Aloha My Friend,
This is an October story so it works into the monthly epistle as a trivial factoid but it is also a story that I have kept with me for many years and just recently was able to discover the whole story. Bless you Google.
If you scratch deep into your memories of 1968, past the rows of nightmare images from Vietnam, across the tragic iconic photos of men pointing to the sky while at their feet lay Martin Luther King dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel and 63 days later burns in the image of Bobby Kennedy sprawled on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel. Dig deeper in your memory and, now that you think about it, you can see the image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos as they stand on the winners podiums at the Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie’s right arm outstretched proudly in a black gloved fist and John’s right arm the mirror image.
On that day, October 17th, 1968, their actions were awash in deep and subtle imagery that would have made Fellini or Thomas Pynchon admirers of their brave and noble stand. They stood shoeless, wearing black socks to represent black poverty. To represent black pride Tommie Smith wore a black scarf around his neck. John Carlos, to express solidarity with all blue collar workers in the U.S., wore a necklace of beads which he described “were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage.”
For this bold Human Rights salute they were thrown off of the American Olympic team, banished from the Olympic Village and would have been stripped of their medals except for the Cold War contest where the number of medals that the US won over the Soviet Union showed some type of superiority when honor was missing.
They had won their medals for running the 200 meter race in just above and just below 20 seconds. Both were students at San Jose State University and, in 2005 they were honored with the erection of a 22 foot high statute of that Mexico day image. They both went on to short-lived careers in the NFL and both have won numerous awards for sportsmanship including the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.
Their cartoonized photo was even a news item on an episode of The Simpsons where Kent Brockman looked back on the 1960s.
Despite their triumphs, for the past couple of decades these two men haven’t spoken kindly of each other
But this isn’t what I came here to talk about.
3 days later something else extraordinary happened that most people don’t know about because it is a story of a loser. And this story still gives me chicken skin of admiration 30 years after I first heard it.
In the late afternoon of October 20th, 1968, 75 men began the long 26.2 mile Olympic Marathon. The race was won in 2:20:26. The next 55 runners jogged on into the stadium for about the next 45 minutes. The bleachers began to empty as darkness and chill filled the high altitude Mexican air. Many thousands had gone on to other things, accepting that the 18 missing runners had quit somewhere along the many miles.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, over an hour after the race was won, several police (policia) cars entered the stadium with their sirens blaring and their red lights flashing and in their headlights cast the figure and shadow of John Akhwari . Bleeding from a fall about half way into the race, John came in bandaged and limping from a dislocated knee. On the video you can hear the astonished spectators slowly, stunned and uncertain, applauding. Listen to the din grow into a roaring crescendo. Long after the race was over, far past the nearly quarter of the runners who had given up and in an agonizing pain that I am certain that I could not endure; John Akhwari circled the track and crossed the finish line.
John Akhwari was from the very young country of Tanzania, created just 4 years before by combining the countries of Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
When asked why he persevered where many could have honorably quit and nursed our wounds he replied, “My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race; they sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race.”
That is Honor.
That is Integrity.
There are no statutes of him that I know of just a simple athletic training facility named after him in Tanzania.
At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing he was welcomed as a Goodwill Ambassador recognizing him among the many winners without medals.
And every time I pick myself up from some whiny, skinned knee episode in my life I think of him.
And now I even know his name.
John Stephen Akhwari.