Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [18]
The food wowed me the most. I couldn’t believe the layout. The first time I ever went out to eat I’d had a sandwich with a toothpick and an olive at the drugstore—big stuff. The selection onboard was beyond words—plus it was free. At mealtime each table was laden with not just a basket of sweet rolls but with six kinds of sweet rolls. Here’s a partial list of the fixings, as reported in the Los Angeles Times: “Lunch: roast beef, baked potatoes, stewed celery, milk, tea, baked apple. We ate seven hundred pounds of beef. Supper: chicken soup, roast chicken, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, peas, ice cream, hard candy.”
I couldn’t control myself. I must have gained ten pounds before I got to Germany.
When I wasn’t gorging myself I went to first-class to work out with the other athletes. The deck went all the way around the ship, unbroken. On the port and starboard sides were cabinets stocked with beer. After a hard run we’d all stop for a glass from the tap and head back to second-class.
I spent some free time collecting souvenirs: ashtrays, towels, whatever. My training as a former juvenile delinquent and petty thief made it easy—and I noticed that almost everyone shared my collecting bug. I also tried to meet all my sports heroes and enjoy the camaraderie. The older athletes took me under their wing.
All the movie people—like Helen Hayes and Joe E. Brown, who became a close friend after the Games—traveled in first-class, as did the Olympic officials. The Committee was mostly wealthy guys; you might say they were to the manner born and we were the serfs. Today our Committee is different. They respect the athletes and the athletes respect them.
At night we stayed on our own deck, unless invited topside, as was Eleanor Holm, a 1932 Olympic swimming champion and the world’s greatest backstroker. She’d met William Randolph Hearst, Jr., in first-class while working out, and they became friends. When the Olympic bigwigs saw her dancing with Hearst, they didn’t like it that she’d left the athletic group. Then they watched her drink champagne, and that did it. She might have been warned first; I don’t know. I think they just tied it all together and the next day Avery Brundage called her on the carpet and dismissed her from the team.
Brundage was famously strict on amateurism, yet he was a hypocrite. He’d condemn athletes for taking money here and there, but we all got a bit more than the amateur rules called for. Every dollar helped, especially during the Depression, but it still broke the rules. Let me put it this way: I’ve never met a world-class amateur athlete in the true sense of the word.
Look what happened to the great Jim Thorpe. He was a starving Indian who made twenty dollars playing professional baseball, so they stripped him of his medals as punishment and broke his heart. It was pathetic to see him treated like a condemned criminal. In fact, it was so ridiculous that about ten years ago they gave all the medals back to his family. I’d just broken the high school world’s record when he and I took a speaking trip together, sponsored by the Torrance Kiwanis, who were just trying to help Jim. I’d give a short talk on “High School Athletics Today.” He’d put on headdress feathers, perform, say a few words, and get ten dollars.
Almost everyone thought Eleanor Holm’s punishment far exceeded the crime. The older, more mature athletes protested and asked Brundage to let everyone vote on the matter. I thought that if Holm lost her place, then they should have thrown off 95 percent of the team for drinking beer. Brundage said no, he was the authority. Like a dictator with an iron fist he issued edicts and everybody had to listen. I don’t even think he let the other officials vote. Of course, Hearst immediately hired Holm as a correspondent, so she went to the Olympics anyway. But she didn’t swim. Our loss.
I didn’t like any of it, but