ABILENE - Former Wildcat sprinter Bobby Morrow died of natural causes a week ago today at his home in San Benito, Texas. The three-time gold-medal winner at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne is one of Abilene Christian's most distinguished alumni, and below is a short listing of additional achievements and quotes associated with his stellar athleticism.
- Morrow trained and competed on dirt/cinder tracks throughout his career, even at the Olympics. Bob Richards, a U.S. decathlete who was the only person to ever win two Olympic gold medals in the pole vault (1952 and 1956), and the first athlete to be pictured on a box of Wheaties cereal, said: "On a modern track surface, there is no doubt in my mind that Bobby would have run an 8-something 100 meters. He is the greatest I ever saw."
- When Morrow ran a wind-aided 9.1 time in the 100-yard dash as a freshman in 1955, the performance on a cinder track was nearly unbelievable. "He he-hawed till he nearly fell off the bench," said ACU head coach Oliver Jackson said of Morrow's reaction. According to the Abilene Reporter-News, the time was so low that two of the three men timing Morrow were ashamed to show their stopwatches. "Jackson said that the one, upon seeing he had 9.05, put his watch in his pocket. The other, seeing 9.1 on the dial, did the same. It wasn't until Head Timer (Elmer) Bulldog Gray (Elmer "Bulldog" Gray, the eventual namesake of ACU's Gray Stadium) asked for a report that they admitted their findings." Jackson admitted that "he doesn't have any idea" how fast Morrow can actually run. The current world record (not aided by wind) of 9.07 was set 55 years later in 2010 by Jamaica's Asafa Powell.
- The men's track and field team the U.S. sent to Melbourne in 1956 was one of the very best in history. In addition to Bobby Morrow, the newly crowned World's Fastest Man, the roster featured the first person to high jump 7 feet (Charles Dumas), the first man to reach 60 feet in the shot put (Parry O'Brien), the only man to repeat as Olympic pole vault champion (Bob Richards), and the only man to win four gold medals in one event (discus thrower Al Oerter). The U.S. men dominated the competition by winning 15 of 24 events.
- It took the U.S. team an uncomfortable 48 hours to fly on a prop-driven plane to Melbourne for the 1956 Games. They were the first Olympics held in the Southern Hemisphere, the first held in the fall, and the first ever televised.
- Of his prize pupil, ACU head coach Oliver Jackson once said, "Bobby had poise and a fluid motion like nothing I've ever seen. He could run a 220 with a rootbeer float on his head and never spill a drop. I made an adjustment to his start when he was a freshman. After that, my only advice to him was to change his major to speech because he'd be destined to make a bunch of them."
- Morrow won the James E. Sullivan Memorial Trophy from the AAU in 1957 as the outstanding amateur athlete in the U.S. Others who have won it include football players Peyton Manning and Tim Tebow, swimmer Michael Phelps, golfer Bobby Jones, figure skater Michelle Kwan, and track stars Wilma Rudolph, Carl Lewis, Florence Griffith-Joyner and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
- Joining Morrow in 1959 recognition by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of nine "Greatest Living Americans" were Cecil B. DeMille, award-winning filmmaker; Norman Rockwell, artist; Clare Booth Luce, U.S. ambassador to Italy; Lt. Col. Frank K. Everest, record-setting aviator; Victor Riesel, journalist; George M. Humphrey, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; Dr. William C. Menninger, pioneering psychiatrist; and J.J. Warren, pioneering agriculturalist. All were honored at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
- Morrow became ill with a virus before heading to the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, losing 10 pounds during a prime time for final training.
- "It felt like Australia was my second home," Morrow once said. "I'd gone there in '55 on a trip for the State Department, and I saw the cricket grounds where they were building the track stadium. I loved the people. They were friendly and sports-minded, and I competed at Sydney after the '56 Games in the (international) meet with Great Britain."
- When Morrow was making headlines in Melbourne in 1956, 1,009 ACU students and 70 faculty members signed a telegram sent to him in Australia. Members of the U.S. team visited Morrow's room in the Olympic village to marvel at the seven-foot-long message. "I wish I could go to a school like that," many of them said.
- Morrow had a record of 80-8 in collegiate races in the 100 and 200 meters, and won 14 individual national championships in those two events. His record in 100 and 200 races:
- High school junior (17 years old): 18-4
- High school senior (18 years old): 17-0
- ACU freshman (19 years old): 17-1
- ACU sophomore (20 years old): 33-1
- ACU junior (21 years old): 20-1
- After the Olympics, the Dallas Texans (forerunners of today's Kansas City Chiefs) asked Morrow to try out for their team, which played at the time in the American Football League. "That was the days before big paychecks," said Morrow, who once starred in football for the San Benito High School. "I hadn't played football since high school, and although I knew I could go out there and run down the field, I still had to catch the ball." He declined the offer.
- Morrow was invited by the U.S. State Department, Morrow made a six-week goodwill tour of the Caribbean in Fall 1958 with ACU head coach Oliver Jackson. In 1959, he was named to the Board of Directors of Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, and participated in a conference at The White House with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, honorary chair of the organization.
- Morrow was pictured in Texas Monthly in 1999 when the magazine named ACU track and field the "Texas Sports Dynasty of the Century." Morrow said of his university, which had just 2,500 students in the mid-1950s, "We had the greatest relay teams in the history of the world … and we could compete with anyone in the world. When the big schools on either coast would hear we were coming to a meet, they wouldn't want to compete with us. Of course, it mushrooms. People from all over the world wanted to run at Abilene Christian. Everyone wants to be on a winning team."
- His father, the late B. Floyd Morrow, was a member of ACU's Board of Trustees from 1956-66.
- Morrow gave the last of his gold medals to his alma mater in 1989 when inducted to the ACU Sports Hall of Fame. "I've had too many honors and awards, but I appreciate this honor," he said. "Now I want to turn this around and give you people an honor. I think it's fitting and you deserve it, that the third and final gold medal would be on permanent display at Abilene Christian. Abilene Christian now owns it. Abilene Christian deserves it."
- Morrow's induction in 1989 to the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame featured other American notables: weightlifter John Davis, track and field stars Lee Evans and Mel Davis, boxer Joe Frazier, the 1960 U.S. Olympic hockey team, and ABC-TV pioneering sports producer Roone Arledge.
- Fifty-eight years to the day, Wildcats appeared on the front covers of Life and Time, two of the most iconic news-feature magazines in the world. Morrow was on the Dec. 10, 1956, issue of Life, crossing the finish line to win one of his three Olympic gold medals. On Dec. 10, 2014, Kent Brantly, M.D., a physician who overcame great odds to survive the deadly Ebola virus disease, was named Time's Person of the Year for 2014. Both became two of the most recognizable people on the globe.
- On June 19, 1961, quartermiler Earl Young appeared on Sports Illustrated's cover as one of the bright new performers in U.S. track and field. Morrow graduated in 1958, Young in 1962 and Brantly in 2003.
