By the time a boy was six-years-old, he knew the first tradition without being schooled: women were sacred. Harsh treatment of any girl or woman, verbal or physical, was simply never seen. The wishes of one’s mother or wife were humbly met; the needs of an elderly woman were holy edicts.
Chapter Twenty-Two
KIVATO IN JAIL
“Coach? This is Martin. Could you go down to the City Complex? Key’s in jail.”
Armando Animas was an early riser but also an early setter. It was ten in the evening and he had been asleep for an hour and a half.
“Who’s in trouble?” grumbled the normally unflappable coach.
“What’s wrong? Who is it?” asked Joetta, also awakened by the call. She was surprised at the tone of her husband’s voice.
“It’s Martin. Somebody’s in jail.”
The team’s top 800-meter man, Martin Caulfield, tried to be clear. “Key . . . uhh . . . Kivato. They took him to the police station after a fight with Pudge Bergstrom. They’ve got Kivato locked up. They told me to have you come get him.”
Armando always told the runners to call him if they got in trouble. Most of them would rather walk barefoot on broken glass than to disappoint their coach. Animas knew some of them drank beer, stayed out all night on occasion – but not Kivato.
The incongruity of the situation spurred Animas into his highest gear. He arrived at the police station in 15 minutes.
* * * * *
“It is time, my son, to join the men for Ha-va-ka-yi.”
Clarence spoke those exciting words the first day of June, the summer following Kivato’s sixth year of school. Every Havatura male learned the four traditions: Respect, the Kiva (worship), Ya-lam-i-ti (endurance), and Ha-va-ka-yi (self-defense).
By the time a boy was six-years-old, he knew the first tradition without being schooled: women were sacred. Harsh treatment of any girl or woman, verbal or physical, was simply never seen. The wishes of one’s mother or wife were humbly met; the needs of an elderly woman were holy edicts.
The concept of argument had to be taught. Only people outside the pueblo expressed discord – people in towns and on television. No Havatura fought, physically or verbally, with each other.
Training was father to son. If a boy’s father was unable, an uncle or older brother could be his teacher. Elders sat on benches, along the walls of the Lodge where Ha-va-ka-yi training took place.
“Hay-yah!” an elder would shout. Instantly, all teaching stopped in the room. In the ensuing silence, the old man would make the correction. Rarely would he correct aloud. He would rise from the bench, whisper to the boy what he should do, then demonstrate it to the novice, his teacher riveted on the nuance.
The Havatura commanded a proud reputation among all the Pueblo tribes. In reality, there were two reputations. First, they would almost never fight. Second, if they did fight, they fought like cougars.
* * * * *
Pudge Bergstrom put the shot for the Rio Grande State track team. He played linebacker on the football team, a muscular two hundred and twenty pounds. Bergstrom was a popular teammate but came to college a racist.
There were two incidents between Kivato and Bergstrom. The first was in September, a month into their freshman year at RGSC. The two instinctively avoided each other, but the cafeteria was the mixing bowl on campus.
Bergstrom slid into a chair at a table for six, the same instant Kivato sat down with his tray.
“My buddies are joining me here in a minute,” Bergstrom said. Kivato didn’t move and began eating his lunch.
“There’s six of us gonna sit here,” Bergstrom clarified. “You’re going to have to sit someplace else.”
Bergstrom’s football teammates showed up and started filling in the space. Kivato held his spot.
Bergstrom rose to his six-foot-two height, circled the table, and pulled Kivato’s chair away. “You need to find another place, Redskin!”
“That’s alright, Pudge,” blurted one of his friends. “We can pull up another chair.”
Kivato rose, his fork in his right hand, his left hand open, his eyes fixed on the huge man before him.
“Whatcha gonna do, Indian?” Bergstrom said.
Kivato laid down his fork, picked up his tray, and silently moved to another table, locked eye-to-eye with his antagonist.
“If no harm has come to you, walk away,” he remembered his father’s teaching.
Nothing came of the incident and Kivato forgot it.
A year passed.
On the night he was arrested, Kivato walked with Tia to the campus bookstore to buy a sweatshirt for their mother. Bergstrom and two buddies were leaving the commons, which shared an atrium with the bookstore.
“I can seduce any woman at this college,” Pudge ranted, provoking guffaws from his friends.
“Hey, what do we have here?” he said, noticing Tia. “I never made it with an Indian maiden before. Come over here, Tia.”
Tia was as strong as any woman athlete – and most of the men – at Rio Grande State, but she was with her brother. It was his place to intervene. She stepped behind him, which was the Havatura way.
“What do you think you’re going to do, little distance runner? Defend her? I’m talking to your sister.”
Pudge shoved Kivato’s shoulder and he fell against Tia, who bumped into the wall.
“Leave her alone, Bergstrom,” Kivato said quietly.
Martin heard the commotion and left his post at the bookstore to investigate.
“Say, Pocahontas, come on. Let’s go get a beer at the Purple Pig.” Bergstrom ignored Kivato and reached to grab Tia’s arm.
Kivato stepped between them and was forehead to chin with the massive youth. “Back away, Pudge,” he said firmly. The big man had figured Kivato for a coward, but the tone of Kivato’s voice put Bergstrom’s friends on their heels.
“You pesky Injun,” Pudge said, reaching down to shove him again.
In an instant too short for any of them to see clearly, Kivato sidestepped Bergstom’s advance, jerked downward on his outstretched arm, threw him to the floor and landed with both knees on his back. Kivato yanked Bergstrom’s head backward with one hand and buried his thumb behind the mastoid process of Pudge’s temporal bone, rendering him unconscious.
His buddies retreated in fear. No one came to Pudge’s aid except a campus policeman.
“Stop it now!”
Kivato looked up and saw the cop had drawn his Mace spray. He let go of Pudge’s hair, allowing his trachea to return to its normal position, and stood up. The big man coughed as he lay face down on the floor of the student center.
“We can’t have fighting here, gentlemen.” He handcuffed Kivato, got on his walkie-talkie to summon an ambulance, and walked Kivato to his cruiser for the ride downtown.
Armando knew every policeman in town by name, their wives and children. If one of Coach’s boys was in trouble, they knew Animas would take care of it.
“You may be looking at an assault charge, Mr. Wapiti,” said the desk sergeant.
“Did you hurt him?” Animas asked the diminutive runner, with a look of mock alarm.
“No, of course not. But he will never bother Tia again, of that I am certain.”
Pudge Bergstrom was released from the emergency room after fifteen minutes. There was not a mark on him. He did not file charges. He never got close to Kivato, or Tia, the rest of the year.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE MILE
Roger Bannister became the first man to break four minutes for the mile on May 6, 1954 in Oxford, England. Ceremonies in Great Britain and elsewhere had been held on that date every year since; like the conquest of Mt. Everest in 1953, a momentous human achievement had captured the world’s admiration.
Thomas O’Malley was in a quandry–the owners of Boston’s Commonwealth Stadium had chosen this spring to renovate the entire complex, upgrade seating, locker rooms, concession spaces, and replace the grass field with artificial turf and the aging Tartan track with a state-of-the-art Mondo surface.
The usual East Regional meet would have to be scrapped this year. O’Malley’s lament, in a Boston Globe letter to the editor, elicited an unexpected response. Local financier – and former runner – Herman Justice had a solution:
Run one mile on a cinder track, like Bannister.
Herman Justice, a Boston College graduate, became the tenth American to break four minutes in the summer of 1964, part of an eight-man mass finish at the California Relays that included 18-year-old Jim Ryun. He entered Harvard Law a month later, became rich as senior partner of the Sub-Four Law Group, but never received any recognition for his running accomplishments.
“I’ll front you ten million dollars,” he told O’Malley. “We can build a cinder track, invite all the top middle-distance stars, and honor all the great American milers of the past. What do you think?”
O’Malley’s mind was stuck on the words ‘ten million dollars.’
“That’s a great plan, Mr. Justice. We have a month to get it done.”
O’Malley hired Jerzee McTolliver as his recruiter.
Within thirty-six hours, Jerzee had commitments from the best trackmen (and women) in the USA to lace up their spikes on May 6: All-expenses paid and five thousand dollars in appearance money proved to be a great inducement.
Jack Sullivan, a childhood friend of O’Malley, lived in nearby Brookline. His construction firm’s motto: We Build Anything and Do It Well.
“Can you build me a 440-yard cinder track between now and May 6th?”
“Sure, Thomas,” Sullivan said, “but it will cost you.” Friendship has its limits.
And it came to pass, as May 6th approached, Olympic hopefuls, former Olympians, and several others with solid credentials came to Boston for the All-American Mile Festival.
Every living American who had placed in the top eight of an Olympic 1500-meter final was invited to attend at Justice’s expense. The honorees went back to 1952 and Robert McMillen – arguably the most obscure Olympic silver medalist in U.S. track history – was honored. Dyrol Burleson, Jim Grelle, Rick Wolhuter, Jim Spivey, and Steve Scott were finally accorded the recognition that American journalists had failed to lavish on them in their prime. Only three-time Olympian Jim Ryun had found the spotlight in 1964, 1968, and 1972. The others had been virtually ignored.
O’Malley created a two-day extravaganza, headlined by the men’s mile race. Armando Animas and Vern Rudebusch were hired to speak at a Sub-Four Coaching Clinic on the eve of The Mile. On the schedule were mile races for women, high school girls and boys, firefighters, police, coaches, masters, and veterans.
Justice suggested watering and rolling the track after every fourth race. If Justice wants something done, O’Malley thought, he’ll have it!
* * * * *
THIS VIEW OF SPORT
By Ken Davis
Roger Bannister said he possessed “the quality of mind” necessary to be the first man to break the
the four-minute mile barrier in 1954. As last week’s All-American Mile Festival in Boston proved, lots of
Americans have that quality.
The featured race came first, a format the reverse of boxing cards, horse racing programs, and symphonic concerts. Financier and event sponsor, Herman Justice, himself a four-minute miler in 1964, filled the stands
with eighteen thousand runners, spectators, and reporters.
The track was constructed from sixty tons of cinders, 440 yards around, with a brick curb (modern tracks are four hundred meters in circumference, have aluminum curbs, and are constructed of synthetic rubber.) Heavy construction equipment kept the surface fast. For one afternoon, Boston’s Commonwealth Stadium was transformed into a venue fifty years in the past.
Ben Spangler exploded from the lead pack of nine men over the final quarter mile to win thirty thousand dollars, the largest winner’s check in a non-World Championship event.
Spangler reeled off splits of 57.5, 58.2, 58.6, and 55.0 for the fastest time ever recorded on cinders, 3:49.3.
Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj owns the current mile world record, 3:43.13.
Justin Weiss, Neal Grady, and Chad McCann were in hot pursuit over the final lap. All cracked 3:53.
Five more standouts were under 3:56. But a group of four men, not known for their 1500-meter or mile
credentials, had the announcer and crowd abuzz, ten seconds behind the winner.
Five-thousand-meter specialist Chuck Madras organized three other longshots after they were ignored by everyone at the pre-race press conference.
“I said, ‘Let’s run a team race, stick together, share the pace, and see if we can break 4:00,’ ” Madras
recounted.
“We rotated the lead every 55 yards” Madras explained, “no man in front for more than a few
seconds, before drifting back, in lane two, a la pro cyclists in a team time trial.”
I think the lads discovered something. Steeplechase teen, Jeremy Stanfield, joined hands with Bill Szymczak, John Corbin, and Madras, crossing the finish line abreast. All clocked 3:59.6, the exact time Bannister ran in 1954.
Sarah Herrington, America’s perennial queen of the 1500, led all women with a 4:16.5, bettering Mary Slaney’s US mile record of 4:16.71, set in 1985 on a rubberized oval.
* * * * *
Coach Ron Gill read the article again and shook his head. There must be another Chuck Madras. There is no way the arrogant, selfish, Charles V. Madras he recruited from Florida, and coached for three years, would have helped another runner achieve a goal. No, the Chuck Madras he just read about had class.