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Barnidge: Gold medalist pole vaulter Bragg knows all about ups and downs
By Tom Barnidge
Contra Costa Times columnist
Posted: 10/23/2009 08:39:31 PM PDT
Updated: 10/23/2009 10:50:25 PM PDT

DON BRAGG is best known for reaching athletic heights — he won the gold medal with a world-record pole vault in the 1960 Olympic Games — but he surely deserves at least as much credit for how he's weathered the low points in his life.

He required spinal surgery more than 40 years ago from one-too-many falls in hard landing pits.

He contracted Lyme disease several years later, which contributed to premature arthritic conditions.

A heart attack eight years ago precipitated open-heart surgery.

A fire at the Clayton home he rented destroyed his family photos and much of his athletic memorabilia in 2003.

And along the way, his wife Theresa and son Mark survived bouts with lymphoma cancer.

Bragg never complained. He set his jaw and lived by the family motto: "Just suck it up."

But after a stroke felled him on Father's Day, when he and Theresa were living in Laguna Niguel, Bragg came the closest he had ever come in his 74 years to surrendering to adversity.

The left side of his body was severely affected, and his eyesight was impaired. Facing mounting medical bills and other financial pressures, he considered selling his gold medal. News traveled quickly when it was listed on Craigslist.

"It was a moment of total weakness," said Theresa, his wife of 48 years. "The depression just overwhelmed him. He kept thinking: How do I provide? How do I support my family?

That was the only thing he had of value."

It was then that the Braggs discovered how many friends they have. Complete strangers, learning of an Olympic hero in distress, besieged them with contributions.

The medal is no longer for sale, and it is headed back to the East Bay. After a six-year absence from Clayton, the Braggs plan to relocate there, where three of their children live.

Bragg, who is recovering slowly from his stroke, has been a larger-than-life character all his life, even answering to the nickname of Tarzan. As a child, he reveled in Tarzan movies and swung from ropes in neighborhood trees. As a strapping 6-foot-3, 200-pound gold medalist, he once was cast to play the role in a Hollywood movie.

His introduction to the skill that led him to fame came almost by accident. He was roaming the streets of his hometown, Penns Grove, N.J., as a youth when he and a group of buddies discovered discarded bamboo poles behind Weinberg's Furniture Store.

"In those days, rugs came rolled up on bamboo poles," Bragg explained.

They first used the poles to vault over a nearby creek. Then, on a dare, they tried to vault over a clothesline. When Bragg was the only one to clear 5 feet, he realized he possessed a rare talent.

"I was always building Tarzan swings and hanging from ropes," he said. "I think the strength it took to hold up my weight prepared me for pole vaulting."

After excelling in high school, he achieved greater heights at Villanova University, winning the NCAA championship in 1955. Then came indoor and outdoor Amateur Athletic Union titles. It was while serving in the Army that he qualified for the Rome Games, where he achieved a lifelong dream by clearing 15' 5".

"How many times does an individual set such a high goal for himself and accomplish it?" Bragg said. "It was overwhelming. Afterward, I kept asking myself: 'Did it really happen? Did I really win it? Or am I dreaming?'"

He punctuated the accomplishment in fitting form. As the stiff-collared Avery Brundage, International Olympic Committee president, hung the gold around Bragg's neck, the world's greatest pole-vaulter let out a hair-raising Tarzan yell.

"There were 100,000 people in the stadium who screamed back," Bragg said. "Brundage had quite a look on his face."

His film role of Tarzan never quite panned out. A legal challenge over copyright issues prevented the picture's completion. And a checkered career that included stints as small-college athletic director, vitamin distributor and kids camp operator never matched the excitement of his summer in Rome.

But when he's asked today, he says he has no regrets.

"The gods have been good to me," he said. "I'm enjoying life."

He plans to share his good fortune this Christmas season. Using some of those generous donations from strangers, he will put on a Santa suit to distribute gifts to foster children in the East Bay.

Maybe that record-setting pole vault isn't all he should be remembered for.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/top-stories/ci_16043921


With familiar yell, 'Tarzan' celebrates his golden past

By Carl Steward
csteward@bayareanewsgroup.com
Posted: 09/12/2010 08:22:38 PM PDT
Updated: 09/12/2010 08:25:20 PM PDT


Tarzan is alive and well and living in Clayton, and at 75 years old, he can still bellow the familiar Tarzan yell without much prompting.
Tarzan's real name is Don Bragg, and though he doesn't swing from trees these days after suffering a stroke less than a year ago, he still gets around the jungle OK.
Bragg just returned from a trip to Rome, where medal winners from the 1960 Summer Olympics were honored. He won the gold in the pole vault as a member of one of the all-time great U.S. Olympic track teams, one that included decathlete Rafer Johnson, long jumper Ralph Boston, discus thrower Al Oerter and the late sprinter Wilma Rudolph.
Other American athletes on that 1960 team were boxer Muhammad Ali -- then known as Cassius Clay -- and a couple of basketball players named Oscar Robertson and Jerry West.
Bragg didn't take a back seat to any of those athletes, primarily because of his effusive personality, his Tarzan alter ego and his flair for theatrics. When he received his gold medal, he let loose with a loud Tarzan "ahh-hee-ah-hee-ahh" that stunned the crowd.
"It was just a gesture to let people know how I felt," he said, laughing.
Fifty years later, many still remember. Bragg was asked to be one of the keynote speakers at the reunion of Rome Olympic athletes, and he delivered -- yell and all.
"I don't know how, but I was chosen. "... Maybe because of my big mouth, who knows?" he said. "But I can still give that baby pretty good. The Italians were really funny because they thought they had to answer me back. So there are guys all over the place giving me Tarzan calls after I did mine."
Bragg didn't pull any punches during his speech. He suggested, not so subtly, that the Olympians shouldn't have had to pay their own way to Rome -- Bragg said it cost him $5,000. He scolded the International Olympic Committee for not taking better care of its past performers.
That said, he reveled at the reunion, visiting old haunts and chatting up old adversaries, notably Finland's Eeles Landstrom, who won the bronze in the 1960 pole vault.
"Everybody was sitting around talking about their injuries and operations," he said. "I said to Eeles, 'I just to had a stroke in the last year.' And he said, 'I had one, too.' I said, 'I had a six-way bypass.' And he said, 'I had a four.' So it turned out to be kind of a competition, and the outcome was still the same."
Competitively, no one could touch Bragg in his heyday. He was the last great pole-vaulter to use largely inflexible metal poles before fiberglass and carbon-based poles forever changed the event. At the 1960 Olympic Trials in Palo Alto, Bragg used an aluminum pole to set a world record of 15 feet, 9 inches.
Sculpted at 6 feet 3, 197 pounds as an Olympian, Bragg had already adopted the Tarzan shtick before going to Rome. In anticipation of his victory, Life Magazine persuaded him to do a photo spread at the Roman Colosseum -- a place he believes he once competed at in a previous life -- dressed in only a loin cloth.
He agreed, believing that an Olympic victory would vault him into the movies as the next great cinematic Tarzan. Even Johnny Weismuller, a former Olympian who became the Tarzan standard in the 1930s and 1940s, remarked at the time that Bragg would have been perfect for the role.
Bragg signed a deal with a film company to shoot six movies of Edgar Rice Burroughs stories, to which copyright had lapsed. But while filming the first movie "Tarzan and the Jewel of Opar" in Jamaica, another studio asserting that it had rights to the Tarzan name sued, stopping production through litigation. The filming was stopped, and what film that was shot was lost in a fire.
His movie career derailed, Bragg nonetheless kept the moniker.
"It's a little cheesy, but it's my thing, it's my mantra," he said. "I always imitated Tarzan, always swung through the trees, ever since I was 8 years old. Somebody in Rome asked me, 'How do you feel about never making a Tarzan movie that actually came out?' I said, 'I am Tarzan. So I don't need a movie to prove it.' I am who I thought I was."
Bragg went on to more noble causes, including building a boys camp for inner-city children. He served as athletic director at a small college in New Jersey. He wrote books, including his own autobiography, "A Chance To Dare: The Don Bragg Story."
Luckily, he still has his Olympic medal. About 10 years ago, a fire destroyed the Clayton home of Bragg and his wife, Theresa. A fireman picked through the rubble and found the medal.
These days, Bragg spends time in Clayton with his family, writing poetry and retelling his stories to anyone willing to listen.
"And if I'm not writing poetry, I'm down at the gym working out -- very light, but still working out and lifting weights," he said. "My ego is based on how big my arms are, and right now my ego is very low. But we shall return."
DON BRAGG
AGE: 75
HOMETOWN: Penns Grove, N.J.
CURRENT RESIDENCE: Clayton
OCCUPATION: Retired. 1960 Olympic gold medalist in the pole vault. Member of the U.S. National Track and Field Hall of Fame.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Villanova University in Philadelphia, where he won the NCAA pole vault in 1955 and many other national and international competitions.
FAMILY: Theresa, his wife of 50 years; five children;
11 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.