Eddie Hart - Disqualified: Eddie Hart, Munich 1972, and the Voices of the Most Tragic Olympics

Eddie Hart is one of the great exemplars of spiritual integrity and athletic excellence in our time. He is one of those rare persons who combine undeniable dignity and unquestionable achievement.

In the 1970s, Eddie Hart was well known as The Worlds Fastest Humanco-holder of the world record for the 100-meter dash. And for those of us who have known him for more than four decades, he is the embodiment of moral greatness.

I was blessed to first meet Eddie in 1969. He was the good friend (or elder brother) of my only blood brother, Cliff West. They were roommates in Berkeley, where they were teammates on the University of California track-and-field team. Eddie was the reigning emperor of the Mad Pad, their famous apartment, and he was the major force behind Cals NCAA track-and-field championship team of 1970. Together, Cliff, Eddie, Kerry Hampton, and Mike Lyons were loving and supportive comrades in the Mad Pad, and the West familyespecially Dad and mebecame close adoptive kin to our brother Eddie.

The first thing I noticed about Eddie was his grand stylein music, clothes, walk, and talk. Along with his quiet dignity and deep wisdom was his sophisticated Pittsburg style, rooted in black southern sensibilities, tested and triumphant in urban West Coast realities. In other words, Eddie is first a product of the black spiritual nobility of the Hart family, especially his father, T. J. Hart, and his mother, Florence Viola Hart. The sublime Hart family represents the best of black church traditioncharity to all, malice toward none, and a willingness to persevere and keep on pushing regardless of the circumstances and consequences. The brute fact that Eddie Hart also became one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century reinforces his familys proud commitment to compassion in the face of catastrophe and dignity in the face of adversity.

The Eddie Hart story is a story of familial pietythe ways his beloved mother and father, grounded in a trusting God, constituted the fundamental sources of good in his life. This powerful acknowledgment of his debts of gratitude to them becomes the model for his own blessed family, with his marvelous wife, Gwen; their loving daughter, Paris; their loving son, Eddie Jr.; and their three grandchildren.