During the recent winter Olympics, my son Leo came home from school one day talking about the Olympics. He said that one of his classmates' grandfather came into his class to talk about the Olympics and gave everyone in the class some Olympic items. He brought home a "USA Olympics" pin, an Olympic towel/rug/wall hanging (not sure what to call it or what to do with it) and a signed photograph of his classmates' grandfather. The photo had the name Bill Toomey. The name seemed familiar, and the photo was of a track athlete running a race. So I went to Wikipedia and found out that his classmate's grandfather won the Olympic decathalon in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. I was impressed.
About a week later, Leo said that the same classmate's grandmother came in to talk about the Olympics. The classmate's grandmother was Mary Rand Reese, who won Olympic gold, silver and bronze in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. She and Mr. Toomey had been married but were divorced. So Leo met two Olympians within one week.
The only Olympian that I ever met was one some of you might have heard of, Eric Heiden. Yeah, the guy who won five gold medals in one winter Olympics in 1980. We worked for the same organization for about two years. He's a nice guy, not huge like I expected him to be, and just a regular guy.
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I went to a track camp in Maine that was hosted by Dick Fosbury who won the '68 gold in High Jump in Mexico City. He created the technique that most high jumpers use to this day. He was a very goofy-looking fellow.
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