Bob Mathias, Hometown Hero

I went to high school with this man. Bob Mathias died last Saturday, Sept. 2nd. An amazing athlete, he won the decathlon in the Olympics twice; first in London at the age of 17 and then Finland four years later. He starred in the movie about his own life. He was a Congressman for four terms. All-American boy; All-American man…except he was a Republican (gasp).

But I fudge the truth here a little bit. He was a tad ahead of me in school and was, I think, playing football in the Rose Bowl as a senior at Stanford during my freshman year of high school. His brother Jim was two years ahead of me and his sister Pat was in my class. According to Bob’s obituary they both seem to be alive and kicking in the backyard of my youth.

This is my brush with greatness: I think I was in my sophomore year when Jim brought a couple of his brother’s Olympic medals to school for show-and-tell. The medals were subsequently stolen from his gym locker. What scandalous behavior for a small town! School and police officials at first pleaded with the thief to return them, to no avail, and then they did a weird thing. They put an empty box in a deserted room and they made every boy in school go in one door and out the other, presumably giving the repentant thief a chance to return the medals without fear of arrest or incarceration. As far as I know it didn’t work. The box was sure empty when I went through. To this day I don’t understand the psychology behind this procedure but, well, who am I to delve into the devious mind of authority?

I think the riddle of the missing medals remains a mystery to this day. Unless they got thrown in a ditch maybe they will turn up in some basement, attic or rural cabinet of curiosities one day. That would be good.