Bill Cosby called me the other day with a question.
"Have you ever heard of John Woodruff?" the comedian asked.
The name rang an unclear bell – for good reason. Mr. Woodruff was the first black runner to win a gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, rallying from last to first place.
It was an incredible feat, one that Mr. Cosby and others believe has been overshadowed to a large extent by the accomplishments of another black runner at those games – Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals.
But as intriguing as the '36 Olympics race remains to this day, Mr. Woodruff was involved in another head-turning 800-meter contest the following year.
That controversial race was held at a makeshift track at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
On a sweltering day in July 1937, Mr. Woodruff ran what was at the time the fastest 800 meters ever. He did it in 1:47.8, beating the old record by two seconds.
He ran against a field of other world-class athletes, including a white runner from California who was his biggest rival in the 800 meters – Elroy Robinson.
Here's one account of the race that ran in The Dallas Morning News on June 22, 1939:
"Officials ran around in circles looking at one another's stopwatches. They talked excitedly. They jabbered. Telegraph operators, taking dictation – this was no time for typewriters – started the story around the globe. John Woodruff had beaten the world record by a full 2 seconds.
"The lanky Negro knew that he turned in his greatest race of all time."
"I was all out," he panned.
Two days later, Amateur Athletic Union officials ruled that the track on which he ran was 6 feet short of regulation.
Mr. Woodruff, now 91 and living in an Arizona retirement village, was never bitter about what happened. But to this day, he questions how officials could have bungled the measurement.
"That's something very fishy," he told me in a telephone interview from his home. "How could the chief engineer measure it within 1/1,000 of an inch [beforehand] and then find it 6 feet short? That was a big joke to me."
He wrote the secretary of the AAU a letter of complaint, "but he never responded to my letter."
Now, at the behest of Mr. Cosby, who has an honorary doctorate from Southern Methodist University, SMU officials are trying to figure out what happened. The engineer who measured the track reportedly was from SMU.
"If nothing else, it's a tremendous story of human accomplishment," said SMU's interim provost, Thomas Tunks, who got a call from Mr. Cosby two weeks ago.
Dr. Tunks said it certainly seems like a long shot that anyone would be able to determine with absolute certainty what happened in 1937, but he said there's no harm in searching for the truth. At a minimum, he said, there may be some way to honor Mr. Woodruff's spectacular run in Dallas.
"It's important to remember important people," he said, referring to Mr. Woodruff's many accomplishments on and off the track. "That's what it boils down to."
Darwin Payne, a Dallas historian and professor emeritus at SMU, did some preliminary research into the 1937 games, which were held in conjunction with the Greater Texas and Pan American Exposition.
(If you have any clippings or memories of that event, please let me know and I'll forward the information.)
I asked Dr. Payne whether it was possible that officials involved in those games didn't want to see Mr. Woodruff claim the world record. The question gave him pause, if not heartburn. "I'd be a little bit surprised if it was that malicious, to tell you the truth," he said. "But it's not inconceivable."
That is a fly in the ointment, the fact that the South was so deeply segregated at the time, and Dallas was no exception. The black athletes who came into town for those games, for example, were sent to stay at the black YMCA, rather than to SMU campus dorms with the other athletes.
It's clear what Mr. Cosby, himself a former runner, would like to see happen: "I would like to see that he has the world record before he shuts his eyes. That's the one thing that's in his heart – he knows that they shoved it to him. He knows that."
Mr. Woodruff finished college, later got his master's, married and has two grown children. He lives with his wife, Rose, and moved to Fountain Hills, Ariz., five years ago. About 2 ½ years ago, he suffered from poor circulation that caused doctors to amputate both legs.
But the athlete whose strides were some 9 feet long, earning him the moniker "Long John Woodruff," still stands tall. This weekend, the University of Pittsburgh will again honor him for his achievements – in particular the '36 Olympics. "I would think that would be the highlight of my career," he said of the Olympics.
Unless, of course, he were to hear someone reassure him that he broke the world record one hot day in Dallas in 1937.
"That would be something," he said.
E-mail jragland@dallasnews.com
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