Earl Young Interview

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Earl Young — May, 2021

Earl Young ran the second leg on the 4 x 400-meter relay at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Italy where he and his U.S. teammates earned the Gold Medal in a World Record time of 3:02.2. He also competed in the 400 meters at the 1960 Olympics, finishing in sixth place. Young set a World Record in the indoor 500-meter dash and was a member of the World Record U.S. Mile relay team and World Record Abilene Christian 800-meter relay team in 1:22.6. He finished in fourth place in the 1960 U.S. Championships and second place at the 1960 Olympic Trials at 400 meters. At the 1963 Pan Am Games, Earl was a member of both the 4 x 400-meter relay and 4 x 100-meter relay Gold Medal teams. He finished second at the 1961 NCAA Championships 400 meters to Adolph Plummer as both were timed in 45.9 seconds. His personal best times are: 100 yards – 9.6; 100 meters – 10.5; 200 meters – 20.9; 400 meters – 45.7. Earl has been inducted into the Abilene Christian University Sports Hall of Fame, and the Texas Track and Field Hall of Fame. After the 1960 Olympics, he was ‘adopted’ by the State of Texas and voted the Dean's Award as the student who had made the greatest contribution of the year to Abilene Christian. His corporate career took him all over the world as an advisor, corporate officer and director for Fortune 500 companies and investment banking firms. Young has served as a director of the Corporate Council on Africa and as President and CEO of Madagascar World Voice. In 2011, Earl was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, and a bone marrow transplant saved his life. He started the Earl Young Foundation which conducts drives to recruit bone marrow and stem cell donors. Earl resides in Dallas, Texas and was very gracious to spend over ninety minutes on the telephone in 2021 for this interview.

GCR:

STRIKING OLYMPIC GOLD AND SETTING WORLD RECORDS It’s hard to fathom that it has been over 60 years since you won a Gold Medal as a member of the 4 x 400-meter relay team at the 1960 Rome Olympics. If you sit back and close your eyes, does it seem like a long time ago and, at the same time, just like yesterday?

Yes, that is a good way to describe it. Let me mention first, you are the second Gary Cohen in my life and let me tell you about the first. He went to Burgen Yale High School. I set a new San Fernando Valley Record back in the day in 1958 when I was in high school at the prelims in 49.6. I came back in the finals and ran 49.6 but a guy named Gary Cohen beat me in 49.2. We didn’t get to meet up again until 1962 at the Compton Relays. He raced in a 400 meters with me and I got my revenge by winning that 400 meters. When I saw your name was Gary Cohen, I thought, ‘Could it be him?’ But its not. Back to the question – I don’t know if everyone handles these types of things the same way, but my mind is never far away. I can get back to it easy, very quickly. I’m sure that Otis Davis, who won the 400 meters in a new World Record of 44.9 seconds, will have it come back to his mind quickly. Of course, I had the best seat in the house, back there in sixth place in 45.6 seconds, which ties the previous Olympic Record. Once in a blue moon I might look at the video and point out to myself where I might have done better. Of course, we all do that too. We did come back in the four by four hundred meters relays to win and I was just a kid two years out of high school. I was only nineteen years old and the youngest medalist on the team that year. I think I’m still fifteenth youngest of all time. I can remember quite vividly that I got to hand off to the great Glenn Davis who won the four-hundred-meter hurdles in that Olympic Games as he had in 1956. He had become my idol in high school as I followed his career quite closely. To think that I handed off to that guy, to the great Glenn Davis, I have never lost the thought of how young I was and how so many of my teammates had been to the Games before, were so senior to me, and how I was in awe of all the guys on the team that year.

GCR:

You mentioned some of the great runners on your Olympic relay team and the 4 x 400-meter relay doesn’t always go to the collection of the fastest four men but is dependent on smart pacing and smooth handoffs. How hard did you and your relay teammates work on encouraging each other to run with a smart pacing plan so you were strong at the end of each leg and what strategy did you implement on race day to put you in position to challenge for the victory and take home the Gold Medals?

I think having Jack Yerman lead off was a good move. Having Jack run out of the blocks could bring the baton in to me in good shape. And he brought it to me in first place. It was my role at that point to make sure we got the inside lane before anybody else did. That was back in the day where the second man didn’t stay in lanes around the curve. So, the second runner had to make sure he could muscle his way into that first lane. Of course, Jack handed off to me ahead of everybody else, so I didn’t have a whole lot of work to do. I just went in the first lane and held off a guy named Manfred Kinder from Germany who came up quickly. I remember the Germans had a lot of fans at each end of the stadium. They had purchased many of those seats and I recall the volume going up when he pulled up on me. He had taken fifth place in the four hundred meters. Relay running was what we did a lot of at Abilene Christian. I ran more relay races than open four hundreds or open two hundreds. I always felt good in the relay and always enjoyed, believe it or not, getting the baton behind because I knew that’s where I would get the best out of Earl Young.

GCR:

The Olympic Games have grown in stature, visibility and commercialism considerably since 1960. How big of an achievement was it amongst your family, friends, Abilene Christian teammates and community to not only make the Olympic team, but to win a Gold Medal?

I was received like a hero, even though I was just a good athlete. I got a lot of attention. But you bring up an interesting point. I think we hear Olympians, more from back then than today, say what a thrill it was to see our flag go up on the center pole and to hear our National Anthem. And it was. And it truly was. In all honesty, I didn’t run primarily for my country. I appreciate that my country made it possible for me to run, but I ran for mom and dad and friends. If I were running today, it would be the same thing. When we received our medals and walked out of the stadium, we went though a tunnel, into a large, gorgeous stadium that was our workout stadium. My mom and dad were standing there. My favorite picture from then, that is still my favorite picture of all the pictures I have, is mom on one side of me and dad on the other side and there we are enjoying that Gold Medal. I had awesome parents who were so supportive of everything I did all my life. They lived a long life, and I was able to say ‘mama’ to a woman for seventy-five years. Not many people get to do that, so it was a real blessing, and we were all very close. To go back to Abilene Christian too, I ran for the appreciation of those people and good friends. That is what made success in running fun.

GCR:	Even though you weren’t primarily running for your country, what was it like on the victory stand, receiving your medals, hearing the National Anthem and sharing it with Jack Yerman, Glenn Davis, and Otis Davis, your three relay teammates?
EY	It was great. Thinking back again to these wonderful memories over the years. Those three guys were great athletes and great guys, as were the athletes we shared the stand with who came in second and third place. There were tremendous German athletes and great guys from the Netherlands Antilles. Even today, after all this time, I can get a feeling in my body about how great it was.

GCR:

In addition to the relay, as you mentioned, you toed the line for the 400-meter finals where you took sixth place. Can you take us through that race and how your expectations and hopes and dreams compared to the reality of that forty-six seconds?

I did not lead in the race. Otis Davis came out strong. Karl Kauffman, from Germany, who took second place, also was clocked in 44.9 seconds with Otis Davis, as Kauffman dove across the line trying to beat Otis. I remember coming off the final curve and thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve run my first two hundred meters too slow.’ There was no question I did, which I had a habit of doing. I was always a good closer but, when you get up against World Class, the top six in the world, you need to be up there with them at the end of the race. If you aren’t up there when its time to kick, and in the four hundred meters you need to be up front, its hard to have what it takes to close and to have any capability of taking those front guys out.

GCR:

What are some memories from Rome in 1960 that stand out as to Opening and Closing Ceremonies, watching amazing track performances or attending other sporting events?

I didn’t get to attend the other sporting events. I got to meet a lot of the fellows. Cassius Clay was in those Olympic Games. So was Jerry West, the great basketball player who ended up playing with the Lakers. There was Rafer Johnson in the decathlon and Wilma Rudolph, our great female sprinter. It was the kind of Games that was different from today where it is so professional, and the athletes are so well-paid for success. Back then it was a bunch of gals and guys getting together to see who could run the fastest, throw the furthest and jump the highest and furthest. It was very, very amateur in the way we approached it. I was just a nineteen-year-old kid, and I was in awe of all these athletes. This may sound kind of strange, but I didn’t realize at the time the enormity of what we did. I know we set World Records, but it was just a great bunch of athletes and a great meet for me.

GCR:

At the highest levels of sport athletes set goals to compete in the Olympics and to represent their country. Please reflect on what it means to be a member of the 1960 USA Olympic team, 1963 USA Pan American Games team, and to pull on the USA singlet several other times including in meets against Russia and Poland?

Track and field and running for me was not the end product. It was not the main part of my life but was a piece of my life. It was a means to an end as far as getting an education. If I hadn’t been able to run, I don’t know if I would have had access to an education like I did. So, the scholarship was a big item. I got to see a lot of the world and meet a lot of people. There is no question that Gold Medal changed my life. It opens doors. I’ve always said a Gold Medal will open any door. After it opens that door, you’ve got about two minutes to get your story told on something else, whatever your objective might be. But it was beneficial to me in the business life I led. Now, with my foundation, with Earl Young’s team, it is very beneficial because it allows me to describe the two most diverse times of my life, the two most defining times. One of them is when I won that Gold Medal. The other is when that doctor said, ‘You’ve got three months to live.’

GCR:

We will delve into that in more detail in a bit. But, in the big picture of your running career, breaking a World Record and going faster than anyone has gone before is another highlight that top athletes strive to achieve. How exciting was it to be a part of three relay World Record teams – your Olympic Gold Medal relay, a U.S. mile relay, Abilene Christian 800-meter relay and an individual World Record in the 500-meter dash indoors?

I think running a World Record is more exciting today than it was then. When I realize what we did, running on three World Record teams and one Olympic Record team, that was something. When we set the World Record at Abilene Christian in the four by 200-meter relay, we were also the fastest college team nationally in the four by four-hundred-meter relay. We also ran 40.1 seconds in the sprint relay, which was second fastest in the country at that time. And that was only six guys. There were six guys at Abilene Christian, and we ran a World Record, led the nation in one relay and were second in the other. That was a very strong accomplishment for a little school in west Texas with twenty-eight hundred students. We could go to Penn Relays, we could go anywhere, and handle the competition. After the Games, the next year in 1961, at the Penn Relays we raced against the great Villanova team with Frank Budd anchoring, and it was a thrill for us to win the four by one hundred knowing the competition we were running against.

GCR:	Let’s take another look back to your 1960 Olympic year where, before Olympic glory, an athlete must first make the Olympic team. How tough was it with the Olympic Trials timetable that had you and your competitors racing semifinals and then the final only 90 minutes later?
EY	One of the blessings with this fast body that God gave me is that it recovered well. That ninety minutes in between the semifinals and the finals was to my advantage. Of course, in Rome we ran seven four-hundred-meter races in six days with the open 400 meters and the relay. Like I said, my body recovers quickly and that has been a blessing to me.

GCR:

How exciting was it when you crossed the finish line at the Olympic Trials in second place and knew that you were an Olympian?

In the Trials at Palo Alto, California, a side story is that we had better attendance than the United States had ever had at those Trials. There may have been sixty thousand people though I forget the exact number. In the semifinal, I came off the curve in good shape and took second place. I came back in the finals and, coming off the curve, I was in lane two. I remember coming off the curve and thinking, ‘Wow! I’m in the lead. I know all the guys in this race. I know I’ve made the Olympic team.’ At the end of the race, Jack Yerman caught me at the finish and there was a picture in Sports Illustrated that showed me and the caption said, ‘Grimacing Earl Young.’ I wasn’t grimacing. I was grinning from ear to ear. I had made the U.S. Olympic team and knew that well before I hit the tape. I had read about the great athletes. I had followed the great athletes, and making the Olympic team was just a dream. To achieve it was something. I can remember in the spring of 1960 when we had a four way meet at Abilene Christian, and the coach had invited Bobby Morrow and Glenn Davis and Bill Woodhouse and some others to run to keep in shape since they had all graduated. After the meet, I was standing with Coach Oliver Jackson and Glenn Davis came along and said that Coach Jackson knew how to peak athletes for the Olympic Trials and Olympics. And Glenn Davis said, ‘You’ll make it. You’ll make the Olympic team.’ I’ll never forget that. To be told that by my hero, my idol in the four hundred meters that I was going to make the team was challenging even to believe it.

GCR:

FORMATIVE YEARS AND HIGH SCHOOL RACING Were you an active child and in what sports did you participate as a youth and teen before starting running?

I played Little League baseball. In fact, I should have continued in baseball. I was a real good hand at it. I played first base and had a .611 batting average. I’ve thought many times I should have stayed on in that great game. But, as a sophomore in high school at age fifteen I began to run cross country. My body was developing at a time where I was having problems with my feet because I was pushing my body as it was trying to grow. High school parents and coaches need to watch their kids and athletes as far as the fast growth of the body while these teenagers are competing. It can cause injuries quite quickly if you push too hard during those growing years. As I grew older, I began to recognize that my goal was to break fifty seconds in the quarter mile. As a senior, I ran 49.6. What people find remarkable is that I ran 49.6 in high school and 13 months later I ran 46.6.

GCR:

In high school you ran times of ten seconds flat for 100 yards, 21.6 seconds for 220 yards and 49.6 seconds for the quarter mile but weren’t in the top five at the California State meet where 10.0, 21.4 and 49.1 were the fifth-place times. Did you qualify for the State meet and, if so, how did you fare in the competition?

I went out in the Los Angeles City Finals. I was very naive as to how to run the quarter mile. Remember, I was only seventeen years old. That year I mentioned where I dropped my time from 49.6 to 46.6, I grew two more inches in height and my body grew to where it could handle the work. I can look back on those days and it wasn’t until my eighteenth year that my body grew to where it could handle the work of what it takes to run a good quarter mile or four hundred meters. At seventeen, my body was still growing.

GCR:	What are some highlights of your racing at San Fernando High School? Did you place high in your Conference Meet and other big invitationals leading up to State competition?
EY	The race that sticks out in my mind is the one I mentioned against the other Gary Cohen. Being able to make the Valley Finals and come up against him, as he had an undefeated year before that, and to compete with him in the finals, sticks in my mind. There were other good races, but nothing like that.

GCR:

Who was your high school coach, what were the main areas he helped you with as a young runner learning the sport, and what was your typical training week?

What I ran was nowhere near what it would be for a high school runner today. We did some repeat 220s and repeat hundreds. I never did any over distance. My coach was a guy named John Walkler who had been a World Class 400-meter runner at USC. He ran in the low 46s when he was at USC, and he was recognized as one of their outstanding athletes at that time. He had come back from World War II and had quite a history there. He was a great coach and great guy.

GCR:	Wasn’t your father a fast runner as a youth and how was his encouragement of you to try your hand at track racing?
EY	The day I was born, my dad said to the doctor, ‘There’s my quarter miler.’ So, from early on, running was part of my life. My dad and I only had twenty years difference between us. When I was sixteen, he could still outrun me for a hundred yards. Had dad had the opportunity to go on to college, he would have been a great 400-meter runner, no question about it.

GCR:

COLLEGIATE AND INTERNATIONAL RACING How did you decide to go to Abilene Christian and were there other colleges in the mix of your choices?

It was very easy. I had gone over to visit Occidental, where the great Chuck Coker was coach. That would have been my pick. But at 49.6 seconds, I didn’t have coaches coming out of the woodwork trying to find me. They could go down to the Los Angeles schools and recruit ‘what is’ rather than ‘what if?’ This gets into the conversation of the difference between recruiters and coaches. As you well know, sometimes we find it all wrapped up in one man, but that is seldom seen. The great coaches can do both, no matter the sport. I’ll tell you the story that happened as I was sitting in class. I was in Social Studies class in May of 1958, getting ready to graduate, and I would have been going over to Occidental. I received a message while I was in class to call my dad. So, I went down to the Registrar’s office and called dad. He said, ‘Earl, Bobby Morrow and Coach Oliver Jackson are in my office and want to take us to lunch. Can you get out of school?’ I tried to explain to my kids that it is like today that Tiger Woods wants to take you to lunch. Bobby Morrow was the biggest thing internationally in track and field. He was on the cover of every magazine. He won three Gold Medals in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and I copied my running style after Bobby. So, I hopped in my 1955 Chevy and scooted over there and, sure enough, there is Bobby Morrow standing in front of me. And I had no idea who this other guy is. It was Oliver Jackson who became, as my dad called, my second dad. Oliver and I were very close. We went to lunch and Oliver told me about Abilene Christian. In all honesty, he embellished beyond a reasonable level. But he sold me on going to Abilene. I was to find out a few months later that my grandmother had written him a letter, unbeknownst to me, and told him she had a grandson who was raised in the Church of Christ, and Abilene Christian, both then and now, is a Church of Christ school. She said, ‘Earl was raised in the church,’ which had more of an impact back then to get you into school, ‘he is a pretty fair runner, and could you help him get into school?’ When they were in California for the Coliseum Relays, they drove out to the valley and introduced themselves to dad and said, ‘Could we meet Earl?’ Oliver had only seen a picture of me finishing a one-hundred-yard dash. That’s all he had ever seen. But he said he saw this kid who hadn’t reached his full growth at all and had run 49.6. And if he really wanted to do anything, he could probably make a pretty good relay guy out of me at least. And we both got more than we bargained for.

GCR:

How was your transition from high school to college in terms of living away from home, more rigorous academics, adjusting to a new coach and increased responsibility living away from your parents?

Have you ever been to Abilene, Texas? It’s west Texas. I remember going out there in my 1955 Chevy with some other kids and we went out there caravan style. We got to Abilene Christian about two o’clock in the morning. We went into one of the dormitories and slept on the couch. I got up in the morning, walked outside and looked around and I guarantee you my first words were, ‘My God, what have I done?’ Remember I had grown up in the San Fernando Valley during its heyday. Everything was gorgeous, new and fresh. There were orange trees everywhere. Trees were hard to find on the campus of Abilene Christian at that time. I went to orientation and met a fellow who became a fast friend for life. Ronnie Toombs was from Merkle, a little town outside of Abilene. There he was in his cowboy shirt, his jeans, his cowboy buckle on his belt and his cowboy hat. And there I was dressed like I was going to USC or UCLA with my polished cottons and my buttoned-down shirt. It was a transition, one that I wouldn’t trade for. But I even thought when I went home for Christmas that freshman year that maybe I would go over and see Chuck Coker at Occidental and consider coming back to California. As it turned out, I began to miss Abilene and all the friends I had there and was anxious to get back.

GCR:	Your racing career almost ended prematurely when you went rabbit hunting and accidentally shot yourself in the leg. How serious was that incident and how lucky were you it wasn’t much worse?
EY	My freshman year I was in Merkle, Texas hunting rabbits with Ronnie. I had a hair trigger pistol and accidentally shot myself in the calf. That hole from the hollow point twenty-two was heading right toward the bone and made a turn and went out beside the bone. If it had hit the bone, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.

GCR:

What did Coach Oliver Jackson do with your conditioning and training to harness your ability, while you were also having a growth spurt, that helped you drop your times drastically to 9.7 for 100 yards, 20.7 for 220 yards, 48.5 for 440 yards and a 46.6 relay leg your freshman year?

It was work. Work. Quarter milers must work. We ran a lot of repeat 220s, stair step 220s. We would start out at twenty-three seconds and run four of them with the last one being all out. Then we would walk a quarter mile and start out running one all out and four back up to twenty-three seconds again. We did stairstep 660s. Coach liked to throw in a 352-yard sprint every now and then. He said we could run 352 yards and add ten seconds to give us a quarter mile time. We worked hard at Abilene Christian. After I graduated, I remember talking to Coach Jackson some after I was no longer running. I was visiting him in Abilene at his home and he said, ‘You know, we may have worked harder than we had to.’ I was a runner that had to run against the clock. I had to know my times. I remember in 1960 when I met Jack Yerman, I found out there were guys who didn’t run against a watch and didn’t pay attention to their times. This had never dawned on me. Jack was one of those guys who run repeat 220s and 330s but didn’t pay attention to the watch. Ollan Cassell was another guy which didn’t really pay attention to the watch. I don’t know if most runners follow one or the other method today. I guess its all what you are capable of mentally. Some runners don’t have to know their times, but I did. I liked knowing my times. We worked hard. No question about it.

GCR:	When I spoke with Tracy Smith, he told me that many runners who were coached under Igloi’s method, himself included, didn’t get a lot of times during there workouts. Did that method trickle down to the shorter distances such as what Jack Yerman was doing?
EY	I think that if a runner has sand hills to run and other training off the track that it is good to be untimed. I used to enjoy when we got off the track. There were no hills in Abilene, but we did run on the golf course occasionally. I always enjoyed when we ran on the golf course on Mondays and ran straightaways. Of course, that was without a watch.

GCR:	After the 1960 Rome Olympics you were part of a U.S. contingent that raced in Turku, Helsinki, Dublin and Glasgow. What were highlights of those meets and were you running individual events, relays or both?
EY	I was running mostly individual events. The next year in 1961 we ran against the Russians in Moscow and then went to Poland as a team and to London as a team. Then we broke up into smaller groups and travelled to Helsinki and Olso.

GCR:

The 1960 U.S. championships were a week before the Olympic Trials and you placed fourth in the 400 meters in 46.4 seconds behind Otis Davis in 45.8, Dave Mills of Canada in 46.2, and Willie Williams in 46.3 seconds. How did you feel your chances were to make the Olympic team?

To make the team back in those days you had to run in the top six at the NCAAs or top six in the AAUs or top three in the Armed Forces meet. Those were the fifteen men that went to the Olympic Trials. I ran one of the dumbest semifinals of the NCAA meet in San Francisco and didn’t even make the finals. I had to qualify at the National AAU meet. What I remember from that meet is we ran the semifinals at one o’clock in the morning. That was one of the more infamous of the AAU meets. Then we came back the next day and I did make it into the top six which took me into the Olympic Trials. After that race, I knew who all the guys were who were going to be at the Olympic Trials, and I knew what I could do against them. I was beginning to reach my peak and, obviously, peaked at the right time. I peaked at the Olympic Trials. I knew Dave Mills was in there and I knew Willie Williams was in there, but I also knew I could handle them.

GCR:

The next year in 1961 at the Texas Relays you anchored three Abilene Christian winning relay teams including the World Record 880-yard relay of 1:22.6 with Cal Cooley, Dennis Richardson and Bud Clanton and Collegiate Record Mile Relay of 3:07.9 with Richardson, Pat McKennon and Clanton. How smooth were your relay passes in the shorter relays, how exciting was it to win three events and set records and how was the crowd response?

We worked on our handoffs. Oliver Jackson was one of the front runners with developing good handoffs in the days of Bobby Morrow. We had smooth handoffs. We would do a large part of our workouts that involved carrying that baton around with us. We never dropped a baton except one time where we had a bad handoff with Dennis Richardson up in Philadelphia. During my time in school, that was the only time the baton was dropped in a relay. We were good at it because we did work at it. I will always regret, and it was unfortunate, that we didn’t get under forty seconds in the four by 100-meters, but we didn’t have enough horsepower.

GCR:

You mentioned wining a relay race at the Penn Relays. What distance was the relay, how great were the crowds and do you still have your Penn Relays watch?

The Penn Relays crowd was awesome. Those were in the days when track meets routinely drew big crowds. We had a meet at the University of New Mexico in 1962 and I had a friend who went there. A few years ago, he sent me a picture from the newspaper that showed a picture of the crowd and the stands. It’s hard to imagine that back in that day we had seven thousand people in the stands there at the University of New Mexico to watch a dual meet between Abilene Christian and New Mexico – a dual meet! That was when Adolph Plummer and I were having some great races. My Penn Relays watch got stolen. I had several watches from the Drake Relays, Penn Relays and Coliseum Relays, and they were left at my parents. We had an invader come in and he took all my watches. I regret that.

GCR:

Speaking of Adolph Plummer, at the 1961 NCAA Championships in Philadelphia, Adolph Plummer nipped you at 400 meters as you both were timed in 45.9 seconds. Were you leading, did you come from behind or was it a battle down the home stretch?

Dolph was a pain in my ass (laughing). I could have done so much more if he weren’t around. But no, typically our races were just like that. Boom, boom, we would cross the finish line together and there wouldn’t be a tenth of a second difference between our times. Going back to the four by 200 meters at the Texas Relays in 1961, they took second, but were disqualified for handing off outside of the zone. That was a great race for Adolph and me. I first met Adolph when he was running at Dyess Air Force base right there in Abilene, Texas. They came over and ran against us and that was when I first became acquainted with the fact that he was going to be a challenge to me through all my career. It was sixty years ago this past June nineteenth that I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. That came out the week of the NCAA meet. There was always talk about the ‘Arnold Palmer curse’ of being on the cover of SI when he didn’t win the PGA Golf tournament. I followed up by not winning at NCAAs.

GCR:	How exciting was it for your parents, your family and your friends that you were on the cover of Sports Illustrated?
EY	It was exciting for them all and a great honor to be on the cover of SI.

GCR:

At the U.S. Nationals you repeated your fourth place from 1960 with a fourth place at 400 meters in 1961. Do you recall much of that race where Otis Davis won in 46.1, followed by Ulis Williams at 46.3, Adolph Plummer at 46.8 and you at 47.2 seconds? Did you challenge for the medals and fade or were you back in the middle of the pack during the race?

I always ran my first two hundred meters too slow. A couple years later they had me see a psychologist to see why I did that, and it was simple. I had a fear of not having what it would take to finish strong. It was a flaw in my belief that I could finish strong in a four-hundred-meter race. I was afraid of running out of gas. So, I wouldn’t run the first two hundred meters like I needed to. And you know that a runner must blow out the first two hundred meters. It’s part of the race distance.

GCR:	After you had the second fastest time in the Pan Am Games 400-meter heats, why did you not compete in the final?
EY	In 1963 the Pan Am Games were in Sao Paolo, Brazil. What I remember most about those games was that sixty to seventy percent of the team came down with dysentery. The team doctor was very concerned and gave me a shot that knocked me out and I didn’t wake up for the 400-meter final. I did run the four by 400-meter relay and the four by 100-meter relay.

GCR:

What stands out from the Pan Am Games in 1963 where you earned Gold Medals in the 400-meter relay with Ollan Cassell, Brooks Johnson and Ira Murchison and in the 1,600-meter with Ollan Cassell, James Johnson and Richard Edmunds, with Venezuela in second place in both races?

I felt very confident. My teammates brought me the baton ahead in both races. It was just a matter of completing the loop. There was some good competition down there, but there were terrible conditions. It was during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cuban team was eating anything in the cafeteria that was put in front of them. Their appetites were voracious. There was a fly-infested cafeteria, and it was nasty. We had to stand back and stay away from the flies. It was not a very healthy environment.

GCR:

We have chatted about many of your big meets and top performances. Are there any others that stand out for a surprising win, coming from behind or a fast time, either individually or as a member of a relay team?

That’s easy for me – the 1962 Texas Relays. It came around to the mile relay. Now, the great team we had at Abilene Christian in 1961 was made up of seniors. They were guys who graduated, and I got to run with Calvin Colley and Bud Clanton and Pat McKennon. All those guys were gone and that just left Dennis Richardson and me. So, in 1962 we didn’t have quite the relay teams we had in 1961. Every time the mile relay came around, I usually had to make up a deficit. At the 1962 Texas Relays I got the baton in the mile relay in sixth place. I wish there were a film of that race. There is no question it was one of my fastest ever. I took the baton in sixth and took out three of the guys on the backstretch. Coming down into the final curve, there was a fellow named Baker from Iowa in second and my good friend Charlie Strong from Oklahoma State who was leading. Charlie and I are friends on Facebook, and he became a great coach. We talked about it years ago and he said, ‘You know, Earl, I knew you were coming. I just didn’t know when you were coming.’ Coming off the final curve about mid curve I took Baker. Then I caught Charlie coming off the curve. When I was coming down the straightaway I was flying. There were watches that had my time as below forty-five seconds and I don’t doubt that. It was one of those times with great crowd appeal. That was in the times with great crowds and the stands were full at the Texas Relays. When we were driving home from the Texas Relays to Abilene, Fred Santer, the Sports Editor at the Abilene Reporter News was in the car. He said, ‘It’s too bad we picked the Outstanding Athlete of the meet before the mile relay.’ I said, ‘You did what?’ And he said, ‘For whatever reason, they decided to pick it before the mile relay, or you would have been the outstanding athlete of the meet.’ It was nice to receive those awards.

GCR:

If we reflect on the track and field scene in the United States in your era, how exciting was it to be in the middle of this amazing group of talented runners when track and field was very popular, both indoors and outdoors, with big crowds attending many meets?

I think I’ve been blessed in my life because we ran in the heyday of track and field. I don’t think there has been a better time to run track and field in the United States. And I also think I been blessed in my eighty years to live in one of the best times in the United States of America. I’m very much a patriot and thankful for this country and what it has allowed me to achieve in my life. It’s been a good run.

GCR:

You were competing in the amateur era when most athletes stopped competing after their college eligibility ended and they graduated and entered the work force. Was this the case for you as you finished up your college degree well in advance of the 1964 Olympics?

When I look at the guys that went to the 1964 Olympics in the 400 meters, I had a history of defeating them. But I had run out of gas. There was no money in track and field and I wanted to get into the business world. I even had an early morning e-mail yesterday from the gentleman who did public relations for Abilene Christian back in my time, and he was asking some questions as to why I didn’t go on. George Eastman, who was one of the assistant coaches of the 1964 Olympic team, had been one of the coaches of the 1960 team and always felt I could do more than I did. And the body could but, if the mind isn’t ready, it doesn’t make much of a difference. If there were Nike contracts and my coach hadn’t retired and went into another business, I may have kept running. Several reasons went into my decision to not train for and compete in 1964. I did receive a letter from the 1964 team coaches that invited me to come out to the Olympic Trials out in California even though I hadn’t qualified. They would have let me run in the Trials, but the desire just wasn’t there. I just didn’t have the ‘want to.’ Without that, you’re no good.

GCR:

HEALTH ISSUES, RECOVERY AND INSPIRATION At the age of seventy, in September of 2011, you were an overall healthy man and were diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and underwent chemotherapy before a bone marrow donor was found a few months later. How did this change your life and your focus and give you a new beginning for your latter years that you hadn’t thought about?

On September 16th, 2011, I had a little sniffle and cough that I couldn’t shake off. We had started our company and I was doing a lot of travelling. I had slowed down my involvement in Africa where I had been very active in business for twenty years. I was helping a dear friend of mine who had developed what is still the best cure for severe migraine headaches. It’s an implant in the forehead and back of the head that is close to a one hundred percent cure for very severe migraines, not the smaller incidents, but where people can’t go on with life without being cured. He had invented this, and we were monetizing it with pain physicians around the country. About this time, I noticed that I couldn’t shake off what seemed to be normal in September in Texas with allergies and a sniffle. I normally wouldn’t be concerned, but the symptoms would not leave. I went to see my general practitioner who looked at my file and said, ‘Earl, you haven’t been to see me in four years.’ I told him everything was going good except for the sniffle and cough. When I think back, I didn’t have the energy level I usually had. He asked if I had time for him to run some tests so he could update my records. We did an EKG, x-rays and a blood test. When I was getting ready to leave the office, he came down the hall and said, ‘Earl, you’re still here. I was just getting ready to call you.’ I sat down with him, and he said, ‘You don’t feel badly?’ ‘No, just a sniffle and a cough.’ He said, ‘You should feel badly because your white cell factory has shut down. You are low on white blood cells and not making any.’ I asked what we were going to do thinking that he had some shots or pills. He told me to take my file across the street to Texas Oncology where a doctor would meet me at the door. That picked up the pace of the day. I took the file and went across the street where I met the oncologist. He looked at the file and said, ‘Mr. Young, this is not good. We need to do a bone marrow biopsy.’ At that point I barely knew how to spell leukemia and had no idea what the future held. I went in the procedure room, they put a needle in my hip and took out some fluid. I’m waiting in the waiting room and his assistant brought me back to see him and I’m sitting in front of the second white coat for the day. Only this time he said, ‘Mr. Young, I’m afraid I have some bad news.’ You don’t hear that too many times in your life, thank God. ‘You have acute myeloid leukemia with FLT3 mutation. Do you know anything about leukemia?’ I said, ‘Doc, I don’t even know how to spell it.’ So, he tells me about blood cancer and said there were three things we could do. I asked him, ‘how long do I have?’ He said, ‘maybe three months.’ My morning was like any other morning – some coffee, some breakfast, a doctor appointment to get a shot to get rid of my cough and sniffle. But no. By three o’clock in the afternoon, the doctor tells me I would be dead in three months. His bedside manner was better than that. He said, ‘If we don’t do anything, that’s what is going to happen. Or we can put you on chemotherapy and see how that goes.’ It’s what I refer to as how long can we drag life out. He did say, ‘There is only one cure and that is a bone marrow transplant. What would you like to do Earl?’ ‘Of course, I would like to go for the bone marrow transplant.’ What I didn’t know at that point was that only four out of ten people who can have further life in that condition find a match for their bone marrow. Six people don’t find a match. In Offenburg, Germany, two weeks before I heard this pronouncement, a lady named Kristine Wagg became a bone marrow donor. They swabbed her cheek, sent that to the lab and her DNA was typed into the international registry. I found out four months later after all my chemotherapy that they found a match with Kristine. I came to find that Kristine was the only match out of twenty-two million people on file who could save my life. The only match out of twenty-two million.

GCR:

I know that later you did meet Kristine. How surprising and exciting and joyful was it when you met her in person?

Oh, my goodness. I was so surprised. My partner in my foundation is DKMS in Germany. They are the oldest organization in increasing awareness and swabbing to save lives. I was speaking at an awards breakfast banquet where I was receiving an award. I had a lot of friends there to see me receive this award. Amy Roseman, who was one the representatives of DKMS comes up to the podium while I’m talking and says, ‘Earl, I’m sorry but you are out of time.’ I started laughing and said, ‘What’s going on?’ She said, ‘As a matter of fact, we have someone here we want you to meet. We have Kristine here from Germany.’ And Kristine comes walking out from behind these curtains. Here’s the lady who is the reason I’m alive. If someone takes my blood type now, it is ‘O female.’ My immune system is Kristine’s immune system. She keeps me alive every day. If she had not become a bone marrow donor, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.

GCR:

I’m grateful for her and joyful we are having this conversation. How difficult and painful was the chemotherapy, bone marrow transplant and recovery compared to the hard training you did decades before as an athlete?

I basically lived on the eleventh floor of City Hospital here in Dallas for those four months where they destroyed my immune system so I could start over. Four months later when it came about for the transplant, Kristine left her little village in Offenburg, Germany and went to Frankfort to a hospital. They put a needle in her left arm and her blood goes into a centrifuge where they spun out her stem cells. Those stem cells were brought immediately from the Frankfort airport to the Dallas airport up to my room at Medical City. My two very nice Filipino nurses were quite short and stood on chairs to get that bag as high as they could to get gravity to pull every last drop of Kristine’s cells down into me. Then I began the procedure of recovery which is an absolute slice of hell. I’ve talked with many folks who have been blessed to have recovery and we all say the same thing – there is no way we can explain how difficult and painful the recovery is. But, once my body began to accept her cells, and I went through the recovery, I began to wonder what I was going to do with the rest of my life because it looked like I was going to live.

GCR:

Please tell us how you started the Earl Young Foundation and the great work it has done since 2015.

We have been fortunate to swab over sixteen thousand college students. Our focus at the Earl Young Foundation is at universities. Typically, they are faith-based universities that have chapel services where it gives me an opportunity to talk about the two most defining times in my life – the Gold Medal and the recovery from leukemia. I explain to them how they can have the opportunity to do the same thing and save a life by merely swabbing their cheek and having their DNA on file. DKMS, my partner and I, do this at universities. Last year, due to covid, we were shut down because there were no universities open. This year we are adding a new wrinkle. We have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to go onto campuses and honor the nurses that you and I and the rest of the citizens of the United States and the entire world were cared for after covid diagnoses. We saw it in this country as nurses sacrificed their lives to save lives. We have raised money to go into the universities with a formula that funds will be available to help student nurses with the cost of their schooling based on the success of the bone marrow registration drives. The student nurses will own the bone marrow drive as they have in the past, run the drive, but now, by having success in having students swab and sign up as bone marrow donors, we will offer scholarships at ten dollars per registered individual. So, if they sign up a thousand students to be bone marrow donors, they receive ten thousand dollars in scholarship funds for their nursing school.

GCR:

Since we are at nearly ten years since your leukemia diagnosis and a few months later that you had your transplant and recovery, how is your health now and what do you typically do now for health and fitness to stay as strong as you can?

As far as fitness, I try to get in a couple miles every day. It’s a fast walk. That helps to keep the body up. Ten years is unusual. I’ve been blessed. What can I say? The typical run is five years after a transplant. I’ve been able to go ten years. I feel good and am in full remission. I think we all realize that having a passion, having a reason to live, having a strong desire to see what you are doing be successful keeps you going. I remember my oncologist saying to me one day when I was in recovery, ‘One reason we let you have a bone marrow transplant at age seventy-one is because of your athletic background. We felt you would give everything you had to try to stay alive.’ Normally, at that time ten years ago, it was unusual for a seventy-year-old man to get a transplant for that reason. The recovery is hell. I will tell you I lay in bed for months. I’m a believer in Jesus Christ and in God, but I would say like Paul’s quote in the New Testament, ‘For me to die is gain.’ I was thinking, ‘I believe in the hereafter. But God, if I’m going to die after all this battle, why don’t we go now and not put up with it?’ It’s a tough recovery. It’s tough. I can’t explain it except to tell you it’s tough – the toughest thing I ever did.

GCR:

WRAPUP AND FINAL THOUGHTS Since you have had success over your running career at mainly the 200 meters or 220-yard dash and at the 400 meters or 440-yard dash, what is your favorite racing distance and which did you enjoy more, the individual events or relays?

I’d say that number one, running the 220-yard dash was always fun to go down in distance rather than up. Let me confess something to you. This body could have been a tremendous 800-meter body. But the brain and the mind wouldn’t let me go in that direction. It would have been interesting to see what I could have done in the 800 meters. My favorite distance is the 200 meters, or 220 yards and my favorite race would have to be the mile relay or 1,600 meters – no question about it.

GCR:

From your many years of racing, who were some of your favorite competitors in high school, college and internationally due to their ability to give you a strong race and you had to go to the edge when you were racing them?

In the United States, Adolph Plummer, of course. We had great races. Ollan Cassell. We also had some great races and the tight time differences just like I had with Adolph Plummer. In that five-hundred-meters indoors, Ollan was second in that race. He was a great competitor. The first time we were introduced to each other was in 1960 at Abilene Christian when he was running for the University of Houston. We had a finish where we both came across in the same time and they gave it to Ollan. A lot of my friends said that if we hadn’t been a Christian school, it would have been awarded to me because I had won the race. I always kidded Ollan about that. We had some close, great races in our days.

GCR:	When athletes win a Gold Medal, they often put it in a display case or a drawer, while some use it to inspire people. Over the years, what have you done with your Olympic Gold Medal to inspire others?
EY	The Gold Medal has travelled with me all over the world. It’s been to Africa. 1960 was the only year the Olympic Committee used a beautiful bronze necklace of olive leaves rather than a ribbon and it makes a beautiful bling. It has hung around the necks of Presidents and Prime Ministers and little kids in the Congo. It is well-travelled.

GCR:

You mentioned earlier how a Gold Medal can open a door and then you have about two minutes to capitalize on it. What were you able to do to transform your athletic success into achievement in your career and did your Olympic Gold Medal performance aid you in your endeavors?

I think that once you have that title, Olympian, it is a unique title. Some people make the mistake of calling a person a former Olympian and that is incorrect just like calling someone a former Marine. You can’t be a former Olympian. You are an Olympian for life. It may be a former Olympic Games, but it is a title to earn for life. People find it interesting. It’s fun and interesting to talk about. It is given an honor that, hopefully, we all wear well with humility, knowing that without the benefit of our God-given body we wouldn’t have it. I am fond of saying that God gave me the body and gave me the talent to make me fast. The Gold Medal is what I produced from his gift. It is mine.

GCR:

Do you keep in contact, and have you been able to visit in recent years with Jack Yerman and Otis Davis, the other two surviving members of you Olympic Gold Medal quartet?

It is rare, but we have had occasions to be around each other and to see each other. I was able to do a video last year that was requested by the University of Oregon. It was a video comment for Otis Davis for when he received his Hall of Fame award and recognition of being one of the great Oregon Duck athletes. That was fun. I saw Jack Yerman abut ten years ago. Abilene Christian did an acknowledgement of our fiftieth-year anniversary of the Rome Olympics. Jack showed up for that and I was able to visit with him there.

GCR:

Earl, you are eighty years old, and I look at my mom at age eighty-five and she is still going strong. What are some of your goals for the future in terms of staying fit, keeping your mind sharp, charitable work and potential new adventures?

My main goal, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is to grow awareness and register bone marrow donors. Until we find a cure, other than a transplant, people are going to die unless we find them matches. And it’s a simple procedure that can save a life. We just have to get the word out there and get more people into the registry to save lives. That is my reason for life now and my number one passion. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, we could sign up as many universities as we can, especially if they have nursing schools where we have our focus, so that every year when the new freshmen enroll, it becomes a tradition on campus to have a bone marrow donor event on campus. The oncologists love to see those eighteen and nineteen-year-old cells because that is before our bodies begin to break down and our cells start breaking down. That is the best time to put cells into another person to keep them alive.

GCR:

When you are asked to sum up in a minute or two the major lessons you have learned during your life from the discipline of running, transforming your athletic prowess into a successful business career, mentoring overcoming the adversity of leukemia and helping others, what you would like to share with my readers that will help them on the pathway to reaching their potential athletically and as a person that is the ‘Earl Young Philosophy of Life?’

Number one, I tell people that want to be inspired to watch the movie ‘Chariots of Fire’ and to read the book ‘Unbroken.’ As far as I’m concerned, if those two stories don’t move you, then I don’t know what will. Those have been inspirational to me. I think the life of Eric Liddell is something that everyone can use as an example. Here is a man who could have taken his fame and gone on and lived well in the English Isles and Scotland. But he chose to go abroad to China to teach people about God and Jesus Christ. A tremendous life. A tremendous life story. It’s the same thing with Louis Zamperini. I met Louis when I was twelve years old. I was receiving an award for that .611 batting average I was telling you about and there was this guy named Louis Zamperini who was speaking at the Little League awards banquet. I never forgot his story.

	Inside Stuff
Hobbies/Interests	I used to play a lot of tennis. I gravitated to tennis after the competitive days of running were over. I miss that, but the body won’t handle that anymore. We do a lot of travelling. I had the good fortune to do quite a bit of travel with my business world that I was involved in. There was a lot of travel to Africa and Europe. I like to read. As far as stamp collecting or something like that, I have none of those hobbies
Nicknames	When I came back from the Olympic Games, a young lady at Abilene Christian gave me the name, ‘E.Y.O.C.’ And that has stuck – ‘Earl Young, Olympic Champion.’ A lot of friends call me that
Favorite movies	Anything John Wayne did. Of course, ‘Chariots of Fire’
Favorite TV shows	I grew up with shows like ‘Wells Fargo’ and the ‘Dale Robertson’ series. I liked any shows that were westerns like ‘Gunsmoke.’ In later times, sitcoms like ‘Cheers’ and ‘Two and a Half Men’ with Charlie Sheen
Favorite music	All country music
Favorite books	I mentioned ‘Unbroken’ earlier. ‘Born to Run’ was a great book. I read many history books and real-life books. I’m a fan of Harold Lamb’s writing in the area of history. I enjoy realism more than I do fiction
First car	A 1955 Chevy took me all the way through my graduate studies. I wish I had it back
Current car	I drive a Ford F150 now and wouldn’t trade for it
First Job	Fortunately, my dad had a business. It was back in the day when we used to repair automobile radiators rather than just slap a new one on. Dad had a very successful business in the San Fernando valley. He worked on everything from the big cooling systems that were seven-foot tall walkshaws that they put on oil rigs to Volkswagen radiators. I could always plan on working there in the summer, whether I wanted to or not. No sixteen-year-old boy wants to be tied down in the summer
Family	I was so fortunate to be born to the people I was born to. They were an awesome mom and dad. I had the good fortune of growing up in southern California with grandparents and great-grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and cousins. We had a big family and that was a real blessing, no question about it. I still have relatives from Crescent City to Laguna Beach. My oldest daughter is nearly fifty years old and is the director of a museum here in Dallas called Haas Motor Museum. Bobby Haas, who did very well in the investment world, became an afficionado of motorcycles and has the only museum of its type in the world as far as the collection that’s in there. Some of these motorcycles aren’t ones you would ride. They are works of art. He has a very famous collection. My son is a computer specialist and works for Price Waterhouse Coopers. My baby girl is with a computer company also. They all are doing well. As my dad used to say, when your kids are okay, the world is in good shape
Pets	We had dogs and I had the good fortune to be raised out in Sylmar out at the north end of the San Fernando Valley. That’s where the sidewalk ended. We had horses. One of my favorite stories is that we bought my dad’s horse from Dale Robertson. It was a star in ‘the show ‘Wells Fargo.’ Horses were a big part of my life
Favorite breakfast	I really like buttermilk pancakes
Favorite meal	Nothing beats a chicken-fried steak with black-eyed peas and okra and corn bread
Favorite beverages	I’m a Shiner Beer fan. That is my favorite alcohol drink. I like the Shiner Bock. It’s hard to beat. For non-alcohol drinks, I like Diet Pepsi
First running memory	It was at San Fernando Park. In San Fernando we were always around a good Mexican crowd and good fiestas. We would go for Cinco de Mayo and have barbequed pork and beef. They would always have races where we could win blue ribbons, red ribbons and yellow ribbons. I learned early on that it is fun to run and one of the things that is even more fun is to win, have people applaud and get a blue ribbon
Running heroes	In high school I was voracious on reading everything about running from Paavo Nurmi to Jesse Owens and all the old track stars. I loved to read about them. Bobby Morrow and Glenn Davis in the 1950s were really my two heroes from the 1956 Olympic Games. I tried to emulate Bobby’s running style. He was a very smooth runner and I hope I came to it by some degree. Those were my heroes during my high school years
Greatest running moment	The mile relay down at the Texas Relays that I mentioned was it. If I could go watch me run a race over again, that would be the one I would want to go, sit, and watch
Worst running moment	The 1960 NCAA meet. To go out in the semifinals with the ability I had was just foolishness
Childhood dreams	Track and Field was my dream. Going to the Olympics was my real dream. It’s interesting because people your age and younger have seen guys running in their fifth Olympics. It’s so different now. Back then, I was looking ahead and planning and dreaming about being in the Olympics. I dreamed about it and got there at age nineteen. I didn’t have a long dream. It happened and, if that had happened today, with Nike contracts I’d still be running. It would have been so different but, back in the day, it was time to go to work and get on with life
Louis Zamperini meetings	In Rome in 1960 after the Olympic Games were over, I got to thinking about Louis. In fact, one of the distance runners and I went out and liberated a Vespa scooter from the Olympic Village. We were driving through the city and there was an area where one of the Olympic flags was flying. I decided, like Louis climbed a pole to take a German Swastika flag in Berlin at the 1936 Olympics, I needed that Olympic flag. I still have it. It’s in my closet. We have used it at a lot of events. After my transplant, Louis’ book had come out in 2011 and I read it. I thought that I wanted to meet him again. He was travelling and signing books and then he became ill in 2012 and didn’t travel again. But a friend of mine here was a good friend of one of his friends in California. My friend said that when her California friend came to town, we should get Louis on the phone and tell him about my story from Rome that I learned from him seven years earlier at the Little League banquet. So, we did, and we talked on the phone. Louis and I had a good visit. He got a kick out of my story and how I swiped the Olympic flag in Rome. At the end of the visit, the most important thing and part of this story is that he asked me, ‘How are you with the Lord.’ I said, ‘Great, Louis. Thanks for asking.’ That was the last time I talked to Louis Zamperini, but I get to tell that story about him and about his change of life that took place after missing the Olympics when he was so bitter. That part of his story to me is the great part of his story – how he accepted Christ and the things he did with his life after that
Embarrassing moment	The one my kids love to hear is from when I was in high school. We went from the San Fernando Valley to run in the city of Los Angeles. Back then, they didn’t run the mile relay in southern California. The longest we ran was the 880-yard relay. I remember I was in position to run the anchor leg and was taking off my sweats. I didn’t take them off until the gun fired for our first man to run. I take off my top, fold it, and put it on the ground. I reach down to take off my warmup bottoms. I pull them down and I’m standing there in my jockstrap. Of course, there was a big crowd in the stands, and I pulled them up. I thought, ‘God, I must have forgot to wear my trunks. I’m going to have to run in my sweats.’ Anyway, I pulled my sweats down again and found out I had pulled down both my trunks and sweats the first time. For a seventeen-year-old boy, that was embarrassing standing in front of a crowd in your jockstrap
Worst date ever	I guess I lived a charmed life. I’m good there
Favorite places to travel	My favorite place overseas would be Madagascar. I spent quite a bit of time there and we did a lot of good there. The company I was with originally went down there to see if there were diamonds but exhausted that idea. It was during the time that Madagascar was the greatest supplier of sapphires, and they still are a great producer of sapphires. I fell in love with Madagascar for many reasons, especially the people. It is a very poor country, and we established a short-wave radio station that is still in operation that can reach the entire face of the earth. It is an organization out of Nashville, Tennessee called World Christian Broadcasting. They broadcast daily stories about Jesus and have a format like National Public Radio that is very effective. The most beautiful place I have visited is Mauritius, which is four hundred and fifty miles east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. That would be my most beautiful island in the world to go to again. My favorite place to go to in the United States would be Nashville, Tennessee. It’s beautiful, the people there are wonderful, and Nashville is a great city. I have lived in Dallas, Texas since 1964 and I prefer the Dallas of 1964. The city has grown rather dramatically
Final nice compliment	As you can imagine, I’ve done interviews throughout my life throughout my life. I want to tell you; this one is the most enjoyable I’ve ever done. I really appreciate the opportunity to be interviewed by you. Thank you!