He's living history, but hardly a relic. As the Greatest Generation fades too quickly, Dillard, a four-time Olympics gold medalist, remains a beacon for Cleveland.
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Lonnie Timmons III, The Plain DealerAt age 89, Harrison Dillard is the world's oldest living Olympics 100-meter gold medalist. He won four golds in running events during his career.CLEVELAND, Ohio — The legend is that Jesse Owens gave Harrison Dillard his first pair of track spikes, that Gen. George Patton called him the best athlete he'd ever seen, and that he could knock a dime off a hurdle with his heel.
The legend himself just chuckles at the memories.
Some of it's exaggeration, some true and some, well, could have been.
Dillard knows the answers and willingly shares them. At 89, he loves nothing better than to recall a historic life. He does so in such vivid detail, he can place a listener on the Olympic 100-meters starting line, or in a World War II foxhole, or at side of one of four presidents who have shared his company.
He's living history, but hardly a relic. Is there another living four-time Olympic gold medalist who not only represented his country, but fought in bloody battles for it? As the Greatest Generation fades too quickly, Dillard remains a beacon for Cleveland.
The spotlight rarely shines on him, and he does not seek it, but the next three weeks will be different. Dillard is to be feted at the Summer Olympics in London, where he won his first two gold medals in 1948 in the 100-meter dash and 4x100 relay. He will be there Aug. 4-8, in time to witness the men's 100 final on Aug. 5, as a guest of the timing company that recorded his 100 victory in a famous photo finish 64 years ago.
Dillard is the oldest living 100-meter champ, and though he stopped jogging around his Richmond Heights neighborhood a few years ago, he hasn't slowed much. He's often on the go, driving his white SUV to visit his 99-year-old sister Ophelia in Shaker Heights, or slogging through a cold rain to watch the Cleveland Senate League's Harrison Dillard Indoor Track Championships at Baldwin Wallace, or the Senate's Jesse Owens Outdoor Championships at Collinwood.
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It's fascinating to watch him at those meets. He'll sit quietly in a metal folding chair for an hour almost unnoticed, a little stooped over but not missing a thing. A few adults will whisper his name and point. Once in a while, an athlete will realize the significance and grasp the moment, as Berea state hurdles champ Donovan Robertson did this spring, telling Dillard it was a thrill and honor to meet him and chatting for almost 30 minutes.
Dillard lights up at these moments, and a smile fills the borders of his gray goatee. One wonders if Usain Bolt will be so lucky in the year 2072 -- 64 years after his first gold medal.
Dillard's hero: Jesse Owens
When those who meet Dillard take the time to ask, they almost start with Jesse Owens, as well they should. Owens and Dillard gradated from East Tech High School eight years apart. Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, defying Hitler and his henchmen, who sought to use the Games as a political tool to affirm Aryan supremacy before igniting Europe in a war that Dillard would fight.
"Aryan supremacy was a myth, a false concept, and Jesse proved it, four times," Dillard says.
Dillard won as many gold medals as Owens, albeit in two Olympics, not one, and Dillard has his own distinct place in track history. He is the only man to win both the Olympic 100 and 110 high hurdles, and is regarded as one of the greatest hurdlers of all time, having set world records at two distances, 120 and 220 yards. Owens and Dillard were members of the inaugural class of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974. But Dillard has never felt overshadowed by Owens. Dillard has told the stories of his boyhood hero hundreds if not thousands of times, and the reverence still carries in his soft, clear voice.
"When I was 13 years old, that was 1936, Cleveland was having this parade to welcome Jesse back to his hometown," Dillard recalls. "The parade started in downtown Cleveland, to come out the East Side, going up Central Avenue, and I lived off E. 63rd and Woodland Ave. The parade was going to pass 63rd and Central. I got permission from my parents, and a few little buddies and I jogged over. When Jesse passed in this big open car and, as the kids say, 'Dude was clean.' He had on this dark suit, white shirt and dark tie. When he passed us, we were standing right on the curb, close enough to touch the car, he looked down and winked and said, 'Hey kids, how ya doin'?'
"Well, we thought this was the greatest thing in the world that our idol had actually spoken to us. I remember running back home and almost took the screen door off the hinges, going in the back door in the kitchen. My mother was cooking and I said, 'Momma! Momma! I just saw Jesse Owens, and I'm going to be just like him.' She said, 'Yes son, I'm sure you will be.' She passed it off that lightly."
Dillard lightly shakes his head.
"In retrospect," he adds, "when people ask, when did you start thinking about the Olympic Games, that was probably when I really began thinking about it, at 13, not knowing what lay ahead, what you have to do to be an Olympic athlete."
A day after wining the gold medal in 1948, Owens congratulated Dillard and said, "I thought you could do it." Dillard told Owens the story of the 1936 parade.
"He just kind of chuckled," Dillard says, smiling.
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Associated Press file photoHarrison Dillard, nearest camera, wins the 100 meters at the Summer Olympics in Wembley, England, on Aug. 3, 1948. The mistaken legend, which continues to be repeated in books, magazines and broadcasts, is that Owens gave Dillard his first pair of spikes.
"The true story is that in 1941, I was at East Technical, a senior, and went to Columbus to run in the state high school track championships," Dillard says. "Jesse was at the school, back at Ohio State. We came out of the locker room and I guess he looked at my shoes and probably saw they were a little worn and said, 'Wait a minute.' He went back in the locker room, he came back and had a brand new pair of shoes. He and I were wearing the same size shoes at the time, size eight. He gave me a brand new pair. I won the state championship in those shoes."
Owens' legend began at Ohio State, where he once set four world records in one hour, and OSU recruited Dillard, who wanted to emulate Owens and become a Buckeye. But Dillard got cold feet and decided to stay close to his parents, William and Terah. He went instead to run for highly regarded Baldwin Wallace coach Eddie Finnigan, who sometimes set up hurdles on Beech Street and directed traffic around Dillard.
Serving his country before representing it
World War II interrupted Dillard's promising track career. Dillard first enrolled in the reserves and soon was called up to join the 92nd Army Infantry Division, the famed all-black troops known as the "Buffalo Soldiers." At a time when troops were segregated, the 92nd was the only black infantry division to see combat, and it encountered heavy fighting as the Allies slowly pushed their way up the Italian peninsula. Dillard went in with the first wave of the 92nd, the 370th Regimental Combat Team in 1944 that helped the Allies break through entrenched and mountainous German defenses known as the Gothic Line. He was a private first class and a sharpshooter and also served in the 371st.
"We were infantry. We get shot at, mortar fire, machine gun fire, artillery fire, anti-tank gun fire," he said.
He prefers to recall cuter stories about being shot at while in a latrine and diving for cover, or encountering Italian women who had never seen black men and letting them touch his face. He also marvels at the memory of witnessing the 442nd Regiment, a Japanese-American troop known as Nisei, fighting their way up the Vogses Mountains under relentless fire.
"The Germans were shelling the hell out of them. Normally, you seek shelter, a foxhole, something. These Nisei guys zig-zagged up the mountain. They never sought shelter. They kept moving, moving, moving," he says of the unit that would become the most decorated in U.S. history.
Dillard saw eight months of combat during his 16 months overseas, and served 32 months. Because the 1940 and '44 Olympics were lost to the war, Patton helped organize a "G.I. Olympics" among U.S. forces. Patton had been an Olympic modern pentathlete in 1912, and after seeing Dillard run the 100 in 10.3 seconds, a tick off the world record, the crusty general said of Dillard, "He's the best goddamned athlete I've ever seen."
Dillard says today the story is true.
"He had his shiny boots and riding pants, and shiny helmet and bone-handled pistol -- just the way George C. Scott portrayed him (in the movie "Patton"), that's the way he was," Dillard said.
Harrison Dillard
Full name: William Harrison Dillard
Nickname: "Bones" -- because of his spindly frame during his prime. He was 5-10, 152 pounds.
Age: 89
Hometown: Cleveland
Current residence: Richmond Heights
Education: East Tech High School, 1941; Baldwin Wallace, bachelor's degree, 1949.
Military service: U.S. Army, private first class, 1942-45, 92nd Infantry "Buffalo Soldiers."
Olympics: 1948 --100 meters, gold medal, 10.30 seconds (Olympic record); 4x100 relay, gold medal. 1952 -- 110 high hurdles, gold medal, 13.70 (Olympic record); 4x100 relay, gold medal.
Word records held: 120-yard high hurdles (13.60, 1946); 220-yard low hurdles (22.60, 1946).
College: Four individual NCAA championships at Baldwin Wallace.High school: State champ in 120-yard high hurdles and 220-yard low hurdles; led the Scarabs to he 1940 and 1941 state titles.
Notable: Won 14 AAU championships; won 82 consecutive hurdles races (1946-48).
Awards: 1952 Sullivan Award, given to the nation's top amateur athlete; National Track and Field Hall of Fame, 1974 (inaugural class).
Fun fact: Loves peanuts and root beer, and does a dead-on Woody Woodpecker imitation.
-- Tim Warsinskey
Dillard returned to BW and quickly picked up where he left off, dominating college meets and winning four collegiate titles. He won 82 consecutive hurdles races leading up to the 1948 Olympic trials, but shockingly banged his way through the hurdles, fell behind and stopped.
"Any hurdler will have days like that because you're trying to clear them by a quarter inch. My lead heal coming up was hitting the hurdles.
He says today he had worked for three months on improving his start and that it had become so quick that it threw off his hurdles timing. But on the flip side, it helped him win the 100 dash in London, tying the Olympic record (10.3 seconds). The first-ever photo finish showed that he edged his teammate and roommate at the Olympics, Barney Ewell, who initially thought he had won.
Dillard and the U.S. won the 4x100, appealing and winning an initial disqualification over what had been ruled a bad baton exchange.
In the 1952 Olympics at Helsinki, he ran on another winning relay and won the 110 hurdles, setting an Olympic record (13.7 seconds). He calls the hurdles win redemption "at the tender age of 29 to win the race I was supposed to win four years earlier."
Cleveland's streets did not come to a halt upon his return.
"There was no parade in either case. There was a civic function, but I can't remember if it was a dinner," he says.
A modest box of medals
Dillard did achieve some celebrity. He and Owens became friends and Owens invited him to his cabin in Idlewild, Mich., where he rubbed shoulders with Muhammad Ali, Count Basie and Sammy Davis, Jr. He also has met Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and, last month in Denver, Barack Obama.
Dillard congratulated Obama on being the first black president and said he was proud of him.
"He said he was standing on our shoulders," Dillard said. "That made me feel pretty good."
Dillard, who obtained a business degree from Baldwin Wallace, worked in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District's business office for many years and is retired.
His late wife Joy, to whom he was married 53 years, had one of his medals set in a gold chain that he would wear on request, but friends and family say the only time you knew he was a gold-medal winner was when someone else brought it up. He keeps the medals in a box.
"He's a very good man, very humble and modest," his daughter, Terri, said. "He's a great, loving dad. The way he takes care of his family and cherishes his family. He's there for us and we love him. We're blessed to have him."
Terri and her three children live with Dillard and will accompany him to London. Joy passed away in 2009. Dillard says he cherishes the memory of London because it was where he won his first Olympic medals, and it's one of the reasons he's genuinely excited to return next month.
"It means a lot," he says, "especially in view of my age. It will be 64 years since I won that race! To be able physically to go back to where you did something, that was, I guess you could say was unique, will give me a great deal of satisfaction."
Dillard says this will be his last Olympics. He has no plans to attend the 2016 Games in Brazil, so it gives him a chance to consider his legacy. Sure, there's the track meet that bears his name, and the Harrison Dillard Bikeway in Rockefeller Park and the track at Baldwin Wallace. The top male sprinter in the U.S. each year receives the Harrison Dillard Award, and at a local function with area high school athletes last year, six-time Dillard Award winner Michael Johnson made certain to pull Dillard out of a crowd and explain to the kids how proud he was to have won the award.
Dillard said a legacy should be something more.
"Naturally, everybody wants to be thought of in the best possible terms," he says. "I would like to think certainly as an athlete, I've done about everything I could do with my physical talents.
"As a person, you like to be thought of as one who got along with people, helped people whenever and wherever he could and was looked upon as someone you'd want your children to try to emulate or to be like, and just do right by people. That's how I'd like to be remembered by people: He was a good guy."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: twarsinskey@plaind.com, 216-999-4661
On Twitter: @TimsTakePD
Plain Dealer reporter Branson Wright contributed to this story.
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