by Billy Mills (Track & Field) 1953-57
Mills grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the Oglala Lakota Tribe in Pine Ridge, S.D. Growing up Mills participated in boxing and running but did not hone his skills on the track until he came to Lawrence, Kan., and Haskell Institute. Following his time at Haskell, the South Dakota native went onto star at the University of Kansas, where he was a three-time All-American and a Big 8 champion. Aside from his collegiate prowess, Mills did exceptionally well on the international stage, winning Gold in the 10,000 meters during the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, where he became only the second Native American to capture Gold. The heralded Olympian continued to run after his Tokyo experience, breaking U.S. records in two events (10,000 meters and three mile run), as well as a world record in the six mile. Mills currently lives in Sacramento, Calif., where he is a spokesperson for ‘Running Strong for American Indian Youth’ organization. He is also a member of numerous Hall of Fames throughout the nation, including the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame as well as the National Distance Running Hall of Fame.
It’s been a long time since you ran with an ‘H’ on your chest… although Haskell is not where you got your start in the sport. How did that first come about?
“On the reservation we had a boxing team, so I had six fights on the boxing team and had zero wins and six losses. I found though that I really, truly enjoyed the running to get ready for boxing. They would just take us five miles out of town and drop us off and I would beat all the heavyweights and older fighters back. A couple of them would get upset, so I would go off the road and run into the fields to go around them. I really had no idea how that was preparing me (for my career).
Once I got to Haskell I did not make the track team my freshman year but the coach decided to let me run the last two races. I could not wear the school jersey, so I just had a white t-shirt on. It was the 800 meters and I recall my older brother telling me, ‘pass the one in front of you.’ So I passed the runner and he said, ‘pass another one’. I passed another one and now I am in fourth place and have the last lap. He said ‘get one more!’, and I passed another one. I had no idea what I was doing, I wasn’t competing, and I was just running for fun. Now I am in third place and he said, ‘pass one more’, so I passed one more and I only had 180-yards to go and he said ‘sprint to the finish… see if you can win!’ So I passed the guy and won the race. The time was not fast because it was against freshman runners, but the coach took notice.”
You grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, so what made you decide to come to Lawrence attend Haskell and then eventually Kansas?
“When we were orphaned, there were really no other schools to go and my sister as well as my older brother at the time was really not in a position to have us going to school back on the reservation. Logic was to go to some of the Indian boarding schools, so I chose Haskell because my older brother Walt had gone there and was on the undefeated football team and the state championship team in basketball. I could read the ‘Haskell Indian Leader’ and see all these great, great articles about the sports program and I thought, ‘this sounds great’. Most of my friends went to an Indian School in South Dakota and many of them stayed at the Indian school on the reservation but I wanted just wanted to follow my brother Walt down to Haskell.”
What do you remember most fondly about your time at Haskell?
“Tony Coffin was my coach and he was just a legendary high school coach. He was like my second father because my father died when I was 12 and my mom shortly after I turned nine. When I went to Haskell, I met Tony Coffin and he would speak to me like my Dad would speak to me. It was like god had sent this man to me. I just absorbed the words that he would say because he was an incredible coach and his real strength for me was making me believe in myself. He empowered me so much that by my sophomore year I was starting to compare myself with how I was doing nationally.”
You had a number of coaches on your way to your gold medal victory during the 10,000-meters at 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. What kind of guidance and motivation did they provide to you during your Olympic journey?
“Coach Easton (at Kansas) would ask me ‘What are your goals? What do you want to do?’ I would tell him that I wanted to make the Olympic Team. He would say as he did a dozen or so times to me, ‘Don’t dream too big now… those kind of dreams are for people like Wes (Santee), so you have to get more realistic and who knows maybe you can in time’. He never said I couldn’t but it was just like he didn’t believe in me. But my coach when I was in the Marine Corps (Tommy Thompson) said to me after I told him that I wanted to medal, ‘What kind of medal do you think you can get?’ After that I just totally opened up for the first time to a coach since Tony Coffin and said, ‘Tommy I want to win the Gold’. He said, ‘Let me think about it’, so right away I was thinking that he didn’t think that I could do it but he told me that he was thinking of strategy.
The next day he came back and said, ‘how fast do you think you can run?’ So I told him 28.25, but he said, ‘that’s not fast enough… what is the very fastest you think you can run?’ So I said, ‘well coach I have been writing down in a notebook 28.25.’ He just stopped there for a minute or two and said, ‘28.25 would be the second fastest time ever run in the world and on a given day could be fast enough to win. Let’s go for 28.25 and keep in mind that you might have to go faster’. So he just started working with me in that manner.”
What did it mean to you to win the Gold medal in what many consider one of the great upsets in Olympic history?
“When I look at that achievement there are several things that kind of sum up what the Gold medal victory amounted to. One, I was the only person on the western hemisphere to ever win the Gold medal in the 10,000 meter run. Number two, I would have to go back to what my dad said to me when my mom died. I was nine years old and he hugged me and kissed me on the top of my head and said, ‘son you have broken wings but I will share something with you. Someday you will have the wings of an eagle.’ He died when I was twelve, so I felt that moment was a gift to me from a higher power.”
That race was considered one of the greatest upsets of all-time… what was going through your mind before you lined-up for the starting blocks?
“I was not nervous but I was making right choices. Two days before the race we were going on sightseeing tour on a bus. My wife was with me and I made the driver stop two stop lights away from the Olympic Village and I told my wife that I couldn’t do it because it would distract me and take my energy away. I felt if I stayed on the bus I would be losing power for my race. I then remember standing in line for about 25-minutes to get (former Olympic coach) Percy Cerutty’s autograph. Now there is Percy Cerutty, one person and then me. The person in front of me in English asked Percy, ‘How do you think the Americans… primarily Gerry Lindgren can do in the 10K?’ Percy looked at him and said, ‘There is not an American tough enough to win the 10K, I don’t think they will do well.’ The guy said, ‘Well that’s just what I wanted to hear… thank you’, and walked away. Now it is my turn and I thought if I spoke to him and I got his autograph, he would take some of my power. So I just said, ‘excuse me coach I am just late for a meeting’, and walked away. Those were right choices for me at the time because I truly felt I could win. I told my wife that I was going to fool a few people, I told Tony Coffin and my brother Chet that I thought I was going to win. My feeling was that I had to compete against myself, so that is when I developed the saying, ‘The ultimate of competition is not for me to compete against you or you against me, but for each of us to reach into the depth of our capabilities and compete against ourselves to the greatest extent we are capable of on a given day’. I had prepared for this day for 24-months and now it is here.”
Take us through the race itself… what was going through your mind as you surged ahead passing runner after runner and eventually runner-up Mohammed Gammoudi as you crossed the finish line?
“We had 110 or 115 meters to go and they are at least eight meters ahead of me, so I though… ‘Now I’ve got to try and catch them now.’ So I started to lift my knees, quicken my stride and then lengthen it, but I was having a hard time doing it and I wasn’t gaining on them. We were coming off the final curve, maybe 100 meters to go and I could see the finish line. (World Record holder Ron) Clarke is in lane three, Gammoudi in lane two I believe and lapped runner got in front of me in lane four. So I am boxed in with 95 meters to go. The lapped runner saw me coming, looked back into the fifth lane and opened it up the fourth lane for me. I remember thinking, ‘Now… I have got to go now!’
As I went by the lapped runner, I looked to make sure he doesn’t cut in front of me too quickly and trip me, and he turned his body slightly. In the center of his jersey I saw an eagle, which goes back to my Dad and the wings of an eagle. So I thought I can do it… wings of an eagle! 30-meters to go… Clarke, Gammoudi, then Gammoudi and Clarke and then me. I am still five yards behind them but I am moving fast. It was wings of an eagle… I can win… I can win… wings of an eagle as I could see the finish line. During the last 30 yards as I caught both of them I could see my stride was better and I knew I had another two or three seconds left in me. It was so overpowering because I thought, ‘I may never be this close again… I’ve got to do it now… wings of an eagle’. Those words went through my mind so fast it’s as if I heard them a thousand times in 30 yards. I then felt my chest break the tape and it was so over powering because I thought of my Dad, I thought of Tony Coffin, Tommy Thompson, my wife and my family, but I knew I had to find the German runner to tell him that the eagle on his singlet helped me win. I found him and I realized that there was no eagle there, it was just a perception.”
Not too many people can say a movie was made about their life and experiences, but yours was in the 1983 film ‘Running Brave’. How big of an honor was it for you to be featured on the big screen like that?
“It was my attempt to do my giveaway. You bring pride and respect to the people around you and you are asked to give back, so my giveaway was taking the inspiration given to me and passing it on to another generation. I don’t see myself and I don’t really relate to the movie as me but our journeys are all the same and we are all related.
What is strange, is the way in which it has helped people. For example, one native boy called a few years back and asked if there was really a Billy Mills. So my wife said yes… and then he asked, is he really Indian, so she said ‘yeah’. He then said, ‘Well I want to be like Billy and be the outstanding athlete at my school and if I don’t win my best friend wins. Years later, the phone rings and I am in Florida and it is Pat (Mills) on the other line and she is in tears because this young boy called her. He was the outstanding athlete of the year and his best friend finished second. They went to a pizza party afterwards with all of the athletes and parents and his friend shows up without his parents and says, ‘I want to say goodbye to you because my parents don’t want to come home. They told me not to let an Indian person beat me because if I pressure an Indian person hard enough they will all fold. But every time I pressure you, you don’t fold, you lend a helping hand, so I just want to thank you for being a friend’.
That evening the friend killed himself, so the young (Indian) boy thought he was going to take his own life too and then he said, ‘Wait a minute. In the movie Running Brave, when Frank kills himself, Billy doesn’t kill himself. He goes onto pursue his dream. Ultimately he calls Pat and tells her the story. To me… a life was lost but another one was saved.”
After retiring from the sport of running you continue to be active in the Native American community, acting as a spokesperson for Running Strong for American Indian Youth, what makes that job so special to you?
“I felt that I have had to give back, being given that gift (of the Gold medal) and I had met a gentleman by the name of Gene Krizek and he asked me to help raise funds. So we formed ‘Running Strong for American Indian Youth’ under Christian Relief Services. So directly through the use of my name I have been able to help raise about $125-Million in cash and in kind benefits. That was my effort and attempt to give back and I have been blessed by multitudes of people in America who have stepped up and gave $100 a year. People have bequeathed and left us in their wills, so I have been able to give back from that one moment in time. I just felt that moment was a gift to me and I had to give back.”
How often do you return to Lawrence and visit Haskell and how much has it changed since you last ran on the campus?
“It obviously has changed a lot since it has made its transition into a college. I have not spent a lot of time on the campus but I have had opportunities to go back on occasion and see some of the people who I think are great educators there like Jerry Tuckwin who took the place of Tony Coffin and was the track coach and athletic director. He of course is now retired but to many people, he became Tony Coffin. When I get back to Haskell it reminds me of what I took from sport and that’s… it’s the journey not the destination where our empowerment comes from and it’s the daily decisions we make in life that not just the talent that we possess that choreographs our journey. Because in many ways mine began there at Haskell.”
You will be going to London for the 2012 Olympics this coming week, what will your role be in this year’s games?
“This will be the first Olympic games I will be at because of art not athletics. My wife is an artist and a few years ago we were at the World Olympic Museum, where I spoke and she noticed there was a minimum amount of information on indigenous athletes worldwide and there was very little on me. So she ultimately asked the World Olympic Museum what the qualifications where for accepting a painting from an athlete. They told her that Olympic sponsors commission somebody to do a painting, a sculpture or a photo and they dedicate it to the World Olympic Museum. So she showed them her website and they loved her work. They asked her if she could do a painting of Billy, which she did and was unveiled at the National Museum of the American Indian this past Saturday. We just got word that it arrived in London this week and it will be displayed among the Art of the Olympians, which was started by former Jayhawk Al Oerter from July 27 to August 12th. Then it will be taken down and sent to Lozan, Switzerland for the World Olympic Museum’s private collection. To be exhibited every three or four months.”
Running Strong for American Indian Youth’s website: http://www.indianyouth.org/
Pat Mills’ website: http://www.studiotupos.com/
(Story provided to us by Haskell Indian Nations University Athletes @ http://www.haskellathletics.com)
