Sixty Years Ago New York City Area Athletes Set Standards

That Have Stood the Test of Time

By Marc Bloom

Second of 2 Parts

Was Julio Meade of Andrew Jackson and the New York City PSAL invincible? 

How badly shattered was his rival Otis Hill of suburban White Plains after four straight 1966 indoor losses, two at 300 yards and two at 440 yards, in the Armory? It was Hill who, the previous year, had set the national flat-floor 300-yard record of 31.2 at the old arena.

“Otis was muscular, very intimidating,” Julio once told me. “I made a practice never to look at him.”

One time, Meade couldn’t help it.

In the most painful indignity of all, Hill lost one of the 300s to Meade when Hill seemed to have the race sewn up. On the first lap, with Hill on the rail and Meade trying to pass, Hill dealt a sharp elbow into Meade’s ribs. Meade fell back, bruised but not beaten. Miraculously, he would rally in the last 100, making up a 10-yard deficit, to overtake Hill for the win.

Julio Meade. Everything would revolve around him.

When at 19 I traveled upstate that May on the Boys High bus to cover my first track meet for The New York Times, Hill showed he possessed reserves and resilience of his own. In the Schenectady Interscholastic Sports Carnival, on the Linton High School track, Hill restored his stature, defeating Meade, 47.3 to 47.4, two of the fastest times in the country and another spike in a rivalry that would live on in track lore.

That season was so rich in duels of disparate personalities that a second rivalry would also prove dynamic. Just as Meade evoked radiance and Hill was a bundle of power, Meade’s teammate in the half-mile, Mark Ferrell, was a free spirit, while his rival, James Jackson of Boys High, was a fighter whose fast pace from the gun was his sucker punch.

 “After meets,” Ferrell said, “we would go down to the jazz clubs in the Village. We were always into music. Julio played congas, Bill played piano, I played rhythm guitar.”

In the Schenectady press area, I had my Olivetti Lettera 32 manual at the ready to knock out the meet’s key narratives. I had read that my model was designed by an artist and “exemplified the aesthetic sensibility of mid-century Italy.”

Art meets art on the track. 

My New York Times story the next day, May 22, in the Sunday edition, carried this headline, written by a deskman:

JACKSON BREAKS SCHOOLBOY MARK; 

Boys High Star Wins 880 in 1:51.5 in Schenectady

My “lede”:

Schenectady, N.Y., May 21 — James Jackson, a Boys High School junior who has made quite a habit of collecting records this season, improved on one of his own today as he won the Schenectady Interscholastic Sports Carnival half-mile in 1 minute 51.5 seconds. He broke the mark he set last year by more than two seconds.

I went on to write that Jackson “had set his sights on a sub-1:50 performance” but his brazen 53.2 opening lap was too adventurous. Ferrell closed hard in a “tremendous kick,” in 1:51.8, for one of the fastest one-two 880s ever run to that point.

Like the first date with your teen heart-throb, I had one in the books.

When I recently reached out to Ferrell, who lives in Wisconsin and works in the photographic arts with studios and museums, he told me that when he joined the Jackson team in ’64, he thought he was going to be “The Man,” and hoped to break 1:50 himself.

Ferrell, 77, had pictures of Jim Ryun and Peter Snell on his bedroom wall. Olympic ads, too. Clips from Life Magazine and Sports Illustrated. “I had stars in my eyes,” he said. “Exposure to the greats on paper.”

We lived on paper, a precious legacy. I read two bibles. One was Track & Field News, which billed itself (and still does) as the “bible of the sport.” The other was Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry, whose origins went back to the 1880s. 

I guess I was a newspaper junkie. I devoured all the intricacies of newsprint and page layout, type size and column width, and the bylines of those whose stories sang. I took pleasure in reading the local papers wherever I went, keeping many and, instead of track stars on my walls, pasted up newspaper logos as though to feel a part of the all-the-truth-that’s-fit-to-print journalistic enterprise.

The names intrigued me and represented an art form unto themselves. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Middletown Times-Herald Record, Allentown Morning Call, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Fresno Bee. I knew them all.

One felt an America bursting in them, perhaps a nostalgic America, as though Pete Seeger was singing, “This Land is Your Land,” in the background. I thrilled to facts like the number of daily newspapers then, 1,750; and, today, with about half that, I mourn their demise.

I don’t think I’d ever felt more fulfilled in my youth than when putting the college weekly to bed on closing night, my clothing ink-stained, and the presses ready to roll.

In Schenectady, the other reporters looked to me for back-room info since I had the goods on the greats. While I held the forthcoming relay showdowns close to my vest, I did let out that a number of New York athletes would probably receive invitations to the Golden West national meet in California. I’d become the East Coast advisor to the event, then only for seniors, and would release the names once the final decisions were made in Sacramento, after the various state meets.

In Schenectady, led by Hill’s 440 triumph, and Larry James’ 180-yard low hurdles win in 19.1, the White Plains squad, which covered just about every event, amassed 49 points to defeat Westchester rival Mt. Vernon by 30.

In the New York State Public Schools Athletic Association championships, at West Point, White Plains would score another blowout. The Tigers’ athletes who would join in a quartet for the relay record attempts were all victorious: Hill took the quarter and James the 330 intermediates; David Jackson won the 100 and Carl Reed won the 220. 

While the somewhat backward NYSPHSAA did not yet include the New York PSAL, Catholic schools or the various private schools’ leagues, White Plains captured state team honors with 58 points, a record total never approached, even with the entire state now long a part of it.

Jackson is the only surviving member of the White Plains sprint foursome. A 6-foot, 170-pounder as a teen, Jackson was a football back in the fall and basketball guard in the winter and would come into spring track with work to do. “I always needed to get into track shape,” said Jackson, 77, a retired teacher of special needs children.

The White Plains coach, Edwin Kehe, tried to steer Jackson into indoor track but, Jackson told me, “I needed a break from the Otis Hill mystique.” With Hill doing most of the team’s ball carrying in football and Jackson blocking for him, Jackson told me he “got an attitude,” and the friction had to run its course. 

When we spoke about old times, including the 50th anniversary celebration of the ‘66 White Plains records, in a 2016 ceremony held at the school track, Jackson grew emotional and had to pause to gather himself. When I asked Jackson what touched him, he replied, “We spent so much time together. They’re not here to participate and tell their stories. I have to do it myself.”

One story was about track shoes. “We were too poor to afford them,” said Jackson, whose victorious state meet 100-yard time was 9.8. “Coach Kehe took us into New York by subway and paid for them. It was a great day.”

Jackson kept his clippings from the White Plains Reporter Dispatch, testaments to togetherness. Since it took him half a season to get sharp, Jackson anticipated the June relays with zeal.

Two additional ’66 New York stars with the versatility of the entire White Plains team had a different agenda in the post-season. One, from Long Island, was the best decathlete in the country. The other, from Brooklyn, was the best freshman multi-eventer, destined for the U.S. Olympic team a decade later.

To recall Fred Samara’s first-year accolades when he attended Fort Hamilton High School, I checked my old New York State annual from ’66, the first of a dozen I published into the late ‘70s, selling them for a dollar. 

Samara, who lived near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge when it opened to great fanfare in 1964, set state freshmen records in the long jump, 22-1, and pole vault, 12 feet, while jumping into a saw dust pit in practice. He also took shots at the sprints, hurdles and throws, and that summer Samara’s father drove him to Pittsburgh for the national pentathlon and Delaware for his first decathlon.

Before long, Samara started scoring over 6,000 points. Older multi stars mentored him and he began dreaming of big things. When Samara’s dad took him to Schenectady as a soph in ‘67, he was awarded the Most Valuable Athlete award after winning the pole vault and long jump — “stealing it” from Jim Jackson who, as a senior, captured a third straight 880 and, when we spoke, seemed irked that the trophy had eluded him.

Samara was a student of the sport, soaking up all the news of his PSAL compatriots, and especially what was happening about an hour’s drive east on “the Island,” courtesy of Alvin Pearman, a senior at Roosevelt High. “I knew all his marks,” Samara told me.

From my old lists, I was reminded that Pearman had run a 21.1 220, long jumped 24-1 ½, triple jumped 48-8 ¾ and pole vaulted 13-5 ½, as a sampling, and would go on to score a nation-leading 6,945 points in the decathlon — the second-best ever and Samara’s high school goal from that point on.

Wherever you looked, track was embossed with a can-do attitude. Maybe it had something to do with the new music providing an upbeat soundtrack. In 1966, the big hits included the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” whose “wall of sound” was felt from the Armory rafters to Andrew Jackson’s dirt track, five laps to the mile, where the Hickories, according to the Daily News, showed the “Watch Our Smoke” reputation they would bring to the inaugural New York Relays.

That phrase was penned by the paper’s PR chief, Jack Smith, who every day for a month wrote full page feature stories on teams entered in the new event, sponsored by the News, and cast as “our Penn Relays.” A huge driver of interest — and an obvious swipe at The Times — the previews would spotlight each school’s signature quartet along with glowing photo treatment. 

Samara ate that stuff up. He was also spurred by the New York Post previews of the major indoor meets at the Garden, doped out by Paul Zimmerman, later pro football’s “Dr. Z” of Sports Illustrated fame.

As the regular season was ending, one night I got a phone call at 3 o’clock in the morning from the Golden West selection committee, in the process of making its final picks for the June 18 national meet in Sacramento. It was midnight in California. We spoke for an hour. All of my candidates from the New York area were accepted.

Meade and Ferrell would come from Andrew Jackson. Hill, James and a triple jumper, Robert Thomas, would come from White Plains. Pearman would compete in at least two events. I’d also gotten in two javelin throwers from New Jersey and the New York State pole vault record holder (14-5 ½) Tim St. Lawrence of Suffern, known since as the “Flying Circus” pole vault guru, a program that has vaulted countless athletes skyward.

But, first, there would be two weeks of record attacks in the relays, the most significant two weeks ever: the 880, mile, two-mile and four-mile would all be subject to a relentless fury that had been building all year.

On Wednesday, June 7, 1966, at the St. John’s University track in Hillcrest, Queens, the 880 and two-mile would be contested. The same day in Highland Park, New Jersey, there would be a four-mile featuring Essex Catholic and its up-and-coming runner, Marty Liquori. Then, a week later, on June 14, also at St. John’s, a mile relay would be run.

Liquori, then a junior at Essex Catholic High of Newark, had run a 4:16.9 flat-floor record mile at the Armory and was a year away from running the third high school sub-4 mile ever.

In a race that was basically a time trial, Essex destroyed the national record by 29 seconds with a time of 17:12.2, 47 seconds ahead of the second-place team. The Eagles’ Jim McLoughlin led off in 4:23.9. Art Martin followed in 4:18.0. Fred Lane, third, had the fastest split, 4:14.8. Liquori brought it home in 4:15.5 for coach Fred Dwyer’s foursome.

The Essex Catholic record would stand until 1976 when South Eugene of Oregon dipped under it in 17:11.7. Fifty years later, in 2016, the Essex time was still the 10th fastest ever; that year, Great Oak of California ran the first sub-17, in 16:58.87.

Even today, the Essex time stands tall. At this season’s Arcadia Invitational, with its national entry, the boys 4x1600-meter relay was taken by American Fork of Utah in 17:07.67. With the conversion from metric to linear, the time equates to just over 17:12, what Essex ran 60 years ago.

At St. John’s, June 7 was a pleasant late spring afternoon. No one was around other than the athletes, coaches and officials. The meet, like so many, was held under the auspices of the Catholic High Schools Athletic Association, and designated a CHSAA Relay Carnival. There was hand-timing, of course, and judges with clipboards and pencils. 

The track was not the prevailing leg-sapping cinder but a hard asphalt compound, a transition to the fast, synthetic surfaces that were still years in the making.

I was the only reporter. Since record attempts were always suspect on the sports desk, I was asked by The Times and Long Island Press to call in if something happened. There were no photographers, not a one. No one taking videos. No parents. No team tents. 

Set your stuff out on the infield, do your warm-ups, and remember everything — the whole year, all of it: it had come down to this.

The 880 relay (4x220) came first. White Plains, adorned in its orange tops, ran as expected. Jackson led off in 21.8, James ran 21.5, Reed 21.3 and Hill 20.8. The sticks were clean, if a tad safe. The Tigers clocked 1:25.4 to take a half-second off the 1:25.9 national record shared by two teams from Los Angeles, Jefferson and Dorsey. Boys placed almost 30 yards behind in 1:28.4. Jackson was no threat because Meade was held out for the two-mile relay.

Meade was untested in the 880. It was considered quite a risk, but coach Blatt needed a fourth. He put Julio on lead-off, praying he would not blow up, imploring him to hold back. Remember, it’s two laps.

Fear of Meade in the sprints had entered the realm of ghostly fissure. In a Sport magazine story that made the rounds at the time, a rival of Meade’s from New Jersey, William Walker of Dwight Morrow High in Englewood, said that one time before competing against Meade when he’d gone to the dentist, while under gas he kept repeating “Beat Meade, beat Meade.”

The mantra was applied time and again. It turned out not even the high-stepping Kangaroos could not beat Meade. Coach Terry had been confident of victory and expected to get a 1:48 out of Jim Jackson on the anchor. When he saw Meade go out in 1:54.3 for a sizable lead, Terry was stunned—we all were, but hadn’t we learned: Julio could do anything.

Maybe Terry forgot that he had made the very same transition in his own high school career. In 1954, Terry, the PSAL 440 champion at Brooklyn Tech, had run the lead-off 880 on the Engineers’ victorious distance medley at the Penn Relays (and, ironically, had done his college running right there at St. John’s).

But it was easy to lose your mind at that moment on the St. John’s track. Julio’s run had made everyone dizzy. The race went back and forth from there. The legs pulsated with symphonic rectitude.

When Sam Thomas handed Mark Ferrell a five-yard margin on Jim Jackson at the anchor, Ferrell was wary. After Ferrell had defeated Jackson at the PSAL city champs, this was the revenge “Jack” had been waiting for. Ferrell cut on cautiously to draw Jackson close, to feel his presence.

With 220 to go and Ferrell still leading, Jackson took off, trying to “hurt” Ferrell with a decisive surge, as Randall remembered it. Jim Jackson now led, Terry’s victory seemingly assured. But Ferrell dug for ardor — driven by the hours of hauling tobacco, the guitar licks, Uncle Milty and the urgencies of Julio — and met Jackson’s groaning home straight stride with the finish in relief and their bodies wiggly. 

Brooklyn vs. Queens: all running was local.

The two young men leaned in as one — Mark in the forest green-and-white of the Hickories, Jim in the blood red-and-black of The High — as though fate had intervened to deliver the only verdict that made sense.

Flowing from the kaleidoscope of years of racing, from Van Cortlandt to the Armory to Randalls Island and beyond, the eight athletes consumed by the same goal, the legs evening out in numerical destiny, would produce a fortuitous result, a just result — a result that must have come from some track God to settle the score with primitive precision.

It was judged a tie. A virtual tie. No photo-timer existed to say otherwise.

The time: 7:35.6 for both teams. 

The officials called it for Andrew Jackson. Both schools would get credit for the 7:35.6, a national record by 6.4 seconds, eclipsing the 7:42.0 run by Proviso West of Illinois in 1965. 

It would take 36 years for the 7:35.6 to be broken; the 4x800 equivalent was 7:33.0 and in 2002, Auburn High of Washington state barely shaved the record in 7:32.89. (The current record is 7:26.12 set by Herriman of Utah last year.)

But what evidence — a uniform thread, bead of sweat, hair on the chinny-chin-chin — would give it to Jackson? Hanging with the officials, I saw the finish up close. We watched Mark and Jim cross in depleted unison. We stood in awe, of the moment, and of the decision to be made. 

The first chest at the line would take it, right? Jim was broad. Mark was lithe. Jim stood out. Mark caressed. Jim thought he won. Mark wanted to sing the Armory anthems.

To this day, none of us looking on could say exactly how the decision had been made. The officials’ judgement was top-secret, secured in the vault of memory, perhaps as it should be.

We only knew that it was Mark Ferrell who’d carried the tune.

That’s how it would go into the record books. Andrew Jackson of Queens first and Boys High of Brooklyn second, in the Olympic final of the high school boys two-mile relay.

The Jackson splits: Julio Meade 1:54.3, Bill Jacobs 1:57.3, Sam Thomas 1:52.7, Mark Ferrell 1:51.3. Boys High: Mark Edmead 1:55.3, John Henry 1:56.6, Mike Randall 1:53.1, Jim Jackson 1:50.6.

All eight athletes ran their fastest times that day.

Last month at the Arcadia meet, the winning boys 4x800 time was a meet record 7:32.78, by Union Catholic of New Jersey, the Penn Relays winner two weeks hence.

Virtually the same time. Sixty years later.

“I thought they miscounted the laps,” Liquori once told me.

After the results were tabulated, I raced to the nearest phone booth to call the papers with the news like a reporter in the old newsreels letting their editors know they’d have to rip out the front page.

Randall, who’d redeemed himself after an erratic season and once quit the team over disagreements with Terry, might have had the best handle on how such transcendence had come together. A Renaissance man, Randall went on to run for Nebraska while earning advanced degrees, leading the anti-war movement on campus and eventually studying everything from poetry to astrology.

Now living in central New Jersey, Randall, 78, suggested to me years ago for the 16,000-word article I would write in 1986 about the two-mile relay in The Runner — titled “Me and Julio Down by the School Track” — that the answer lay in the cosmos. His theory went like this:

“Most athletes will have Mars in the mid-Heaven of the astrological chart of their birth. On the day the record was set, Mars hit exactly between six and eight degrees of Gemini, the sign of the winged foot.” In other words, Randall professed, it was a prime day for athletes.

A week later in the mile relay, planetary majesty had not abated. With the same foursome from the 880, White Plains got an opening 49.8 from Carl Reed as Andrew Jackson and Boys High kept it close. A 48-flat second leg by Dave Jackson blew the race apart. Larry James followed in 47.4, his future as Villanova’s “Mighty Burner” showing its stripes. 

Snatching the last stick of the season, to secure a record destined from day one, Otis Hill was given a 20-yard lead—finally an assignment that would prove too much for Julio Meade. But, well…

Hill split 47.5 as White Plains’ time of 3:12.7 ravaged the 3:14.9 1964 national record of Samuell of Dallas by 2.2 seconds, while leaving a stacked Andrew Jackson squad 20 yards up the track.

However, with Meade’s anchor carry of 47.2, Jackson’s runner-up time was 3:14.8, also under the Samuell mark (Boys was 3rd in 3:18.1), and so the Hickories could also be credited with two national records in two weeks.

The ’66 White Plains team is the only one to simultaneously hold the boys national 880 and mile relay records, other than Lewis Institute of Chicago, according to track historian Jack Pfeifer. In May of 1903, separated by three weeks, Lewis first ran 3:30 and 2/5 for the mile, then 1:32 and 2/5 in the 880. (A Catholic school that eventually became a college, Lewis’ early runners might have been “over-age.”)

Dave Jackson, on the second leg, proved to be the key for White Plains. Finally rounding into shape, he said it was his most satisfying performance, one he would turn to in times of difficulty later on. “Whenever I felt life getting the best of me,” he said at the 50th anniversary relay record commemoration at White Plains High School in 2016, “I’d think of what we did as a track team and strength would come and I’d rise from the dark hole I was in.”

When I organized a 50th anniversary celebration of the two-mile relay, in 2016, at roughly the same time as the White Plains fete, similar emotions were expressed. Our gathering filled the Coogan’s restaurant reception room down the street from the Armory. All surviving members or family of those who’d passed on attended. World record holder Steve Williams of the Bronx and Olympic gold medalist Vincent Matthews of Queens were among the heads of state who would come to honor their own. 

From Jackson, we had Mark Ferrell, Sam Thomas and Bill Jacobs; from Boys, Jim Jackson and Mike Randall, along with coach Doug Terry, who was aided by former Kangaroo Bill Dabney, the early-1970s half-mile great whose soft stride was like a whisper on the track.

It was not only an evening of remembrance but recognition of a vibrant culture in which the poetry of running, and the magnitude of generous relationships, had rendered a visionary community impacting one and all. It was felt in that room, on the cavernous wooden track down the street on 168th, and in the photographs that had accompanied my revelatory article from ‘86, for which all of the protagonists, then in their late 30s, had gathered at the Manhattan studio of the photographer Harry Benson.

Benson, an unassuming Scotsman, was known for being the designated portrait photographer for everyone from President Ronald Reagan to the Fab Four. In August, 1964, when the Beatles disembarked from their flight to New York for a concert, Benson was among them, standing with camera in hand, an iconic moment, life imitating art. 

A little more than two decades later, Benson, now 96, could add Andrew Jackson and Boys High to his portfolio. In capturing the infectious joy in the cool cats from the city, Benson had nailed it: you gotta have fun or it ain’t worth it.

The day after the mile relay record, the athletes and coaches and myself, 10 of us, flew out to Sacramento together for the Golden West. 

I fit right in. Me, who’d struggled to break his novice on the track, who’d walked in his first cross country race at Van Cortlandt, paving the way for grandiosity. I had my Italian-made work of art close at hand: the Olivetti Lettera 32, packed with copy paper, my carry-on.

One of the coaches rented a van and the 10 of us were thick as thieves for the weekend. We stood in wonder at California: the hard sun and brown contours, the scattered barrenness, the feeling of new ground and discovery, a place of longing, as The Mama and Papas sang it, in startling counterpoint to the rhythms of the saints we’d left behind. 

All invited athletes had to come up with their own travel funds. Somehow, Jackson, White Plains and Roosevelt took care of their athletes’ needs. I got a “student rate” airfare for $150, the meet gave me a room for my invitations help, and my coverage for The Times and other outlets would help me break even.

When we arrived at the host school, Sacramento State University, I was put in with a pole vaulter from Oklahoma. He couldn’t understand my Brooklynese and I couldn’t understand his Okie drawl. We gestured.

The campus rec room and its pool table were commandeered by the national javelin record-holder, one Terry Bradshaw of Shreveport, Louisiana. Bradshaw — the future Hall of Fame quarterback and Reality TV star — had a blond crewcut and hot cue in his hand. 

When Bradshaw asked me what I ran, I said the quarter. I didn’t say I was in the meet. When the final entry lists were posted, I said, I was kidding, I’m only a reporter for The New York Times. He was incredulous.

The track facility was Hughes Stadium. It had a scarlet clay surface. In the press box, I met Jesse Owens, the Honorary Referee. I saw Owens a few years later in the same role at Schenectady. I felt sad for Owens, needing to sell his name in order to make ends meet. Three decades after he’d “defeated” Hitler, Owens seemed a forlorn figure, out of place even at a track meet.

I must have been bad luck for Bradshaw as he was upset by one of my Jersey stalwarts, Roger Collins of Livingston High, who threw the spear 242’ 10 ½” for a meet record and astonishing 22-foot victory margin. (Bradshaw placed seventh almost 50 feet shy of his national record.)

Golden West started in 1960 in the Los Angeles area and moved to Sacramento in 1965. From ’60 through ’65, the winners included Mel Renfro, Tommie Smith, Jim Ryun and Bob Beamon, the only New York winner to that point. (Beamon won the triple jump in 1965, at 50’ 3 ¼”. Not his best event, it turned out.)

Julio approached the national-championship quarter with a sense of duty. Whenever counted on by others, Julio thrived on the responsibility. Later, in marriage, he and his wife took in a number of children of relatives in need of a stable home life.

On a side trip that our contingent took to Lake Tahoe, I could see the commitment in Julio’s eyes as we gazed at the rich, blue waters and took pictures with our Instamatics. I think Julio’s penetrating mindset wore on Otis, who seemed tense in Julio’s midst.

That’s how the 440 played out. Meade flew past the field unchallenged and put together a flawless race, running a meet record-equaling 46.8, to triumph by almost a full second. Hill, visibly tired, hung on for second in 47.7. One-two for New York as promised.

Meade’s bosom buddy, Mark Ferrell, almost staged a repeat of his relay triumph. Leading on the home straight after a sluggish first lap, Ferrell was surprised by the late surge of Rich Messmer from Spokane and lost his form. Messmer won by inches in 1:51.7. Ferrell ran 1:51.8.

“I should have won that sucker,” Ferrell laments today. “I didn’t run through the line.”

In the other events, James and Pearman took second and fourth, respectively, in the 330 intermediates. James, Pearman and Thomas placed fourth, sixth and seventh in the triple jump. St. Lawrence was eighth in the pole vault, and the second Jersey javelin thrower, Mike Prudenti of Madison, was ninth.

Meade and Ferrell went on to run for Kansas University.

While at Villanova, in 1968, James won the Olympic silver medal in the 400 at Mexico City and ran on the world record U.S. 4x400 relay, and later became coach and athletic director at Stockton College in New Jersey.

James Jackson made it to the Golden West as a senior in 1967 and in an uncanny synchrony wound up with the same slightly disappointed result as Ferrell: a close second in the 880, running 1:51.8. The winner, Dave Morton of Texas, had the same time. “It was my first half-mile in lanes,” Jackson recalled. “I came off the stagger dead last.”

Jim went on to run for Purdue and soon after graduation became the Boys High (and Boys & Girls) coach, amassing a record of coaching success over 36 years second to none.

Hill went on to run for Southern University in Baton Rouge. Pearman went on to track-and-field and football at Colgate. Jackson played football at Illinois and in 1967 would score two touchdowns in an Illini upset win over Woody Hayes’ Ohio State team.

Fred Samara, keeping tabs on his New York predecessors, led the nation’s high school decathletes as a senior in 1969, scoring 6,734 points, the third best ever. He would go on to compete for Penn, win the AAU nationals in 1975, score over 8,000 points and make the ’76 Olympic team for Montreal, placing down in the field with an injury.

Soon after, Samara, 77, began coaching at Princeton and, as head coach from 1979 to 2023, had the longest serving coaching tenure in any sport in the Ivy League. Fred’s men’s squads collected over 40 Heptagonal championships.

The White Plains team was venerated in a Track& Field News story that matched the Tigers man for man and event per event with another historic team that season — Muir of Pasadena, California. The two schools were remarkably close. White Plains had more depth in the sprints, distance and relays. Muir was superior in the field events, led by Golden West pole vault champion Paul Hegler and the next year’s Golden West long jump winner, Jerry Proctor.

I went on to cover another 10 or so Golden West meets while continuing my advisory role. The week after the ’66 meet, I was back on duty at the AAU Nationals at Randalls Island, this time “running quotes” for the reporters too tied up in the press box to make it down to the infield interviews.

When I would go up to deliver the athletes’ remarks, a chorus of typewriters would serenade me with pecking fingers tap-tap-tapping away.

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Marc Bloom is working on his first novel, set in the nineteen-sixties.

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