Here is an addendum to yesterday's "Jesse Owens" tale at the Olympics. I did not get it in time to add it to the story, but it is worth preserving:
Jesse Owens' name was chiseled into the granite wall of Berlin's Olympic stadium, as soon as he had won the race.
An oak tree sapling was given to Jesse Owens - as was given to all the other Olympic winners. He took it back to the United States with him. I don't know if it ever grew into a tree.
After the games, Hitler invited the whole American Olympic team for a gala dinner in Berlin. Not to their credit, after they left it was found they had stolen 134 pieces of cutlery, dishes, cups and other souvenirs.
When Jesse Owens returned to the United States, not only was he not received or congratulated by Roosevelt, he was ignored by Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and even Johnson - it took Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s to invite Jesse Owens to the White House for the first time.
Sadly, Jesse Owens turned into an alcoholic late in life. A "service organization" picked him up, cleaned him up, and had him tour the country speaking to "lodges" and other service clubs about you-guessed-it! That's how the story grew that Hitler had "snubbed" him. He was paid $1,000 for a speech.
Ernst Zundel found out about this and wrote to Jesse Owens as he lay dying of cancer in a hospital in Arizona, asking him to set the historical record straight.
And he did!
Two weeks before he died, he gave an interview to the sports writer of the Miami Herald - recalling that, when he got home from the Olympics to America, he had to ride in the back of the bus. In Berlin, he said, he was adored by the mainly German crowd and was allowed to ride at the front of the bus.
That, too, is history - that had to be revised.
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This gives me an opportunity to state once more - as I have done so many times when people heckled me no end to come out with a "racial" statement - that my idea of racial honor is the Olympics model.
Each one for his or her own country. With pride. Without apologies. But with respect and dignity for all.
Each one to give his best, his all - and let the best man win!
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"Truth sits upon the lips of dying men."
(Sohrab and Rustum, 1853)