Background

Rafer Johnson was born on August 18, 1934 in Hillsboro, Texas, United States, into a Texas family of cotton-field laborers. He was the oldest of five children in the family.

Education

When Rafer turned 9 years old, his family moved to Kingsburg, California, a small farming town in the San Joaquin Valley. Though the community was home to residents mainly of Swedish extraction, Johnson recalled that he enjoyed the advantages of living in a small town and believed it inspired him later in life.

At Kingsburg High School in the early 1950s, Johnson was encouraged by his track coach, Murl Dodson. One day, the student-athlete complained to his mentor that he felt he was not fulfilling his potential, so Dodson took Johnson to watch another athlete prepare for a race. The track star was Bob Mathias, also from the San Joaquin Valley, who had won the 1948 Olympic decathlon and was at the time training for the 1952 Games.

Johnson went on to attend the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was captain of both the track and field teams and president of the student body as well. He was also the first African-American at the school to pledge a national fraternity.

In his later years, namely in 2005, Johnson was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Whittier College.

Career

In 1956, Rafer's athletic talents qualified him for the decathlon event of the Summer Olympic Games, which were held in Melbourne, Australia that year. The decathlon was one of the Olympics' most grueling tests: athletes took part in ten events over a two-day period that included a series of jumps and hurdles as well as the discus throw, shot put, javelin, and pole vault; they also ran a 400-meter race and the final 1500-meter. Johnson took second place and a silver medal.

Johnson was such a standout athlete during his college career, that Sports Illustrated named him "Sportsman of the Year" in 1958. Around this time, Johnson began training alongside another standout UCLA track star, C. K. Yang, for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. At those Games, Johnson served as captain of the United States team and carried the American flag in the opening ceremonies. His decathlon performance was a memorable one: in the final event, the 1500-meter race, Johnson crossed the finish line visibly exhausted, just steps ahead of Yang. Both men set world decathlon records in the event, and Johnson decided to use the opportunity to exit gracefully - he never competed again.

Instead, Johnson went to work for People to People International, an American goodwill agency and acted in films. He was often cast as an African warrior in combat in Tarzan pictures of the 1960s but also appeared in the 1979 mini-series Roots: The Next Generation. For a time, he worked as a sports broadcaster and also devoted his energies to recruiting Peace Corps volunteers. Johnson also volunteered for Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy in 1968. When Kennedy won the California primary in June, he and his entourage were passing through the Ambassador Hotel. Shots were fired, and Kennedy fell. Johnson pushed Kennedy's pregnant wife, Ethel, out of harm's way, then lunged toward the gun - along with another unofficial bodyguard, gridiron star Rosey Grier - and disarmed the assailant, Sirhan Sirhan.

Johnson was devastated by the moment, but credited Kennedy's sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, for helping him regain some perspective. Shriver and her husband - parents of television journalist Maria Shriver - had recently founded Special Olympics, a competition for developmentally and physically disabled children and adults. Johnson became a founding board member of the California Special Olympics and dedicated himself to helping the organization grow to a size of 25,000 participants in 68 programs across the state. In 1983, he was elected President of the Board of Special Olympics, the post he held till 1992, when he was made Chairman of the Board of Governors. Over the years, Johnson also served on the California State Recreation Commission, a Fair Housing group, and a federal committee on mental retardation.

In 1984, to the surprise and delight of 100,000 spectators, Rafer was the final torchbearer at the opening ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. In the opening ceremonies, Johnson sprinted up the steep stairs, torch in hand, and lit the flame that marked the formal kick-off of the Games. He received rousing cheers.

In 1995, Johnson revisited the stadium in Rome, where he won his gold medal, when he took part in a documentary film on Olympic history.

Rafer Johnson was the author of a 1998 memoir, The Best That I Can Be, in which he credited those who encouraged him or did not allow prejudice to stand in the way of helping him in his athletic career.

Achievements

• Rafer Johnson was a notable sportsman, who won the gold medal for the decathlon in the 1960 Olympics and also earned the title of "world's greatest athlete," usually appended to the first-place finisher in this grueling track and field event.
  
  In 1958, Johnson was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. He won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States in 1960 and the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1962.
  
  In 1994, Rafer was elected into the first class of the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame. He was also one of 13 California Hall of Fame inductees in the California Museum's yearlong exhibit. In 2011, Johnson was inducted into the Bakersfield City School District Hall of Fame and in 2016 into the Texas Track and Field Coaches Hall of Fame.
  
  In 1998, Rafer Johnson was named one of ESPN's 100 Greatest North American Athletes of the 20th Century. He was also named one of the 100 Most Influential Student-Athletes of the past 100 years by the NCAA.
  
  Johnson was also a recipient of the Fernando Award for Civic Accomplishment from the Fernando Foundation and the Athletes in Excellence Award from the Foundation for Global Sports Development.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Best that I Can Be:

    (Structured around the ten events of the decathlon, Rafer'...)

    1998

• movie

  • Tarzan and the Great River

    (Under the leadership of charismatic Bacuna, a murderous t...)

    1967
  • The Sins of Rachel Cade

    (Angie Dickinson, Roger Moore and Peter Finch star in this...)

    1960
  • The Last Grenade

    (Two soldiers of fortune, Harry Grigsby and Kip Thompson, ...)

    1970
  • Wild in the Country

    (Out on parole, a troubled but gifted young country boy fa...)

    1961
  • Licence To Kill

    (Bond's licence to kill is revoked as he embarks on a pers...)

    1989
  • Tarzan and the Jungle Boy

    (Tragedy left him orphaned and alone, forced to fend for h...)

    1968
  • None but the Brave

    (A crippled C-47 transport crash-lands on a remote Pacific...)

    1965

• TV series

  • Roots: The Next Generations

    (In 1865, the United States' Civil War and slavery end, bu...)

    1979

Religion

Rafer Johnson attended the Baptist church along with his family.

Politics

Johnson met Kennedy, then the United States attorney general, in 1961. Their political and social views meshed and they quickly became friends. He was a regular guest at Kennedy's home. When Robert Kennedy announced his run for president in 1968, Johnson jumped in with full support, addressing rallies, speaking at news conferences and meeting with voters.

Views

In 1969, Johnson founded the California Special Olympics by conducting a competition at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for 900 individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Quotations: "I tell them how what matters is becoming the best you can be at whatever you're doing."

"What I can tell them is the way you become an Olympic champion is to start working now. I tell them why it's always worth it to put the time and effort into something you want to be good at."

"So I had the opportunity to do what the kids in the Hershey program do, except that the Hershey program lets them do it on such a larger scale, with the regional and national competitions."

"Tonight I'm going to shower and then just walk for about four hours and look at the moon."

"The main thing is that it's nice to see these young people - 9 to 14 years old - take the opportunity to get more involved in their health and fitness. We need more kids to be more active."

"It's very warm there, so we were outdoors all the time. The local people had programs for us year-round, where as kids we had the opportunity to play football, basketball, baseball, track and field - we just went from one sport to the next, year-round."

"I make appearance at local park and recreation agencies when the program starts, when they have the qualifying meets at the local levels. Then I try to go to the regional competitions, and of course I'm there in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in August for the North American final."

"The whole decathlon is ridiculous, but the 1,500 meters is insanity."

"I also meet with city officials, representatives from governors' offices, really anyone in that sort of position who has shown an interest in youth fitness, to let them know why this sort of program is so important. I give the same message when I speak at conferences."

Membership

Johnson was a member of Pi Lambda Phi fraternity and The Pigskin Club of Washington, D.C.

Personality

Johnson was always a vocal advocate for fair play and good sportsmanship. He eschewed drugs and alcohol and, in track races, refused even to try to anticipate the starter's gun, believing that it was a form of cheating.

Physical Characteristics: Rafer Johnson was 1.90 m (6 ft 3 in) tall and weighed 91 kg (201 lb).

Rafer died after suffering a stroke.

Quotes from others about the person

• Tom Brokaw: "I thought about the whole arc of his life. And how I'd always believed, well before I knew him personally, that he was the quintessential American athlete."

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  football, baseball, basketball

Connections

Johnson married Elizabeth Thorsen in 1971. The couple had two children - Jenny Johnson Jordan and Joshua Johnson.

Father:

Lewis Johnson

Lewis Johnson was a cotton picker and farm handyman.

Mother:

Alma Gibson Johnson

Spouse:

Elizabeth Thorsen

Daughter:

Jenny Johnson Jordan

(born June 8, 1973)

Jenny Johnson Jordan is an American female beach volleyball player. She won the silver medal at the 1999 Beach Volleyball World Championships in Marseille, alongside Annett Davis.

Son:

Joshua Johnson

(born 1975)

Friend:

Rosey Grier

(born July 14, 1932)

Rosey Grier is an American actor, singer, Protestant minister, and former professional football player.

Friend:

Kirk Douglas

Friend:

Robert F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy (November 20, 1925 - June 6, 1968) was an American politician and lawyer, who held the post of the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964. He also served as a U.S. Senator from New York.

References

• Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World An account of the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome reveals the competition's unexpected influence on the modern world, in a narrative synopsis that pays tribute to such athletes as Cassius Clay and Wilma Rudolph while evaluating the roles of Cold War propaganda, civil rights, and politics.
  2008
• Decathlon Men: Greatest Athletes in the World The stories of two Olympic decathlon winners.
  1966