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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > June > 13 > Entry
Edwin Moses — “the visionary” — is honored
Dayton’s most famous athlete has just received another prestigious honor.
Edwin Moses — the legendary Olympic track champion who grew up on Kimberly Circle in West Dayton and graduated from Fairview High School — just received an honorary Doctor of Science degree at the University of Massachusetts — Boston
“Edwin Moses is more than an Olympic athlete, UMass Boston chancellor Keith Motley told John Powers of the Boston Globe. “He is a visionary who leverages his abilities, education and understanding to inspire others.”
The son of Gladys Moses and her late husband, Irving — both long-time educators in the Dayton Public Schools system — Edwin was a skinny, studious, science geek who told Powers “I couldn’t get a scholarship out of high school. I looked like (Steve) Urkel — seriously.”
He went to Morehouse College in Atlanta on an academic scholarship, got two degrees and, in the process, became a track sensation at a school that didn’t even have a track.
A three-time Olympic hurdling medalist — he would have garnered more hardware had the US not boycotted the 1980 Olympics — he won 122 straight 400-meter hurdle races between August 1977 and June, 1987. That’s 9 years, 9 months and 9 days without ever being beaten.
And yet some of the 53-year-old Moses’ greatest accomplishments didn’t come as he circled a running track.
As Powers noted , Moses was the force behind developing “trust funds that allowed amateur athletes to keep up with their state supported rivals from socialist countries” and he pushed for out-of- competition — any place, any time — drug testing to help clean up the sport.
Today, he is the chairman of Laureus World Sports Authority, an independent public charity that funds and promotes the use of sport — and involves 45 of the world’s most legendary athletes — as a tool for social change.
Before being honored here at the Schuster Center last September, Moses sat down with me at his mother’s home and told me how he travels constantly, whether it’s giving motivational speeches or circling the globe for Laureus.
He told how he and actor Jackie Chan worked on the Cambodian mine project. In France, he was involved in programs for handicapped kids, while in Barcelona, Spain, he said, “immigrant kids were taught to be sailors the old fashion way.”
A project in Berlin involved children of East German parents who were being discriminated against and were having trouble assimilating in the West. He was involved in another project bringing together kids from Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Northern Ireland.
“In Sao Palo and Rio (Brazil), we have a boxing program for kids carrying submachine guns during the day,” he said. “In Kenya we’re using soccer … Sports is the tool we use for social change.”
As Motley so aptly put it, Edwin Moses truly is “a visionary.”
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Comments
By Thomas Devers
June 23, 2009 8:52 AM | Link to this
Thank you for an excellent article on someone who achieved so much and gives back to the world.By nyc
June 14, 2009 7:10 AM | Link to this
a great human being!!!