Luck of The Draw

By Jack Daniels

In looking over my life, it's interesting to realize how often some luck has been involved. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area led to learning to love the Pacific Ocean and to getting to attend Sequoia High School in Redwood City, a school that I later realized had prepared me for winning National Championships, and medals in two Olympics. Our family's move to Montana led to lots of great hunting and fishing with brother Danny, and attending the University of Montana led to Danny, brother Jerry and I all being smoke jumpers for the U.S. Forest Service. That work also prepared Jerry for successful years with the CIA in Laos and Thailand, work that earned him three CIA medals of honor. Brother Kent was Montana State Trap-shooting champ and State champ in high school wrestling. My 4 years of military service sent me to Korea where I learned about the sport of modern pentathlon, and which also sent me to a year of study in a great Sport Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Next came graduate studies at the universities of Oklahoma and Wisconsin, which also led to many outstanding years of research in exercise physiology and how to be a successful running coach. Coaching years found me starting men's track and cross-country at Oklahoma City University, National Track Coach in the country of Peru, and women's track and cross-country coach at University of Texas. Then 6 years of research with Nike, followed by 19 years coaching runners at the State University of New York in Cortland to numerous national titles. I also began coaching post-collegiate runners, several of whom competed in Olympic Games, including a Silver-Medal winner in women's marathon. However, all of these accomplishments all take second place to my marriage to Nancy Jo Scardina, who was first a great runner (Olympic Trials qualifier in the totally-different events of 1500 and marathon), then was my Assistant Coach for 25 years during which she also became the mother of our two wonderful daughters, Audra Marie and Sarah Tupper. Sarah is an opera singer in New York City and Audra a very dedicated worker at the University of Washington in Seattle. Nancy has become a Registered Nurse and is as dedicated to that profession as she was to her running career. I always envy those for whom she provides aid. Few people have had the luck I have had. God bless Nancy Jo, Audra Marie and Sarah Tupper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645598718

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Gold Standard

The main purpose of writing this story of my life is to concentrate on the many things and wonderful people who helped me become a coach and researcher. Since the earliest years of one’s life are often not filled with visions of what you eventually do become, in this first chapter, I will rush through about the first 17 years with just some mention of particularly memorable happenings.

I don’t remember my birthplace but have fond memories of my early childhood, which was spent at home with wonderful parents and brothers, for all of whom I have nothing but admiration and love. The very young years were filled with typical childhood things and an initial dislike for school. I witnessed World War II through the newspapers and radio and did a lot of fishing, hunting, and outdoor games with my family. I also grew up in the big band era of music and dreamed of being a member of a dance band.

Possibly due to my small stature and being a relatively weak performer in sports, I became interested in physical fitness. Training to earn my Gold status in a wonderful high school physical education program led to far greater success in athletics than I had ever dreamed could be true.

For whatever reason, my dad decided to move us from my Detroit birthplace to sunny San Francisco when I was only a few weeks old. I may as well get right out with it; to me, there is no greater place in this country than the San Francisco Bay Area. Sure, the house my dad bought when I was 6 years old for $4,000 could easily sell for $800,000 today, which is a little frightening, but you can’t beat the weather and the proximity of an ocean, not to mention lots of things to do.

I’m not sure if kids remember something that they did when they’re only 2 years old, but that is my earliest memory as a 2-year-old, jumping off a 6 ft. high fence into my father’s arms. Also, though I don’t remember him myself, I was told that I spent many hours with our Great Dane Drago and even had my picture taken with him at a dog show in San Francisco. Drago was later poisoned and we lost him, but I still have that picture of us at the dog show; he was definitely bigger than I was.

What I remember most about those early years were fishing trips that my brother Danny; father, Bob; and I used to go on with regularity. We always called our father Bob, as did everyone else, even though his real name was Ronald, and Danny’s real name was Ronald Junior. For that matter, we also called our mother Louise, which was her middle name. The fishing trips were off piers, boats, or the shore and always in the beautiful Pacific Ocean.

Another early memory was my first Halloween. I remember that if you didn’t get a treat, you did play a trick on that house. Soaping the windows or screens was a standard trick in those days, and sometimes the treaters would trick us by passing out chocolate fudge that had pieces of white hand soap that were made to look like pieces of cut up marshmallow.

I grew up pretty small, and part of my being smaller than my classmates was because my mother wanted me to get an early start in school, so I went to kindergarten as a 4-year-old. I really hated it and, in fact, dropped out after just 6 weeks. We moved to Long Beach for a year, and when the school down there said I was too young for 1st grade, my mom told them I had already been to kindergarten: So what is he to do? They let me in 1st grade, and I had my tonsils removed in a successful attempt to eradicate the regular earaches that I had been plagued with for my whole life (all 5 years of them). I still hated school and used to sneak home during recess and hide in the yard until it was time to come home. It was fun going back to San Carlos, our new home just south of San Francisco, but I wasn’t there long before we spent part of a winter in Ogden, Utah. I also got to spend the entire summer with my dad in a remote resort/military place called Castle Hot Springs in Arizona, where I had one of the greatest times of my life. All I did was swim during the day and listen to big band music every chance I got. I remember Harry James mostly but enjoyed almost any of the popular bands of that era.

I guess the most memorable part about the 6th grade was learning (from my friend Melvin Ratkovich) to blow tiny bubbles off my tongue, a lifelong trick that I have managed to teach my wife and two daughters, but have yet to beat my record of 44 in a row, a superb accomplishment I realized one day on a San Francisco street corner. Of course, later in life, I did realize that when the temperature dropped below zero, I could get those little spit bubbles to freeze before they hit the ground, and I could pick them up to play marbles with them. I guess I should also mention that I remember when the price of going to a movie went up from 10 to 11 cents, which was similar to the price of a gallon of gasoline.

My 7th grade was spent in Kennewick, Washington, during the year that Bob installed telephone switchboards at the Hanford nuclear site in Hanford, Washington. Danny and I used to crawl out on and under the big bridge that connected Kennewick to Pasco. I can only imagine what our parents would have thought about that, the two of us hanging a hundred feet or so above the Columbia River, not so far from where the Columbia and Snake Rivers joined forces. My younger brothers, 6-year-old Kent and 4-year-old Jerry, were almost always with us during our free time, and it was then that I first realized that Jerry had a special talent for making up words. Three that he made up that year were truckgud (referring to a small, handheld piece of metal that could be used as a toy vehicle), liffiker, and atch. Actually, the latter two are often put together into a single word, liffikeratch. I have some bumper stickers with liffikeratch on them, thanks to daughter Sarah, who also likes Jerry’s weird words.

Possibly, the two most memorable things about my 7th grade year in Washington were (1) realizing that some people had bad breath (a girl in my class, whom I sort of fancied, breathed in my face and changed my entire outlook on her desirability) and (2) an exhibition a guy did in our gym class one day at school. This guy came to show us his basketball-shooting skills. First, he made about 10 straight free throws and then more consecutive baskets from the free throw line while kneeling on the floor. This was followed by more no-miss shots while lying on his back at the free throw line. His finale was to stand under one basket and sling the ball to the other end of the court in an attempt to sink that basket. After two near misses, he announced that he didn’t miss three times in a row and proceeded to sling his third attempt into that faraway basket (off the backboard, but still it went in). It’s interesting how certain things that you actually witness can have a major impact on what you dream of doing someday. To see this guy sink all those baskets from anywhere on the court seemed to make accomplishing some difficult task not so impossible after all. I came to believe that maybe I can do something that others will find hard to believe if I really set my mind to it.

It was back to San Carlos and my serious attempt to become a trombone player, the instrument my brother Danny had tried and given up on. I took serious lessons and learned to love playing the trombone quite well. It didn’t seem long at all before I was headed to Sequoia Union High School in Redwood City, as San Carlos didn’t have a high school, so we were among the early kids to be bussed to another district.

Sequoia was a great school where I started my athletic career; however, it was music that dominated my life. In addition to the school marching band and pep band, I played in two or three local dance bands and found myself doing a decent job of imitating Tommy Dorsey. One not-so-great band experience was on the way to band practice one evening. Our trumpet player was driving us down a dark and quiet road, and after stopping at a cross street, he announced that he was going to see how fast he could go before he had to take the gas pedal off the floor. It wasn’t long because coming around a sharp corner, he realized that we were fast approaching a major road, for which we had to stop for a light. He hit the brakes as the car hit some leaves, and we slid off the road and into a chain-link fence going about 50 mph. It seemed like we turned over a couple times. I think it was only once, but the fence did a good job of stopping us. I broke out the front windshield with my head (no real damage there), wiped my right arm out on the window-opening handle, and did a job on my knee while bracing against the floor during the impact. The car was totaled, and none of the four of us suffered major injury; however, there was no band practice that night.

While in high school, I didn’t start out in track, nor did I make it in baseball, which had been my dream, but I was allowed to participate in swimming. I tried swimming, not because I was any good at it but because my year-older brother, Danny, was doing it, and I wanted to do everything Danny did. We had different exponent categories in swimming (based on height, weight, and age), and I fit into the smallest category because of my young age and smallish stature: 4 10 and 92 pounds at the end of my freshman year.

Swimming went okay, but it was in physical education class that I realized I had some talent. Sequoia had a truly outstanding PE program, which demanded an hour every day, 5 days a week, for all 4 years of high school. We did calisthenics every day, played sports, boxed, wrestled, did gymnastics, had great obstacle courses to conquer, and took fitness tests twice every year. Every student started out as a White, which meant you wore white shorts to PE class and were in a class made up only of Whites. If you did well enough in PE that year, you moved up to being a Red. Reds were primarily sophomores, but if you did well enough in your fitness tests as a White, you were immediately moved into a Red class. Reds had more advanced fitness tests, and success in these moved you into the Blue category, and you now took PE with all Blues, mostly juniors and seniors in school.

Blues had their own sets of fitness demands, and hitting the median score on all 8 tests promoted you to Purple. The school then provided you with purple, satin shorts, which was a big deal, to say the least. There weren’t enough Purples to have their own class, so the Purples took PE with the Blues.

There was one more category of high achievement in physical fitness tests, and that was set aside for those students who could achieve the ceiling in all 8 fitness tests. If you made it to the Gold level, you were given gold, satin shorts to wear, and everyone knew you were a stud. There weren’t many Golds on campus, and in fact, my graduating class of approximately 550 students had 10 Golds. I had made it at the start of my senior year and retained that status in the spring fitness tests, as you didn’t get to keep the gold shorts if you couldn’t keep hitting the ceiling on all 8 tests, which were given twice every year.

The 8 tests, with Gold performances, are as follows: (1) 20 ft. rope climb from a sitting position and no use of legs in 11.5 seconds, (2) 24 bar dips between parallel bars, (3) 150-yard swim in 2:17, (4) 300-yard shuttle run in 49 seconds, (5) 150-yard dodge run in 26 seconds, (6) 18 chin-ups with palms facing away, (7) 34 8 triple jump, and (8) 20 one-hand squat thrusts (burpees) in 30 seconds.

I was very proud to be a Gold but had no idea how big a role my interest in being fit would play in the rest of my life. To put the benefits of this great fitness program into proper perspective, I simply need to tell you that three of the ten of my class who made it to Golds participated in the Olympics just 6 years after graduating from high school. Possibly more interesting is that all three of us were on the swim team together, but none of us went to the Olympics in the sport of swimming. One guy swam and played water polo at Stanford, and he went to the Olympics in water polo. The second guy was a diver, who went on to college at Ohio State and made the Olympics in diving. I was a swimmer, sort of, and went to the Olympics (winning a team silver medal) in the modern pentathlon, certainly a sport that demands a variety of skills and good fitness. When I was a competitor in the modern pentathlon, we did the following: horseback riding on a strange horse, over a 5000 m cross-country course with 28 obstacles, round-robin épée fencing of about 60 bouts, .22-caliber pistol shooting at turning targets placed 25 m away, 300 m swimming, and 4000 m cross-country running, done 1 runner at a time. All were done one at a time over a course you didn’t see until you ran it. The modern pentathlon has changed a great deal in recent years, but this is the way it was.

I doubt if there have been many cases of three guys from the same high school all going to the same Olympics, and I am fully convinced that we owed it to a great physical education program. I don’t know about those other guys, but I worked hard to get fit for those tests. I guess it was the first really great thing I did, although my mom thought I was a very good trombone player, and I must agree; I could sound a lot like Tommy Dorsey, or Glenn Miller, when we played at dances.

I kept in touch with the head of that Sequoia High School physical education program for many years and still have the complete description of what we did. It is particularly interesting to note that those fitness tests started to be practiced for by junior high school students, and it wasn’t long before the first freshman to make gold was a reality. That physical education program taught me how to take physical activity seriously, and there is no doubt in my mind that I would never have made an Olympic team without it. I’m not sure whatever happened to those gold shorts though.

In addition to time spent playing baseball and the trombone and getting in shape for the semiannual fitness tests, Danny, Bob, and I spent a great deal of time hunting and fishing. We constantly checked the ocean tide information, looking for the perfect day for abalone hunting, a rare shellfish that is outstanding eating but harder and harder to come by. With a low enough tide you could wade out a little ways from shore and pry these tough little guys off the rocks, they would cling to with tremendous resolve. A leaf of a car spring or some other strong prying bar would do the best job of removing the abalone from their rock abode.

We also spent a good deal of time hunting behind our house or sometimes walking right through town, with shotguns over our shoulders, to the bay where we would go after ducks that spent the night on the bay. Doves and pheasants were the other favorite game we would go after; every now and then, we could also get quail and geese. Fishing in the ocean was the greatest, mostly because it involved being on the beach; catching something was irrelevant as far as I was concerned. Nothing beats the ocean and the beach.

As much as I liked the ocean, I wasn’t particularly fond of the bay; it seemed dirty and not very friendly. In fact, in addition to the hunting trips to the bay, the most memorable bay adventure was the annual Shark Derby. They gave prizes for the most brought in, the largest, smallest, longest, shortest, ugliest, and prettiest. Believe me, there were some good-sized sharks in that bay.

One day, we were advised that a great uncle, Gordon Tupper, had just passed away, near his home in Montana. He had been the