by Frank Deford
But anyway, 1984. Now because your father didn’t follow swimming, he was quite surprised to find out that the best swimmer in the world then was a German boy named Michael Gross. He was sort of an early version of Michael Phelps, although, of course, not nearly so good. He was extremely tall, Michael Gross, and with arms so long they called him “The Albatross.”
The first time we saw Gross win a gold medal it was in the two-hundred freestyle. He set a world record—absolutely blew all the others away. And there were all sorts of Germans there cheerin’ the Albatross on. Remember now, Teddy, the Berlin wall was still up, and Michael Gross was a West German. The ones on our side. So it really pleased your old man. Well, a couple days later, Gross was swimming in the hundred-meter butterfly, and though he was by far the best butterflyer in the world, it sort of took him a while to unwind that long body of his, so he was an underdog in the hundred. In the short race.
But all these Germans—West Germans—were wavin’ flags and leadin’ cheers for the Albatross, and, in particular, there was a large group of younger ones down below us, near the pool, and shortly before the race started, your father turned to me, absolutely out of the blue, and he said, “Sydney, is it all right with you if I go down there with them?”
Well, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather, but, of course, I said yes, and he scrambled down to be with that bunch. Remember now, Teddy, he was a man of . . . uh, let’s see, sixty-eight years then, but he was like a spring chicken for that moment. I looked down, and I couldn’t hear what they were sayin’, but I could see him chattin’ with some of the Germans, and when Michael Gross was introduced, he started whoopin’ and hollerin’ in German just like all the others.
And Teddy, damned if Gross didn’t set another world record, comin’ up at the end and out-touchin’ the boy from the United States, who was the favorite. So the air kinda went outta the whole stadium, except for the German contingent. And no one was makin’ more of a fuss than your father, right in the middle.
After a good while, he came back up to our seat, and you know what, Teddy: he was crying.
“And men aren’t supposed to let women see them cry.”
Oh my, no, your father had experienced his consciousness-raising by then, and he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. He was smiling through his tears, just beaming. And he said, “I always hoped it would be like this . . . liebchen.”
I didn’t quite get his meaning. I said, “Whaddya mean?”
And he said, “You know, back in ’36, I dreamed it would turn out that we Germans could be like the good people in the world. That the Olympics would show us that. That’s what I wanted.”
And that’s when I started to cry myself, Teddy, because here it was 1984 in Los Angeles, but you know what occurred to me? You know what I thought?
“No, no I don’t.”
Well, what I thought was that this was finally my Olympics, too. My Tokyo Olympics of 1940 had finally arrived in Los Angeles.
And your father reached over and took my hand, and he squeezed it, and then he went back to being himself again. He only gave himself that one moment to be what he had been, to remember what he had dreamed that summer when we fell in love the minute we met, not having the foggiest what lay just around the corner.
Or ever after, for that matter.
