Carl Lewis Owes It All to Parents

It is a conceit of Americans that heroes, like Henry Adams’ friends, are born, not made. Environment has nothing to do with it.

That may be true. But how come all the great vaudeville comedians and almost all early-day radio humorists came from the Lower East Side of Manhattan? How come the great blues musicians came up the Mississippi out of New Orleans? Why do all the great actors and poets seem to come from England? Why do dancers come from Russia, tenors from Italy, skiers from Austria? Arnold Palmer’s father was a golf pro?

If environment is so irrelevant, why does virtuosity seem to grow in clusters in the same place? Does a rose grow in weeds? No, it grows with other roses. Genius does not flourish in a vacuum.

Carl Lewis is one of the great athletes of the 20th Century. He may be on the verge of doing what no athlete has ever done before--win the 100, 200 and the long jump in two separate Olympics. Since he also runs on the sprint relay team, he could perform the astonishing feat of winning four gold medals in successive Olympics.

So, did Carl Lewis just roll out of bed with this incredible ability? Oh, sure. And Caruso never took a singing lesson in his life. And Louis Armstrong just picked up a cornet one day and began to play, “South Rampart Street Parade.”

Lots of people are born with the ability to play the cornet or the piano--or to run fast or jump far. But to do it really well, to hit Broadway or Hollywood--or the Olympic Games--you have to be in the right place at the right time. You have to go where the state of the art is refining itself, where you have competition, motivation, inspiration. Skill withers if it’s not repeatedly honed and tested and refined.

Carl Lewis, it may please you to know, was practically born on a running track. He didn’t just come along one day to a wide creek and find he could jump it. He was in a long-jump pit almost as soon as he was out of a playpen. His first pair of shoes had running spikes in them. Carl was born to run. He was also taught to.

I have this from an unimpeachable source: His mother. I had breakfast with Lewis’ mother the other morning as she was passing through on her way to Seoul and the Olympics as part of the program in which Seagram’s, the distiller, is sending the families of the 550 Olympians to the ’88 Summer Games, expenses paid.

Willingboro, N.J., is not ordinarily thought of as your basic wellhead of track and field in this country. But when William and Evelyn Lewis moved there in the late ‘60s, they were already dedicated track and field enthusiasts. Mother Evelyn had been a member of the U.S. team as a hurdler and long jumper in the first Pan-Am Games, in Buenos Aires, in 1951. Father Bill had been a football and basketball coach.

Both were graduates of Tuskegee. At Willingboro, they founded the Willingboro Track Club. Initially, they brought Carl and his younger sister, Carol, along on the workouts because it was cheaper than hiring a baby-sitter.

“Carl practically lived in that long-jump pit,” Evelyn Lewis recalls.

When he wasn’t jumping in it, he was building sandcastles in it. Carl’s Aunt Freddie, Evelyn’s sister, recalls that he and his sister had to be dragged off the pit when darkness fell. Other kids wanted to go home and watch television. Carl wanted to jump in the street lights.

“At the age of 14, he was winning the junior nationals with 20 feet 5 inches,” Evelyn Lewis remembers.

Carl, who is now 6 feet 2 inches, was late maturing. “He was small until the 10th grade, when at one time he grew 2 1/2 inches in a month and a half,” Evelyn recalls.

Growing pains inhibited his jumping, and Carl began to work on his run-up, his speed intervals. People found them pretty astonishing. He was a gifted runner but not the stylish runner he was to become. Both parents began to work on his form.

“If there was a flaw, it was his takeoff,” Evelyn the former 80-yard hurdler, says. But it soon became apparent to the Lewises that Carl was a fluid power runner who accelerated as he went along. They concentrated on working on that.

Today, a number of track filberts think that if Carl had better action at the post, he would be as unbeatable as an ocelot. Evelyn Lewis is not sure she agrees. “Energy might be expended that he might need at the 80-meter mark,” she says.

The exploits of the children--Carol is one of only two female Americans to have long-jumped more than 23 feet and has won four outdoor and as many indoor national championships in the event--and the pedagogy of the Lewis parents brought the track and field world flocking to Willingboro.

“We had all-comer meets with athletes from nine states,” Evelyn reports. “There’d be 500 or 600 youngsters.”

Carl had been a one-man track team. But he hated the hurdles.

“He struck a bargain,” his mother says. “If he ran a 9.5 hundred and long-jumped 25 feet, he could drop the hurdles. He made it easily. He was always goal-oriented, academically and athletically.”

Carl Lewis was practically world class when he left Willingboro for Houston, where Coach Tom Tellez was able to re-refine the product. But Carl Lewis was as mistake-free a mechanic as a teen-ager could be by then.

The Lewis family suffered a devastating loss last year. Bill Lewis succumbed to cancer. Carl’s 100-meter gold medal--and part of his heart--lies in the grave with him in New Jersey.

But if Carl becomes the Olympic athlete for all the ages at Seoul and pulls down three or four more gold medals, does what no man has ever done, he will owe it all to a pair of dedicated parents who turned a little corner of New Jersey into a hotbed of track sports.

He got good for the same reason George Burns and George Jessel and Louis Armstrong and Al Hirt did. He was in an environment where he couldn’t help it. Jean-Claude Killy couldn’t help being a great skier. Carl Lewis couldn’t help being a great long jumper.

The Soviets are used to being beat by jumpers and sprinters who come from the sun belts of California, Florida, Georgia and Texas. This is the first time they will have been bested by something that comes out of the waving palms of Willingboro.