When Harrison Dillard, the four-time Olympic gold medalist, died on Nov. 15, there wasn’t the fanfare and notice he received 70 years ago, though several national media outlets lavished praise on the great athlete. Dillard, a lifelong Clevelander and nicknamed “Bones,” was 96.
His death was confirmed by a friend, Ted Theodore.
Noted mainly as a hurdler, Dillard also excelled as a sprinter, and there was no greater testament to these capabilities than his successes at the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games.
The path over these hurdles, so to speak, began when Dillard was 13. “We kids,” he told a reporter, “used to take old car seats, burn the fabric off them and then jump over them in the street.” It was during this same period that Dillard was among a throng of admiring children at a parade honoring Jesse Owens, the Olympic legend.
Dillard recalled that moment when he saw the great sprinter: “Jesse looked down from an open car and said ‘Hi, boys.’ I ran home. I said, ‘Mama, Mama, I just saw Jesse Owens, and I’m going to be just like him. She said, ‘Of course, you are son.’ She didn’t take it seriously then, but later, when she saw how much it meant to me, she went and cleaned other people’s houses and their laundry and cooked for them so she could buy a little more food to build me up.”
Dillard followed Owens’ trail to East Technical High School, five years after the sprinter had graduated. Owens, Dillard recalled, gave him a new pair of running shoes. After Dillard failed to make the school’s track team as a sprinter, Owens convinced him to become a hurdler.
At East Tech, following Owens’ advice, he quickly became one of the best sprinters and hurdlers in high school. He won two state titles as a senior in 1941. Ivan Greene, his coach, nicknamed him “Bones,” because of his thin build. It was a nickname that would remain with him throughout his life, although he filled out to 158 pounds on a 5-10 frame at his physical peak. It was at Baldwin Wallace College under the tutelage of Eddie Finnigan, that “Bones” refined his skills as he became the world’s best hurdler. He led the Yellow Jackets to four Ohio Athletic Conference track crowns.
In the U.S. Army, as a member of the 92nd Division Buffalo Soldiers, Dillard’s high school training was significant, and he won several meets as a hurdler. One famous general said that Dillard was “the best goddamn athlete I’ve ever seen.” That was Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
The next hurdle for Dillard was at Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. He soon put the little known college on the map, though he had to do most of his training outdoors. During the winter months, the men on the track team had to practice in the girl’s gymnasium, which had room for only one hurdle. Dillard said, “I learned to start fast and get there ahead of the big guys so their elbows wouldn’t bat me around.”
Following a string of successes at college competitions, Dillard was considered a favorite to qualify as a hurdler for the 1948 Summer Games in London. But something went terribly wrong at the Olympic trials when his foot hit four of the first seven hurdles, destroying his rhythm. He never made it to the eighth hurdle. “It was the worst race I ever ran,” he lamented. “It was the only time in my life that I didn’t finish a race.” Fortunately, he had qualified earlier in the 100-meter dash, finishing third.
Dillard was a huge underdog in the 100-meter dash finals with more than 80,000 people looking on at Wembley Stadium, including the king and queen of England. To win this race he had to top the world record holder, Mel Patton, Barney Ewell, and Lloyd LaBeach of Panama. He told Ewell, his roommate, that he was going to beat him. “You’re crazy,” Ewell laughed.
At the sound of the gun, Dillard was out of the blocks and shot to an early lead. Halfway to the finish he was still five feet ahead. But suddenly the long legs of the other contenders began to gain on him. They all hit the tape in a virtual dead heat, but Dillard believed he had won—and two minutes later the photo-finish camera confirmed it. He came across the line at 10.3 seconds, tying the Olympic record. Later, when he entered the Olympic dining room for supper that evening, the athletes gave him a standing ovation.
But Dillard was not finished. He won a second gold medal as a member of the 400-meter relay team that consisted of anchor Patton, Lorenzo Wright, and Ewell. He was among the honored guests to attend a reception at Buckingham Palace. Back home, the Cleveland Indians in a game against the Detroit Tigers, Dillard was honored and surprised to see his old track coach, Finnigan, emerge from the Indians dugout. Later, Indians owner Bill Veeck hired him as a publicist, a job he held for nine years. He said, noting his weekly salary of $125, that he was making as much as some of the players.
In 1952, Dillard was still haunted by his hurdling failure four years before and sought to erase that memory. But he faced another technical hurdle when the AAU ruled that because he had earned money with the Cleveland Athletic Commission, he was ineligible. Led by sportswriter Franklin Lewis, a protest raged, and the AAU capitulated. Bones was 29 when he began training for the games in Helsinki, Finland. At the event, Dillard edged his teammate Jack Lewis in a winning time of 13.7, a new Olympic mark.
“This is the one I wanted,” he told the press. “I wanted it much more than I did the 100 four years ago.” A fourth gold medal was his as a member of the 400-meter relay team. All told, he had won four gold medals thereby tying his idol Jesse Owens. Moreover, no Olympic contestant had ever won medals in the sprints and hurdles. In 1955, he received the Sullivan Award as the nation’s outstanding amateur athlete.
The end of his running days neared at the 1956 Olympic trials, when he finished sixth. He was 33. Even so, he was later inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. Upon meeting Pres. Barack Obama, Dillard told him that he was standing on “our shoulders.”
Those slight shoulders and spindly legs carried Dillard into a number of post-athletic jobs and appointments, including a sports promoter, and working at the Cleveland Board of Education, eventually becoming the business chief and later surviving charges of mismanagement. He retired in 1992 and a year later was feted by the appearance of a number of former harriers and other sports celebrities.
In the twilight of his days, he said his only regret, especially during his tenure at the board of education, was that “I didn’t do more for the kids.” He certainly did enough on the tracks of the world.