Rafer Johnson was turning 65, long since a boldface name whose resume was bursting with athletic, humanitarian and barrier-breaking fireworks, by the time I met him. Olympic champion. Co-founder of the Special Olympics for the disabled. Member of Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign entourage. UCLA’s first Black student-body president. Lifelong civic booster in southern California.
But what he talked about that day was his kids. This was in July 2000. We were in Sacramento for the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. I was covering the event; Johnson was there as a father. His son, Josh, was a contender in the trials’ javelin competition.
“It’s the same for all parents,” Johnson said. “What you want is the best for your child. You want what they want, and anything short of reaching that goal is disappointing. But not disappointing, in that you showed you could compete at that level. That’s the bottom line. If you can walk away having given your best effort, you can’t ask for more. You might wish for more, but you can’t ask for more.”
When Johnson died last week at 86, I thought of “discovering” him in 1958—though he already was the world decathlon record-holder, with a 1956 Olympic silver medal. I was a grade schooler in suburban L.A.; he was a forward on the UCLA basketball team, whose games regularly were televised locally. His coach was John Wooden, who subsequently won a record 10 national titles and reportedly once lamented not adjusting the team’s style to better accommodate Johnson, who that season was UCLA’s most accurate shooter—over 50 percent.
I thought of newspaper coverage two years later detailing Johnson’s dramatic decathlon victory in the Rome Olympics, an intriguing story of competitive rivalry and international fellowship. Johnson had barely prevailed against C.K. Yang, who was from Taiwan but also was Johnson’s UCLA teammate, training partner and friend. (Decades later, I bumped into Yang at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and got his feelings on the long-running political tug-of-war between mainland China and Taiwan over the island’s identity, and Yang’s belief that, despite competing under the compromised name of Chinese Taipei while denied a display of its national flag or anthem, “it’s still better to be here. We’ve come to the conclusion that we can close our eyes and show the world some sports we can do.”)
And of course I thought of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics’ opening ceremonies, an elaborate Disneyfied production highlighted by Johnson lighting the Olympic cauldron, a central act in the Games’ quasi-religious pomp.
He was 49 then, tasked with circling the Coliseum track, then climbing 99 wickedly inclined steps, torch held high in his right hand, to the stadium’s peristyle end. He was 24 years past his last competition; he had turned down an invitation to play for the Harlem Globetrotters and didn’t act on being drafted by the Los Angeles Rams, who didn’t care that he hadn’t played football since high school.
But that taxing ascension toward the heavens, witnessed by a full stadium and global television audience, reinforced the title—earned by Johnson at the ’60 Games—that traditionally is bestowed on Olympic decathlon gold medalists: World’s Greatest Athlete.
“I had my turn,” Johnson said during the Sacramento meet. “I worked hard at it, like all Olympians do, like all athletes. That was my time. When [he and wife Betsy] had children, it was their time, from youth soccer right up to what they’re doing today. We tried to make the house theirs. I didn’t have any of my medals or awards around because the house was a place for their trophies and medals.”
He had dabbled briefly in acting. Worked as a sportscaster. Immersed himself in the turbulent politics of the ‘60s. Found himself regularly in the midst of defining historical moments, a real-life Forest Gump. Johnson was the guy who wrestled the gun away from Bobby Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, in June of ’68 at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel.
Watching his son at the 2000 trials, Johnson said he had “a feeling much different from when I was competing. If I got nervous then, I could go work out. With your kids competing, you just sit and watch and pray and hope. But I don’t get just into winning and losing. It’s thrilling to see them have the opportunity to compete on that level. It’s an opportunity I wish every kid could have.”
Josh placed seventh, four spots short of making the Sydney Games. Johnson’s daughter, Jenny, meanwhile was in the process of qualifying for the same Olympics in beach volleyball and wound up finishing fifth at those Games.
Shortly before those track trials, I had chatted with Jenny Johnson. Her father, she said, “coached a lot of my teams and more of my brother’s teams. My mom coached my teams. In sixth grade, he brought his medal to school; we were studying ancient Greek culture and he talked to our class about the ancient Olympics. He never talked about his accomplishments.”
She said that on the morning of the ’84 Olympic ceremonies, “he said to me, ‘Guess who’s lighting the torch?’ I said, ‘Michael Jackson.’ He said, ‘No, I am.’ I didn’t know what it was. But everybody was cheering, our whole family was crying, and he said it was so powerful a feeling, when he turned around [at the top of the steps ascending to the cauldron] and saw the crowd, that he had to hold on.”
Michael Jackson? “It’s the answer most kids would’ve given,” Johnson said. “Anybody but their dad.”
