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By Root 662 0

who came, so we used a huge vacant lot. In Jamaica I circled the island, speaking often. I also went to Cuba—this was before Castro took power—and appeared for two nights at a church in Havana. The first talk was “Devil at My Heels,” my war story. The second was “Communism versus Christianity in Japan,” based on my experience at Waseda University. Both were advertised in the newspaper. The second night a bearded young man and his friends, all dressed in khaki but with no official designation, sat in the back of a church and listened. Afterward Pastor Rodriguez walked Cynthia and me to his house, where we were guests. On the way, one of the bearded young men who’d been in the back of the church called to Rodriguez from across the street. I watched while they talked; the conversation seemed heated. When the pastor came back, he grinned sheepishly. “What was that all about?” I asked.

“That’s a young revolutionary named Fidel Castro,” he explained. “He didn’t like your comments about communism.”

Fulgencio Batista still ran the country, but young activists could cause problems, like setting churches on fire. That concerned me. “Is this going to get you in trouble?” I asked.

“No,” Pastor Rodriguez said with a smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

Seven years later Castro took over, and communism was his religion. But I’ll always remember that when he heard the gospel, he heard it from me.

ONE OF MY favorite activities was visiting prisons and camps for delinquent and/or troubled young people. Each time I felt as if I gave my younger self the support and advice that would have once benefited me. I had a wonderful rapport with kids and prisoners, especially when I told my tale of incarceration in Japan. They were amazed to hear about the conditions; by comparison, their prison stays were soft, and I’d hear comments like, “Hey, after listening to your story, I can do my five years standing on my head.”

As a result I was put in charge of Lifeline Christian camps, which ran several sites on the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego. I bounced from location to location, talking to kids only eight to twelve years old. Then I was asked to speak to a State Youth Authority detention home in Whittier, where kids sixteen to twenty were in for major crimes, including homicide. I’d start my talk by admitting I was a problem kid, too, with some of the same difficulties they had now.

The response inspired me to open my own camp for troubled kids. I called it the Victory Boys Camp and hired two other Olympians as counselors. At first I had an actual location on the Angeles Crest Highway, in the Southern California mountains near Lake Arrowhead, but it cost too much to maintain. I ended up restructuring the program so that I could take about thirty-five kids a week into the Sierras for a real wilderness experience that included fishing, camping, rappeling over cliffs, skiing, mountaineering—whatever seemed adventurous. Dave McCoy of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area provided skis and lift tickets for free. Others donated food and lodging to help defray the cost.

The experience always offered big surprises for the kids. At first they’d sit in the bus on the way up, talking only to one other. I had to get them on my side, so after a few hours we’d stop in volcanic country and someone would ask, “What are we gonna do here?”

“We’re going to go to a dry waterfall called Fossil Falls,” I’d say. “You hike in about a mile.” There I’d throw a rope over the top and rappel down—three big jumps to the bottom. I’d come back up and say, “Every one of you guys is going to do that before the week is out.”

“Oh, no, not me!”

“No way!”

“Forget it.”

But back in the bus they would no longer talk sullenly among themselves. They yakked and asked me all kinds of questions. Now I had them, and I didn’t let go for a week. I did it because I believe everybody in the world should try to help somebody else. Let’s say half the people in the world are successful. If they help the other half, hey, you’ve got no problem.

In my experience, juvenile delinquents never accomplish