GAY IV

Games

Decathlete, Family Man,

GAMES FOUNDER

ABC'S DICK SCHAAP offers a glimpse of Tom Waddell's life.

E WERE FLYING TO SAN FRANCISCO,

the producer and I, on our way to begin shooting a story for ABC-TV's 20/20 on Tom Waddell, the former Olympic athlete and founder of the Gay Games, who was dying of AIDS. "I'm worried about this story," the producer

said to me.

"Why?" I said.

ROBERT WEAVER

"Because stories about homosexuals make me nervous," the producer said, “and I think they make viewers nervous too."

A few hours later the producer and I met Tom Waddell for the first time, and spent the afternoon with him. Then the producer and I drove to our hotel.

The producer turned to me. "This is going to be a great story," he said.

"Why?" I said.

"Because I love this guy," he said.

OM WADDELL HAD A GIFT for turning preconceptions and stereotypes upside-down. I spent a great deal of time with him in 1987, the final year of his life, first working on the television report, then collaborating on his autobiography, and I had my own preconceptions, my own nervousness. Both were quickly dispelled.

Early in our friendship, Tom took me to the Harvey Milk Gay and Lesbian Democratic Club dinner in San Francisco, and when we entered the Hyatt Regency ballroom, the first guy who saw me grabbed my arm and said, "When the fuck are we going to get a hockey team out here?"

O M WADDELL CONTRADICTED all the stereotypes of the athlete and of the homosexual. He was an artist, painter, photographer, and dancer. He was an athlete, college football player, gymnast, and track-and-field star, so gifted, versatile, and dedicated that, when he was 30 years old, he made the U.S. Olympic team and finished sixth in the 1968 Olympic decathlon. He was also a physician and a paratrooper, and he founded the Gay Games in 1972, a few years before he discovered he was HIV pos-

itive.

Tom was also a husband and father. He married Sara Lewinstein, who worked with him on Gay Games I, because each had dreamed of having a child. Their daughter, Jessica, was born in 1983.

Dick Schaap is a correspondent for ABC News, host of The Sports Reporters on ESPN, and author of 29 books. His Gay Olympian: The Life and Death of Dr. Thomas Waddell is forthcoming from Knopf.

T WAS SAD to watch Tom's vigor, his physical and mental quickness, slipping away from him in his final year, but remarkably, it was almost never depressing. There were too many bright moments, too many laughs.

Soon after the story aired on 20/20, I bumped into a friend of Tom's named John, who had appeared in the story. John had been seen sitting in Tom's kitchen, explaining to Tom that the reason he cooked meals for him, read to him, and ran errands for him was that he loved him. "I know," Tom said. "That's why I let you do it."

The night the segment aired, John told me, he received a phone call from his mother. "John," she said, "was that you I just saw on 20/20?"

"Yes, mother," John said. "That was me."

And his mother said, "It was wonderful. How did you ever get the part?"

eat dinner.

NE NIGHT SARA, Tom's widow, dropped me off at Artemis Café, the restaurant she owned in the Mission District. We had attended a bodybuilding competition together; she wanted to go home to her daughter, and I wanted to

I went into Artemis and sat down and looked around and realized I was the only man in the place. Maybe 80 or 100 women-customers, waitresses, a singer-and me. I'd been to Artemis often enough. I knew the waitresses. I didn't feel uncomfortable. I ordered dinner, ate, and went back to my hotel.

The next morning I called my wife in New York and told her about the 100-to-1 odds in Artemis. "Were they all gay?" my wife asked. "I don't know," I said, "but I guess so." "That's the trouble with your fantasies," my wife said. "They've always got a hitch in them."

OME PEOPLE instinctively spot other people's weaknesses and go for the jugular; Tom instinctively spotted other people's strengths and aimed for them. He had a genius for making others feel significant, valuable, special, for making them feel better about themselves.

My wife met Tom only a few days before he died. His memory was betraying him, his ability to articulate feeling. He spoke sparingly and softly, among friends who knew he was leaving them, who were angry because they were losing him, yet relieved because he was escaping the pain. He comforted us.

"I know this sounds strange," my wife said, when Tom finally slept, and we left his room, "but I had the most wonderful day."

Even dying, Tom managed to make her feel good.

HEN TOM DECIDED it was time to die, he took 36 morphine pills, folded his hands on his lap, and said, "Well, this should be interesting." He never spoke COherently again.

He slipped into a coma, and before I left his room, I walked up to his bed and kissed him goodbye.

When I wrote about Tom in Sports Illustrated the week after he died, I described the scene and the farewell, and

PARTICIPANTS: Waddell at Gay Games II (opposite); with daughter Jessica and wife Sara (above) in 1986.

an editor deleted the reference to my kissing Tom goodbye. I suppose he meant well. I guess he was trying to protect my masculinity.

I realized I could have gotten the kiss past him, if I had said I kissed Tom on the cheek, or if I had said my wife and I both kissed him goodbye, but somehow, even though both facts were true, I didn't think they were necessary.

EVERAL DAYS after Tom's death I attended a celebration of his life. It was held in his home on Albion Street, a sprawling former gymnasium, and it was crowded with his friends and admirers. One gentleman with a beard walked up to me and said, "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?" I said, "No, not at all," and he said, "Have you undergone psychoanalysis?"

I said, "No, not that I know of," and he said, "That's funny. You're the first heterosexual I've ever seen who seems comfortable among homosexuals who didn't undergo psychoanalysis."

"Thank you," I said. "I think." Thank you, Tom.♥

GAY GAMES IV

OFFICIAL SOUVENIR PROGRAM