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Forged By Fire - Glenn Cunningham Story 2/9/2017

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DyeStat.com   Feb 9th 2017, 1:10pm
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Forged By Fire:

A tragic schoolhouse blaze 100 years ago today set the course for Glenn Cunningham and the American mile

 

By Adam Kopet of DyeStat

Letha frantically yanked open the schoolhouse door and out billowed thick black smoke into the frigid morning air, and out tumbled her three brothers, choking and burning.

“Throw sand on us!” screamed Floyd, dropping to the ground and rolling frantically to smother the flames from his clothes. Glenn copied his older brother and did the same.

The frozen ground was hard as cement. There was no sand or dirt to throw.

Raymond, who gasped for air but was not badly burned, and Letha began slapping at Glenn’s body, trying to extinguish the flames on his pants.

Floyd staggered to his feet and shouted: “Home! We gotta get home!”  

From the Rolla Sunflower country school, it was two miles down a lonely two-lane road in Southwest Kansas to the Cunningham house.

One hundred years ago today, on Feb. 9, 1917, the fire that nearly took 7-year-old Glenn Cunningham’s life also set him on a trajectory to become the greatest miler in the world.

Running on sheer adrenaline, 13-year-old Floyd began to stagger home with his sister Letha, 11, giving chase. Minutes earlier, it was Floyd who had accidentally tried to start the school’s stove with gasoline instead of slower-reacting kerosene. What he didn’t know was that there had been a meeting in the classroom the night before and at least one of the coals was still hot.

The ignition of the gasoline by the ember produced an explosion like a Molotov cocktail. The only door going out of the building could not be opened from the inside. It took the boys’ screams and frantic beating on the wooden planks for Letha to hear them and let them out.

Raymond, 9, helped his younger brother to his feet and they hobbled in the direction of home. The pain in Glenn’s legs was almost unbearable.

In desperation, the four kids made progress toward home, believing it was their nearest and best chance for help.

Floyd was nearly naked. Everything from his shoes to the top of his coat was burnt away, exposing charred skin. His sister and two brothers caught up to him, but he never stopped moving.  

Feeling dizzy and overwhelmed by the sight of his older brother’s injuries, Glenn collapsed to ground and vomited.

“Get up!” Raymond hissed in Glenn’s ear. “When we get home, Mother will know what to do. C’mon, Glenn. You can’t just lie there.”

By the time the four children reached the front porch, however, they remembered that their mother was not home. Only Margie, their 14-year-old sister taking care of two younger siblings, was there to meet them.

Margie helped Floyd and Glenn onto a bed and sent Raymond out to go find their parents. Letha ran to the nearest neighbor’s house to find an adult who could advise them what to do next.

Margie attempted to remove Glenn’s burnt clothes as he cried out in pain. Floyd, though, glassy-eyed and looking at the ceiling, remained silent.  

Excruciating minutes and hours passed before Dr. Fergusen arrived, first to treat Floyd, then Glenn.

“With Glenn, the big danger is infection,” Dr. Fergusen told Clint Cunningham, the boys’ father. “If it comes, both legs will have to be amputated. Regardless, I doubt he’ll be able to walk again.”

Silence fell over the room.

“With Floyd, there’s not much we can do.”

 

I Will Walk  

Dr. Fergusen stood over Glenn after another unsuccessful attempt to bend the boy’s scarred legs.

“For six months you’ve been telling us that you are going to walk again,” the doctor said. “Do you still believe that?”

“Yes, sir,” Glenn answered.  

“All right, let’s try it.”

“You mean now?” Glenn asked, suddenly overtaken by concern.

Dr. Fergusen nodded. “Yes. Now.”

The doctor and Glenn’s mother watched as Glenn pushed himself upright in bed, each movement painstakingly slow. Propping himself up with one hand, the boy used the other to nudge each leg toward the edge of the bed, one inch at a time. The strain caused Glenn’s forehead to bead with sweat.

Finally, Glenn sat on the edge of his bed with his feet dangling above the floor. Dr. Fergusen and Rosa Cunningham took positions on either side of him to help him up so he wouldn’t fall.

“Lemme be,” Glenn said defiantly.

Glenn’s feet touched the floor for the first time in six months and he rediscovered that his legs would support his frail body. Then he tried to take a step, but neither his right leg nor left leg would budge.

The boy cried bitterly as he was helped back onto the bed.

Cunningham KidsThe failure was crushing. Alone in his room, Glenn searched for a way out of his immobile condition, latching onto some strand of hope.

He formed a plan.  

“Father,” Glenn said. “I need something.”

Just home from a long day’s work, and tired, his father looked at him curiously.

“What’s that, boy?”

“Our big chair, downstairs,” Glenn said. “I need it right here. Right beside my bed.”

Glenn’s father looked at him thoughtfully.

“That’s our best chair, son.”

“I know it,” Glenn replied. “I need the chair, Father.”

Clint Cunningham studied his son for a few moments, before nodding.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll bring ‘er up to you, Glenn.”

It was a simple plan. The sturdy, homemade chair became Glenn’s exercise machine. After sliding himself from his bed into the chair, Glenn used the arm rests to push himself onto his feet. From there, Glenn forced his legs to move enough so that he could circle around the chair while he held onto it.

Glenn executed the daily routine for months. It was a period that saw him begin to adopt a single-minded dedication and focus to a goal, a characteristic that defined the rest of his life.

On Christmas Eve, as Glenn’s mother took a break from baking to massage her son’s legs, as per their daily ritual, he proudly proclaimed:

“I have a present for you.”

“Where would you get a present?” she teased.

"To get it, you gotta go and stand by the door.”

Smiling, she stood up and followed Glenn’s instruction.

"Now close your eyes,” he said.

With his mother’s eyes shut, Glenn used the moment to slip out of his bed and onto his feet. He took a faltering step forward with nothing to hold onto, then another.  

“Now open them!” Glenn said excitedly. “Quick, Mother!”

Amazed, Rosa ran to catch her son just as his trembling legs began to give out. They tumbled to the floor together, both crying tears of joy. Later the same day, Glenn repeated the performance for his father and siblings.  

The weeks pressed on into 1918. Glenn’s mobility slowly improved. He had managed to avoid an infection, thankfully. But the flesh that had burned from his knees and shins was slow to heal. He had lost all of the toes on his left foot but his right leg was weaker than the left.

By spring, Glenn’s father began to press him to resume some of his old chores.

Now 8, he began to doubt whether he could.

“C’mon, boy, we’re all gonna chase rabbits on the prairie,” Glenn’s father said one afternoon.

Glenn responded by shaking his head ‘No.’ “I couldn’t even catch a turtle.”

“Well, you could help some, I reckon. Mother says we need the meat.”

After a moment of defiance, Glenn joined the family on the rabbit hunt on the seemingly endless expanse of prairie. From a perch on the wagon, Glenn watched Letha successfully catch the first rabbit of the day.

With the encouragement of his father, Glenn hopped down out of the wagon and tried to help. His first step nearly caused him to fall flat on his face. He hobbled forward but was unable to keep up.

Glenn’s father went to the front of wagon and unhitched one of the horses.

“Here,” he said to his son, thrusting the horse’s tail into the boy’s hand. “Hang on to that. Let’s go.”

Towed by the horse, Glenn hobbled through his longest walk since the fire. He didn’t catch any rabbits that day, but went home with a renewed sense of satisfaction. He was making progress.

 

The First Race

“I want to win that little medal they got on display in the drugstore window,” 13-year old Glenn announced to a classmate. “It’s the one for the mile run. It looks like it might be pure gold.”

“Win? You?” the boy scoffed at Glenn. “Don’t be a fool, Scar-Legs.”

Glenn looked down at his legs. Underneath his pants was the black and blue scar tissue that would forever cover his legs and remind him of the schoolhouse fire. In spite of the wounds, his legs had grown to be strong and limber over the past five years.

The race was on a Saturday. Glenn’s parents didn’t approve of athletic pursuits. His father viewed them as showing off.

The local track and field meet, held in conjunction with the annual farmers’ fair, provided Glenn with a perfect opportunity. No one else in his family knew about the race, and for a few hours he wouldn’t be missed.

It was still early when Glenn arrived. Fair-goers wandered in and out of small tents and wooden stands, where local vendors sold homemade cakes and jellies.

Glenn immediately sought out his school’s principal, Mr. Simmons. Participating in the race required his permission.

“Are you intending to run like that?” Mr. Simmons asked, referring to Glenn’s homemade woolen shirt and long pants. On his feet he wore thick-soled canvas sneakers and heavy socks.

“Yes, sir,” Glenn answered.

“You’re so small you’ll have to run in the Class B races,” Mr. Simmons cautioned.

Contrary to his principal’s assessment, Glenn got into line for the Class A race. It was the Class A race that offered the shiny medal to the winner.

“How much do you weigh, son?” the official at the scale asked as Glenn stepped forward.

“How much you gotta weigh?” Glenn countered.

“At least 70 pounds.”

Glenn stepped up on the scale.

“Exactly 70 pounds,” the man announced. “Who’s next?”

Several shorter races were scheduled to go first. Glenn waited, apprehensive, thankful that his father was miles away.  

Glenn went to the starting line of the half-mile grass track. Eight other boys, most of them in high school, stood towering over him. He was the youngest, the shortest and the only one wearing long pants.  

“On your mark,” called the starter.

Glenn watched as the other boys knelt down to one knee and placed both hands on the ground. He copied them, not wanting to stand out any further.

“Get set. Go!”

The boys snapped up and took off in a dead sprint. Glenn started out from behind, taking his time as his father had taught him on some of their long runs together.

One of the early front-runners lasted a quarter mile. Glenn went past him as he staggered to the side and plopped down onto the grass, out of breath.

Glenn quickened his pace, passing several more boys. By the halfway point, he had caught up to the two lead runners. They were both much taller than him, and Glenn was unsure the proper way to pass, so he darted between, ducking under their pumping elbows.

“Pretty fast clip you’re setting, bub,” one of the boys retorted.

Glenn remembered his father’s words: “When you run, don’t talk.”

Instead of answer, Glenn said, “Huh?”

The boy repeated the question and Glenn repeated his response: “Huh?”

“Be careful,” the other boy said. “He’s so little you might step on him.”

“Huh?” Glenn repeated.

The boys got wise to the ploy and stopped talking. But it didn’t matter. Glenn picked up the pace again and began to stretch his lead.

Glenn was startled to see the finish line coming up so quickly and he didn’t recognize it at first. It is just a string held at eye level. Glenn ducked under it and kept running. The crowd yelled for him to stop and Glenn realized that the race was over.

A man’s voice broke through the din.

“Son, you gotta break that string to win.”

Glenn turned and saw the two other boys approaching the finish. He sprinted backward to the finish line, scrambling to make up for his mistake. For the first time, he felt the weight of the sweat on his soaked woolen shirt.

Glenn lunged for the string and grabbed it just ahead of the on-rushing boys.

He had won his first mile.

 

Kansas Flyer

The sportswriters claimed the Iowa State senior was “simply unbeatable.”

“It takes him another quarter mile just to slow down,” one of them wrote.

Glenn, now 22 years old, was not so sure, but after taking a year off to deal with the severe pain in his legs, he did not know he was ready for the challenge in front of him.

“He says he’s gonna beat you so badly you won’t even finish on the same side of the track as him,” said Brutus Hamilton, Glenn’s coach at the University of Kansas.

Glenn admitted to some creeping doubt. It was a feeling not shared by the coach.

The race was a 2-mile and fell during halftime of a football game.

“I’ll be standing at the first turn,” Coach Hamilton told Glenn. “I’ll motion to you whether I want you to move out or lay back.”

Glenn’s plan was simple. The moment the gun went off, he would file in behind the Iowa State runner, letting him have the lead. Starting out conservative was not just smart racing strategy. It gave his legs a chance to warm up and decreased the chance that they would seize up in pain mid-race.

The second lap came. Hamilton waved for Glenn to move to the front.

On the third lap, Glenn saw his coach wave him forward again. He picked up the pace. On the fourth lap there was another wave. Glenn accelerated again.

Surely he’ll let me drop back now, Glenn thought. Instead, Hamilton kept motioning him to move faster and faster.

It was an important day in Glenn’s budding relationship with his college coach. After years of finding his own way in the sport, he now had someone whom he could trust. And in conversations with Hamilton, Glenn opened up about the impact of the fire on his day-to-day life, as well as the crushing death of his older brother.

On the eighth lap, Glenn bore down and gave everything he had. His legs felt good. He could hear the crowd roar as he entered the homestretch.

Glenn heard the sound of footsteps behind him and it spurred him to sprint with all the force he could muster. The sound in his ears remained.

With a final effort, Glenn broke the tape. Then, wearily, he turned to take stock of the situation and found that there was nobody behind him. The runner from Iowa State was still going, on the other side of the track.

 

Olympics

Glenn arrived in Berlin in 1936 to damp and cold weather, the kind that made his legs feel stiff. There was palpable tension in the air. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime staged the Olympic Games to show the world an image of power and perfection, but the signs of a future conflict were ominous.

StadiumGlenn, at 27, was near his athletic peak. Already a veteran of the 1932 Los Angeles Games, he viewed Berlin as a chance to redeem himself for a fourth-place finish. In the United States, he had been a national high school record holder in the mile, a star at Kansas, and the undisputed leader of the effort to pursue the sub-four minute barrier in the mile.

Although his athletic career would end in 1940, as nations were plunging into war with Germany, Glenn Cunningham’s impact on track and field – and the mile – reverberated for generations, from Wes Santee to Jim Ryun to Alan Webb to Drew Hunter.

He won the Wanamaker Mile at the Millrose Games six times in the 1930s, a feat that would go unmatched until Ireland’s Eamonn Coghlan, the “Chairman of the Boards,” won seven times from 1977-87.

The fire that could have killed him, and the subsequent death of his brother Floyd, were a combination of pain and suffering that required Glenn to respond with ferocious effort and discipline.

In 1938, he ran 4:04.4 for the mile on an oversized indoor track – faster than the outdoor world record. (It was disallowed at the time because he had a pacer). It would take 16 more years of chipping away at the challenge before anybody (Sir Roger Bannister) dipped under four minutes. For Cunningham, who started slow and finished at a sprint to preserve his legs, the feat was just out of his grasp.

In 1936 at the Berlin Games, as Jesse Owens was proving the fallacy of Hitler’s vision of superiority, Cunningham was still testing his own ability to overcome adversity.

There was an intense rivalry between the German and U.S. teams. American team members looked to Glenn, whose story of perseverance had made him a Depression-era hero, as a leader. It was a role he embraced, with humility, as the team steamed across the Atlantic.

After the pomp and parade of the Opening Ceremony, the competition finally started.

Glenn’s event was the 1,500 meters and he held the American record. Italy’s Luigi Beccali, the Olympic champion from 1932 – when Glenn was fourth – held the Games record.

Twelve runners made it to the final, including Beccali. Due to the cold and damp weather, Glenn took extra time to prepare and warm up, not quite able to shake the aching pain in his legs.

Glenn approached the final with nervous anticipation, his stomach full of butterflies.

The starter’s pistol fired and Glenn laid back, moving to the outer edge of the pack. The cheering crowd noise throbbed in his ears, counterbalancing the wild pounding of his heart.

The onset of the pain in his legs grew from a dull roar to a piercing scream. He felt a moment of panic, but continued to press on. Trying to set his discomfort aside, thinking about his team and his country, he continued to push harder. He passed one of the Germans.

The faster pace, and the adrenaline of the big moment, helped Glenn click into a bearable rhythm. He moved through the field, passing runners, including New Zealand’s Jack Lovelock.

At two laps, Glenn made a fateful decision to go to the lead. As he came up alongside leader Robert Goix of France, he could feel his right leg suddenly buckle. He nearly fell to the cinder track before recovering his balance and his stride. The pain returned, however, with unrelenting force.

MedalPushing through once more, Glenn made his move and took the lead. The roar of the crowd intensified as the drama of the race unfolded. The pace pushed him to places he had never been. His eyes stung. His tongue became dry and thick.

Rounding the final turn, Glenn felt the finish line approach. He lengthened his stride coming into the homestretch and pumped his arms. He pushed aside the pain, but he could feel trouble coming – either his legs might give out or he might get caught.

With a final summoning of his reserves, Glenn tried to hold on.

But there was Lovelock, the wavy-haired Kiwi and 1932 silver medalist, sprinting like mad over the final 100 meters. He overtook Glenn and crossed the line in first place.  

Glenn Cunningham finished second for silver, running faster than the world record. Beccali, the reigning champion took bronze.

After the race, Glenn told a reporter, “I feel I ran a fast race. I broke the Olympic record for the (metric) mile. Only one person in the world ran faster.”

Despite finishing second, Glenn remained upbeat and proud of his accomplishment.

“In one way, the Berlin Olympics was the climax of my running career,” Glenn said.

By 1940, with so much of the world at war or on the brink of it, the Games scheduled for Tokyo were canceled.

As a result, Glenn’s racing career came to an end. He found a new calling, guiding troubled youth, first on his ranch in Kansas and then eventually in Arkansas. Over a span of decades, he and his wife, Ruth, cared for thousands of children.

The determination to walk again and live a normal life required sacrifices that seemed easy in comparison with making circuits around the chair when his knees wouldn’t bend, when the pain was too great, when he thought about how Floyd died but he lived.

At a time when coaches and science couldn’t determine whether a man could possibly run a four-minute mile, Glenn Cunningham was a vital link in an exploration that rivaled the first summit of Mount Everest.

His resolve was, literally, forged by the fire of 1917.

“Those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest men,” Hamilton said.

 

Cunningham Quote

 

How We Wrote It: Telling the story of Glenn Cunningham’s life, beginning with the scene of the fire, required numerous sources. Most important was Cunningham’s memoir, “Never Quit.” Much of the dialogue used here comes from this book. Every effort was made to remain as true to life and factual as possible.

Additional sources include Dr. Paul J. Kiell’s Cunningham biography, “American Miler,” and an interview with Cunningham conducted by Darryl Hicks in 1981, published on MyBestYears.com in 2009.

Throughout the various sources, there were discrepancies about dates and names. Even Cunningham’s own accounts vary. Whenever possible, names and dates were verified by additional sources.



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