; they have a daughter and will add two more. They stay married 48 years until Owens’s death.
1936 The Berlin Summer Games
Having won a place in the US Olympic squad by winning three qualifying events, Owens joins the US team. With other countries, the US has considered a boycott over Germany’s treatment of the Jews. US Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage opposes it when Germany promises to withdraw a ban on Jewish participation and remove anti-Semitic signs.
Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels want the Games to be a celebration of Aryan supremacy. Eighteen African-American athletes take part, winning 14 gold medals. Owens earns four: 100m, 200m, relay sprint and long jump.
The Nazi myth of racial superiority is in tatters and Owens becomes a worldwide symbol of its destruction. He is said to have been snubbed by Hitler at the victory ceremony. Owens later says he was ignored not by the Führer but US President Franklin D Roosevelt. He received neither a congratulatory telegram nor an invitation to the White House.
Back in the US, Owens takes on lucrative speaking engagements and earns $10,000 for endorsing Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon.
Stripped of amateur status, his sponsorship deals dry up and Owens looks for other ways to earn a living. He races against a thoroughbred horse in Cuba for $2,000, with an equine handicap, and wins.
1943 Moving into PR
Appointed director of national fitness by the wartime US Office of Civilian Defense in 1942, Owens is hired by Ford as assistant personnel director of African-American workers. Promoted to director, he switches to PR. Three years on he moves to Chicago and sets up his own PR firm.
1950 Press plaudits
Owens is named as the greatest track athlete of the past half-century by the Associated Press and three years later becomes secretary of the Illinois State Athletic Commission.
1955 Motivational success
Owens visits India, the Philippines and Malaysia to lead running clinics and promote US political and economic values. The following year he attends the summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, as personal representative of US President Dwight D Eisenhower.
1965 In the Owens name
A fruitful relationship with Atlantic Richfield Oil Company leads to the first ARCO Jesse Owens Games, providing training and inspiration to young black athletes. Owens is appointed the spring training and running coach for the struggling New York Mets baseball team.
1976 The legend grows
After joining the US Olympic Committee board in 1973 and induction into the US Track and Field Hall of Fame a year later, Owens receives the official recognition that eluded him 40 years ago. Gerald Ford awards him the highest US civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1980 Owens dies at 66
A pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, Owens succumbs to lung cancer, aged 66, at his retirement home in Tucson, Arizona.
1984-96 Memorials
The Jesse Owens Memorial Plaza is dedicated outside Ohio Stadium. In Berlin, a street near the Olympic Stadium is renamed Jesse-Owens-Allee. The Jesse Owens Memorial Park opens in his Alabama birthplace. Owens is by now the best-known athlete in Olympic history."
FYI LTC John Shaw 1SG Steven ImermanGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySGT Michael HearnSGT Randell Rose[SGT Denny EspinosaA1C Riley SandersSSgt Clare MaySSG Robert WebsterCSM Chuck StaffordPFC Craig KarshnerSFC Don VanceSFC (Join to see) SPC Nancy GreenePVT Mark Zehner Lt Col Charlie Brown
Narrated by Jesse Owens, one of the best sports documentaries ever, VHS transfer from an old television broadcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soOm36ZzCwI
Images:
1. Jesse Owens and Minnie Ruth Owens marriage on 10 August 1935
2. Jesse Owens and his lifelong friend Luz Long lie on the stadium floor
3. 1950s husband & wife Jesse and Minnie Ruth Owns seated on a sofa
4. The Owens family posing for pictures after their daughter Marlene's Homecoming Queen win at the Ohio State University, 1960
Biographies:
1. imdb.com/name/nm0654389/bio
2. Timeline from telegraph.co.uk/films/race/jesse-owens-timeline
1. Background from {[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0654389/bio]}
Jesse Owens Biography
Overview (5)
Born September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama, USA
Died March 31, 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA (lung cancer)
Birth Name James Cleveland Owens
Nickname Black Magic.
Height 5' 10" (1.78 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Jesse Owens, arguably the most popular American track and field star in history, was -- along with his contemporary, world's heavyweight champion Joe Louis -- one of the first African Americans to change white society's perception of both black athletes and, more importantly, people of color. The future Olympic champion was born James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama, the youngest of 10 children born to sharecroppers Henry and Emma Owens. When young "J.C." as he was called was eight years old, his parents decided to abandon their small hometown and flee the sharecropper's life of peonage (legal in the U.S. until a 1938 Supreme Court decision outlawed it) by moving north to Cleveland, Ohio to find a better way of life, far away from the Jim Crow segregated south. J.C. was enrolled in a public school, and on his first day of school, the teacher heard his name as "Jesse", which was what he would be known as instead of J.C. for the rest of his life.
Prosperity did not come with the move to Cleveland as southern blacks were to find that racism was prevalent up north too, and Owens had to work while attending school to help support his family. Because he had to work after school, his high school track coach would meet him in the mornings to train him, due to his great talent. He was recruited by many colleges, but decided to go to the University of Ohio, but without a scholarship, he had to again work his way through school. In addition, he had to face discrimination daily on campus and during the travels to track meets, as America was still in the throes of legal segregation.
Owens married his high school sweetheart, Ruth Solomon, in 1935, and they eventually had three daughters together. At the Big Ten meet in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935, Owens set three world records and tied a fourth in less than an hour. Owens tied the record in the 100-yard dash at 9.4 seconds, and set records in the broad jump (26 feet 8 1/4 inches), the 220-yard dash (20.3 seconds) and the 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds). The stage was set for Berlin.
The Berlin Olympics of 1936 were held in Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and Hitler's Nazi Party used the event as a soapbox to promulgate the theory of "Aryan" racial superiority. Hitler was spectacularly shown up by Jesse Owens and other African American athletes, members of a so-called "inferior" race. Despite the hostile atmosphere, Owens triumphed in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and the broad jump. He replaced a Jewish-American member of the 400-meter relay team that went on to win the Gold Medal. In three of his events, Owens -- who became the first American in the history of track and field to win four gold medals in a single Olympics, a feat not duplicated until 1984, when Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at the Warsaw Pact nations-free 1984 Summer Olympics) -- established Olympic records. It is disputed whether Owens shook hands with Hitler. By the end of the games, the German fans cheered for him. In fact, in his 1970 autobiography "The Jesse Owens Story", Owens claimed that the Fuhrer himself waved to him.
Owens' life after the Olympics was marred by the lack of opportunities provided to all African Americans, not just athletes. Although he came back to a ticker-tape parade held in in his honor by the City of New York, Owens had to ride the freight elevator to attend a reception for him at the posh Waldorf-Astoria hotel. In his autobiography, Owens remembered, "When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."
Like many African Americans in the first half of the 20th Century, Owens was a Republican. The Democratic Party traditionally counted on the votes of the "Solid South", politicians who were anti-black and pro-segregation, while the Party of Lincoln traditionally was the party of civil rights legislation, which died in committee under long-serving Southern Democratic pols in Congress. It was not until the 1960 Presidential election that a majority of African Americans voted for the Democratic candidate rather than the Republican. Thus, it is not surprising that Owens endorsed Republican Presidential candidate 'Alf Landon' over incumbent President 'Franklin D. Roosevelt' in 1936, who would lose, crushed under the massive landslide racked up by FDR, who began to form a "New Deal coalition" that would embrace African Americans.
After the Olympics, Owens had difficulty making a living and turned to sports promotion, essentially turning himself into an entertainer. Though boxing was integrated, the number of African American contenders was regulated as to not alienate white fans, and the pro sports of baseball, football and basketball were segregated. Black athletes, even those as popular as Owens, did not begin winning serious promotional contracts until the 1970s.
To make an income, Owens engaged in many exhibitions, such as running against race horses before Negro League professional baseball games. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he became a radio disc-jockey. He was extremely well-liked, and became an in-demand public speaker. Owen's popularity grew with the time, as he was seen after the war as the man who showed up Hitler and his discredited policies of racial superiority, thus becoming an important public figure in a society that, beginning with the Supreme Court decision desegregating schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954), was facing the painful process of overcoming its own racial hatreds and sordid past.
Owens started his own public relations firm, and traveled around the country speaking on behalf of corporations and for US Olympic Committee. His speeches stressed the importance of religion, hard work and loyalty. He also sponsored and participated in youth sports programs in inner-city neighborhoods. In 1976, President Gerald Ford bestowed the Medal of Freedom on Jesse Owens, the highest civilian honor the United States government can award.
Jesse Owens, one of the more remarkable Americans to grace the world stage, died on March 31, 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona from complications of lung cancer, likely caused by his pack-a-day cigarette smoking habit. He was buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. Owens was 66 years old. His Owens's memory is kept alive by his widow Ruth and his daughter Marlene, who operate the Jesse Owens Foundation, which provides financial assistance and support to deserving young people s from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Honors continued to accrue to Owens, even after death, testament to his greatness as a symbol of overcoming adversity. In 1984, a street in Berlin was named after him, and a school was renamed Jesse Owens Realschule/Oberschule (Secondary School). On March 28, 1990, Owens was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, which was presented to his family by President 'George H. W. Bush'.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
Spouse (1)
Ruth Solomon (10 August 1935 - 31 March 1980) ( his death) ( 3 children)
Trivia (13)
1. Won 4 gold medals in Track & Field (100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4 × 100 meter relay) at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
2. Even though he defeated the top German athletes in the 1936 Olympics, the German people liked him. Crowds of 110,000 cheered him in Berlin's glittering Olympic Stadium - fans sought his autograph and picture when he walked the streets. In 1982, Berlin renamed the avenue leading to the Olympic stadium "Jesse Owens Allee" (Parkway) in his honor. His widow and family attended the dedication ceremony as guests of the German government.
3. Inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, 1983 (charter member).
4. During the 1968 Mexico City games, he was called in to talk to the black athletes to try to ease the tension created after the banishment of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. After he met with the athletes, he was seen leaving the meeting in tears because he felt that he was unable to reach the more radical athletes who saw him as nothing more than an "Uncle Tom".
5. Was invited back to Berlin in the 1960s, to the same stadium where he'd won his Olympic medals, and was given a hero's welcome. The mayor addressed him: "The last time you were here, Adolf Hitler refused to shake your hand. Today, I'm proud to give you both of mine." Owens and the mayor embraced, then Owens ran one last ceremonial lap around the track, with the crowd cheering.
6. Became famous for beating horses in a 100-yard dash - but there was a trick to it: They used a starting gun, which would startle the horse long enough to give Owens enough of a head start to win.
7. Was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African-Americans.
8. The runner he beat in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Summer Olympics was Jackie Robinson's brother, Matthew "Mack" Robinson, who also beat the world record at the time while taking the silver medal.
9. Owens once worked for exploitation titan Kroger Babb, traveling the road with the movie Mom and Dad (1945) with an all-black crew serving African American theaters. Owens would deliver a lecture on "sex hygiene" during an intermission.
10. Ironically, he was not intended to be part of the relay team in the 1936 Olympic Games. He and Ralph Metcalfe replaced Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jewish members of the 1936 Olympic track team.
11. While Adolf Hitler was not fond of Jesse Owens as a black man per se, he never snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand. Hitler shook hands with only the German winners on the first day of the Olympics. When the Olympic officials demanded that going forward Hitler either shaken the hand of every medalist or none at all, he chose not to publicly greet any medalist regardless of nationality.
12. Jesse Owens carried a photograph of Adolf Hitler shaking hands with him at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in his wallet. It is unknown if the photograph still exists.
13. In 2014, Eric Brown, British fighter pilot and test pilot, the Fleet Air Arm's most decorated living pilot, stated in a BBC documentary: "I actually witnessed Hitler shaking hands with Jesse Owens and congratulating him on what he had achieved." Additionally, an article in The Baltimore Sun in August 1936 reported that Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself.
Personal Quotes (15)
1. [When asked about how he felt years after Adolf Hitler refused to shake his hand at the Olympics] I'm here. He's not.
2. We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.
3. Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
4. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
5. The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at.
6. Although I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either.
7. Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.
8. One chance is all you need.
9. Life doesn't give you all the practice races you need.
10. For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
11. The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
12. I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.
13. If you don't try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody's back yard.
14. Some people say Hitler snubbed me. But I tell you, Hitler did not snub me. I am not knocking the President. Remember, I am not a politician, but remember that the President did not send me a message of congratulations because, people said, he was too busy.
15. Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave. It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters. But before he left I was on my way to a broadcast and passed near his box. He waved at me and I waved back. I think it was bad taste to criticize the 'man of the hour' in another country.
2. Timeline from{[.telegraph.co.uk/films/race/jesse-owens-timeline/]}
Jesse Owens: the life and times of a 20th century icon
1913 Owens born Oakville, Alabama
The tenth and youngest child of Henry Cleveland Owens and Mary Emma Owens is named James Cleveland, known as “JC”. His father is a sharecropper, his grandfather was a slave. From the age of six, he picks up to 100lb of cotton a day despite serious bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia.
1922 A misheard name sticks
The family moves to Cleveland, Ohio, in search of opportunities during the Great Migration. When James enrols at Bolton Elementary School, his teacher writes down “Jesse” for “JC” in the register, reputedly because of his strong Southern accent. The name stays with him for life.
1928 Early sporting achievements
At Fairmount Junior High, Owens is spotted by Charles Riley, lifelong coach and mentor. Owens works at a shoe repair shop and trains before school, setting records in high jump at more than 6ft, and leaping nearly 23ft in the long jump. He meets his future wife, Minnie Ruth Solomon.
1930 Starting to build a stellar reputation
Owens moves to East Cleveland Technical High and Riley follows as volunteer coach. Victories ensue at the Ohio state and national championships; he equals the world record in the 100-yard dash (9.4s), sets a new one over 220 yards (20.7s), and wins the long jump.
1933 New mentor at university
The high-school athletics star is showered with offers but chooses Ohio State University, which has no track scholarship programme. He works as a lift operator, at a petrol station, as a waiter and an Ohio Statehouse page. Larry Snyder, one of the few US track and field coaches to allow black athletes to compete in university sports, teaches him a new focus and discipline.
1935 Breaking more records
Nicknamed “The Buckeye Bullet” after the team’s informal title, Owens foreshadows Olympic glory by breaking three world records and matching a fourth in 45 minutes at the Big Ten Competition in Michigan, despite a back injury. He marries Minnie; they have a daughter and will add two more. They stay married 48 years until Owens’s death.
1936 The Berlin Summer Games
Having won a place in the US Olympic squad by winning three qualifying events, Owens joins the US team. With other countries, the US has considered a boycott over Germany’s treatment of the Jews. US Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage opposes it when Germany promises to withdraw a ban on Jewish participation and remove anti-Semitic signs.
Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels want the Games to be a celebration of Aryan supremacy. Eighteen African-American athletes take part, winning 14 gold medals. Owens earns four: 100m, 200m, relay sprint and long jump.
The Nazi myth of racial superiority is in tatters and Owens becomes a worldwide symbol of its destruction. He is said to have been snubbed by Hitler at the victory ceremony. Owens later says he was ignored not by the Führer but US President Franklin D Roosevelt. He received neither a congratulatory telegram nor an invitation to the White House.
Back in the US, Owens takes on lucrative speaking engagements and earns $10,000 for endorsing Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon.
Stripped of amateur status, his sponsorship deals dry up and Owens looks for other ways to earn a living. He races against a thoroughbred horse in Cuba for $2,000, with an equine handicap, and wins.
1943 Moving into PR
Appointed director of national fitness by the wartime US Office of Civilian Defense in 1942, Owens is hired by Ford as assistant personnel director of African-American workers. Promoted to director, he switches to PR. Three years on he moves to Chicago and sets up his own PR firm.
1950 Press plaudits
Owens is named as the greatest track athlete of the past half-century by the Associated Press and three years later becomes secretary of the Illinois State Athletic Commission.
1955 Motivational success
Owens visits India, the Philippines and Malaysia to lead running clinics and promote US political and economic values. The following year he attends the summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, as personal representative of US President Dwight D Eisenhower.
1965 In the Owens name
A fruitful relationship with Atlantic Richfield Oil Company leads to the first ARCO Jesse Owens Games, providing training and inspiration to young black athletes. Owens is appointed the spring training and running coach for the struggling New York Mets baseball team.
1976 The legend grows
After joining the US Olympic Committee board in 1973 and induction into the US Track and Field Hall of Fame a year later, Owens receives the official recognition that eluded him 40 years ago. Gerald Ford awards him the highest US civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1980 Owens dies at 66
A pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, Owens succumbs to lung cancer, aged 66, at his retirement home in Tucson, Arizona.
1984-96 Memorials
The Jesse Owens Memorial Plaza is dedicated outside Ohio Stadium. In Berlin, a street near the Olympic Stadium is renamed Jesse-Owens-Allee. The Jesse Owens Memorial Park opens in his Alabama birthplace. Owens is by now the best-known athlete in Olympic history."
FYI LTC John Shaw 1SG Steven ImermanGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySGT Michael HearnSGT Randell Rose[SGT Denny EspinosaA1C Riley SandersSSgt Clare MaySSG Robert WebsterCSM Chuck StaffordPFC Craig KarshnerSFC Don VanceSFC (Join to see) SPC Nancy GreenePVT Mark Zehner Lt Col Charlie Brown
(4)
(0)
LTC Stephen F.
'The Jesse Owens Story' (1984)
The Jesse Owens Story (original release July 9, 1984) which was written by Harold Gast is a US-American bibliographical drama about "perhaps the greatest and...
'The Jesse Owens Story' (1984)
The Jesse Owens Story (original release July 9, 1984) which was written by Harold Gast is a US-American bibliographical drama about "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field [sprint & long jump] history" (Frank Litsky, NY Times 1980): Jesse Owens (1913-1980). In 1985, the film was awarded with an Emmy (Primetime Emmy Award) and nominated for another two.
Cast:
Dorian Harewood as Jesse Owens
Dan Ammerman as Coach Robertson
Bob Banks as Henry Owens
Tom Bosley as Jimmy Hoffa
Georg Stanford Brown as Lew Gilbert
LeVar Burton as Professor Preston
Bernard Canepari as Attorney Grossfeld
Robert Chidsey as Governor Aide
Glenn Colerider as OSU Professor Overman
Barry Corbin as Judge
Ronny Cox as Coach Larry Snyder
Chris Douridas as Jerome
Norman Fell as Marty Forkins
Lynn Hamilton as Mamma Solomon
Robert Hibbard as Police Lieutenant
George Kennedy as Charles 'Charley' Riley
Chuck Long as Terry Carter
Gary Moody as Angry Customer
Randy Moore as Coach Cromwell
Debbi Morgan as Ruth Solomon Owens
Greg Morris as Mel Walker
Tonye Patano as Laverne Owens
Lee Ritchey as Brashears
James Sikking as Avery Brundage
Vic Tayback as Abe Saperstein
Craig Miller as Spare Runner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMk_0j-2wNg
Background from {[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/race/jesse-owens-timeline/]}
Jesse Owens: the life and times of a 20th century icon
1913 Owens born Oakville, Alabama
The tenth and youngest child of Henry Cleveland Owens and Mary Emma Owens is named James Cleveland, known as “JC”. His father is a sharecropper, his grandfather was a slave. From the age of six, he picks up to 100lb of cotton a day despite serious bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia.
1922 A misheard name sticks
The family moves to Cleveland, Ohio, in search of opportunities during the Great Migration. When James enrols at Bolton Elementary School, his teacher writes down “Jesse” for “JC” in the register, reputedly because of his strong Southern accent. The name stays with him for life.
1928 Early sporting achievements
At Fairmount Junior High, Owens is spotted by Charles Riley, lifelong coach and mentor. Owens works at a shoe repair shop and trains before school, setting records in high jump at more than 6ft, and leaping nearly 23ft in the long jump. He meets his future wife, Minnie Ruth Solomon.
1930 Starting to build a stellar reputation
Owens moves to East Cleveland Technical High and Riley follows as volunteer coach. Victories ensue at the Ohio state and national championships; he equals the world record in the 100-yard dash (9.4s), sets a new one over 220 yards (20.7s), and wins the long jump.
1933 New mentor at university
The high-school athletics star is showered with offers but chooses Ohio State University, which has no track scholarship programme. He works as a lift operator, at a petrol station, as a waiter and an Ohio Statehouse page. Larry Snyder, one of the few US track and field coaches to allow black athletes to compete in university sports, teaches him a new focus and discipline.
1935 Breaking more records
Nicknamed “The Buckeye Bullet” after the team’s informal title, Owens foreshadows Olympic glory by breaking three world records and matching a fourth in 45 minutes at the Big Ten Competition in Michigan, despite a back injury. He marries Minnie; they have a daughter and will add two more. They stay married 48 years until Owens’s death.
1936 The Berlin Summer Games
Having won a place in the US Olympic squad by winning three qualifying events, Owens joins the US team. With other countries, the US has considered a boycott over Germany’s treatment of the Jews. US Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage opposes it when Germany promises to withdraw a ban on Jewish participation and remove anti-Semitic signs.
Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels want the Games to be a celebration of Aryan supremacy. Eighteen African-American athletes take part, winning 14 gold medals. Owens earns four: 100m, 200m, relay sprint and long jump.
The Nazi myth of racial superiority is in tatters and Owens becomes a worldwide symbol of its destruction. He is said to have been snubbed by Hitler at the victory ceremony. Owens later says he was ignored not by the Führer but US President Franklin D Roosevelt. He received neither a congratulatory telegram nor an invitation to the White House.
Back in the US, Owens takes on lucrative speaking engagements and earns $10,000 for endorsing Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon.
Stripped of amateur status, his sponsorship deals dry up and Owens looks for other ways to earn a living. He races against a thoroughbred horse in Cuba for $2,000, with an equine handicap, and wins.
1943 Moving into PR
Appointed director of national fitness by the wartime US Office of Civilian Defense in 1942, Owens is hired by Ford as assistant personnel director of African-American workers. Promoted to director, he switches to PR. Three years on he moves to Chicago and sets up his own PR firm.
1950 Press plaudits
Owens is named as the greatest track athlete of the past half-century by the Associated Press and three years later becomes secretary of the Illinois State Athletic Commission.
1955 Motivational success
Owens visits India, the Philippines and Malaysia to lead running clinics and promote US political and economic values. The following year he attends the summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, as personal representative of US President Dwight D Eisenhower.
1965 In the Owens name
A fruitful relationship with Atlantic Richfield Oil Company leads to the first ARCO Jesse Owens Games, providing training and inspiration to young black athletes. Owens is appointed the spring training and running coach for the struggling New York Mets baseball team.
1976 The legend grows
After joining the US Olympic Committee board in 1973 and induction into the US Track and Field Hall of Fame a year later, Owens receives the official recognition that eluded him 40 years ago. Gerald Ford awards him the highest US civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1980 Owens dies at 66
A pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, Owens succumbs to lung cancer, aged 66, at his retirement home in Tucson, Arizona.
1984-96 Memorials
The Jesse Owens Memorial Plaza is dedicated outside Ohio Stadium. In Berlin, a street near the Olympic Stadium is renamed Jesse-Owens-Allee. The Jesse Owens Memorial Park opens in his Alabama birthplace. Owens is by now the best-known athlete in Olympic history.
FYI CSM Bruce TregoSFC Richard WilliamsonSPC(P) (Join to see)CSM Chuck StaffordPFC Craig KarshnerCpl Robert Russell PayneA1C Riley SandersSSgt Clare MayPo2 David DunlapSGT (Join to see)Sgt Jim BelanusCpl Vic BurkPO2 Frederick Dunn1LT Peter DustonSGM Bill FrazerSPC Chris HallgrimsonCSM (Join to see)PFC (Join to see)SGT Randell RoseSSG Robert Mark Odom
The Jesse Owens Story (original release July 9, 1984) which was written by Harold Gast is a US-American bibliographical drama about "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field [sprint & long jump] history" (Frank Litsky, NY Times 1980): Jesse Owens (1913-1980). In 1985, the film was awarded with an Emmy (Primetime Emmy Award) and nominated for another two.
Cast:
Dorian Harewood as Jesse Owens
Dan Ammerman as Coach Robertson
Bob Banks as Henry Owens
Tom Bosley as Jimmy Hoffa
Georg Stanford Brown as Lew Gilbert
LeVar Burton as Professor Preston
Bernard Canepari as Attorney Grossfeld
Robert Chidsey as Governor Aide
Glenn Colerider as OSU Professor Overman
Barry Corbin as Judge
Ronny Cox as Coach Larry Snyder
Chris Douridas as Jerome
Norman Fell as Marty Forkins
Lynn Hamilton as Mamma Solomon
Robert Hibbard as Police Lieutenant
George Kennedy as Charles 'Charley' Riley
Chuck Long as Terry Carter
Gary Moody as Angry Customer
Randy Moore as Coach Cromwell
Debbi Morgan as Ruth Solomon Owens
Greg Morris as Mel Walker
Tonye Patano as Laverne Owens
Lee Ritchey as Brashears
James Sikking as Avery Brundage
Vic Tayback as Abe Saperstein
Craig Miller as Spare Runner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMk_0j-2wNg
Background from {[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/race/jesse-owens-timeline/]}
Jesse Owens: the life and times of a 20th century icon
1913 Owens born Oakville, Alabama
The tenth and youngest child of Henry Cleveland Owens and Mary Emma Owens is named James Cleveland, known as “JC”. His father is a sharecropper, his grandfather was a slave. From the age of six, he picks up to 100lb of cotton a day despite serious bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia.
1922 A misheard name sticks
The family moves to Cleveland, Ohio, in search of opportunities during the Great Migration. When James enrols at Bolton Elementary School, his teacher writes down “Jesse” for “JC” in the register, reputedly because of his strong Southern accent. The name stays with him for life.
1928 Early sporting achievements
At Fairmount Junior High, Owens is spotted by Charles Riley, lifelong coach and mentor. Owens works at a shoe repair shop and trains before school, setting records in high jump at more than 6ft, and leaping nearly 23ft in the long jump. He meets his future wife, Minnie Ruth Solomon.
1930 Starting to build a stellar reputation
Owens moves to East Cleveland Technical High and Riley follows as volunteer coach. Victories ensue at the Ohio state and national championships; he equals the world record in the 100-yard dash (9.4s), sets a new one over 220 yards (20.7s), and wins the long jump.
1933 New mentor at university
The high-school athletics star is showered with offers but chooses Ohio State University, which has no track scholarship programme. He works as a lift operator, at a petrol station, as a waiter and an Ohio Statehouse page. Larry Snyder, one of the few US track and field coaches to allow black athletes to compete in university sports, teaches him a new focus and discipline.
1935 Breaking more records
Nicknamed “The Buckeye Bullet” after the team’s informal title, Owens foreshadows Olympic glory by breaking three world records and matching a fourth in 45 minutes at the Big Ten Competition in Michigan, despite a back injury. He marries Minnie; they have a daughter and will add two more. They stay married 48 years until Owens’s death.
1936 The Berlin Summer Games
Having won a place in the US Olympic squad by winning three qualifying events, Owens joins the US team. With other countries, the US has considered a boycott over Germany’s treatment of the Jews. US Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage opposes it when Germany promises to withdraw a ban on Jewish participation and remove anti-Semitic signs.
Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels want the Games to be a celebration of Aryan supremacy. Eighteen African-American athletes take part, winning 14 gold medals. Owens earns four: 100m, 200m, relay sprint and long jump.
The Nazi myth of racial superiority is in tatters and Owens becomes a worldwide symbol of its destruction. He is said to have been snubbed by Hitler at the victory ceremony. Owens later says he was ignored not by the Führer but US President Franklin D Roosevelt. He received neither a congratulatory telegram nor an invitation to the White House.
Back in the US, Owens takes on lucrative speaking engagements and earns $10,000 for endorsing Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon.
Stripped of amateur status, his sponsorship deals dry up and Owens looks for other ways to earn a living. He races against a thoroughbred horse in Cuba for $2,000, with an equine handicap, and wins.
1943 Moving into PR
Appointed director of national fitness by the wartime US Office of Civilian Defense in 1942, Owens is hired by Ford as assistant personnel director of African-American workers. Promoted to director, he switches to PR. Three years on he moves to Chicago and sets up his own PR firm.
1950 Press plaudits
Owens is named as the greatest track athlete of the past half-century by the Associated Press and three years later becomes secretary of the Illinois State Athletic Commission.
1955 Motivational success
Owens visits India, the Philippines and Malaysia to lead running clinics and promote US political and economic values. The following year he attends the summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, as personal representative of US President Dwight D Eisenhower.
1965 In the Owens name
A fruitful relationship with Atlantic Richfield Oil Company leads to the first ARCO Jesse Owens Games, providing training and inspiration to young black athletes. Owens is appointed the spring training and running coach for the struggling New York Mets baseball team.
1976 The legend grows
After joining the US Olympic Committee board in 1973 and induction into the US Track and Field Hall of Fame a year later, Owens receives the official recognition that eluded him 40 years ago. Gerald Ford awards him the highest US civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1980 Owens dies at 66
A pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, Owens succumbs to lung cancer, aged 66, at his retirement home in Tucson, Arizona.
1984-96 Memorials
The Jesse Owens Memorial Plaza is dedicated outside Ohio Stadium. In Berlin, a street near the Olympic Stadium is renamed Jesse-Owens-Allee. The Jesse Owens Memorial Park opens in his Alabama birthplace. Owens is by now the best-known athlete in Olympic history.
FYI CSM Bruce TregoSFC Richard WilliamsonSPC(P) (Join to see)CSM Chuck StaffordPFC Craig KarshnerCpl Robert Russell PayneA1C Riley SandersSSgt Clare MayPo2 David DunlapSGT (Join to see)Sgt Jim BelanusCpl Vic BurkPO2 Frederick Dunn1LT Peter DustonSGM Bill FrazerSPC Chris HallgrimsonCSM (Join to see)PFC (Join to see)SGT Randell RoseSSG Robert Mark Odom
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