So How Did All of This "Olympicism" Start Anyway...

Yes, I will go back to find some of the pics and journals and post parts of them later. But until then, quite simply, there were many circumstances. Among them, swimming in the NJ State finals and living near a beautiful ocean, greeting foreigners at a convention city adjacent to my home town, Ventnor, at the New Jersey Shore, having parents that realized traveling was an education, loving sports, and loving life certainly helped to make ten olympics possible. Knowing people who encouraged me like Eleanor Weems of Long Beach, California certainly made a big impression on me as a young girl. And before my first Olympics in Mexico '68 I became even more curious during my year of teaching in Japan because it was soon after the '64 Olympics and quite often I was stopped while riding my bike in Tokyo for an autograph. I had to explain that even though I might have looked like one of the athletes, I was not. That was 1966. In 1967 when I spoke about the olympics while living and teaching in Hong Kong, for the most part, I heard discouraging words. A year later I found myself walking down Avenida Reforma in Mexico City headed for the CBS News office. Bert Quint was chief of the Latin America Bureau in those days and although I did not have an appointment he had a look at my resume and said that my resume would even be better with CBS News on it. And I was hired!

Now what exactly was it like to work for CBS News during the exciting Olympic months in 1968? That deserves a post or two in October. (Yes, I will also cover some of the adventures that I skipped in China.)