1972: Gary Kurtz email

Hi Steve,

It’s easy to understand why the photo that you took of Dellinger, Jim Ryun, Phil, and Pre is very dear to you. It unknowingly set the stage for so much of your life.

 

It’s been a long time since we’ve talked. I worked for NIKE just over twenty years, which doesn’t compare to your forty-plus years.

1972: Bill Landers letter

1971 Bill Dellinger's Office

In Bill Dellinger's Office, left to right,
Bill Dellinger (face blocked), Jim Ryun, Phil Knight, Steve Prefontaine

Once I’d found my Dunn Hall dorm and unpacked, I headed out on campus to take some photos to send back to my parents. Not only did I feel like a tourist, I was acting like one. The Oregon basketball team played in McArthur Court, an aging, ivy-clad arena that dated to 1926. Next to “Mac Court,” I discovered, were the shoe-box-sized offices of all the university’s athletic coaches, including the man I was supposed to check in with, Dellinger.

His door was open. Dellinger, it turned out, wasn’t alone. He’d been chatting with three others, two of whom I’d seen in magazines and newspapers. I tried not to gawk but it was like a folk-music fan suddenly seeing Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. There sat Prefontaine and Ryun, along with some other guy, a little older, who did not appear to be cut from quite the same athletic cloth as the other two.

AUSTIN MEEK

The Last Amateurs

The track stars of the 1970s fought to get today’s athletes paid

Kenny Moore visits Bill Bowerman's bronze at Hayward Field in 2006 (Chris Pietsch/The Register Guard)

Gerald Ford, then vice president of the United States, penned a 5,000-word essay for Sports Illustrated in 1974 outlining his views on various subjects of the day.

Steve Prefontaine's Legacy

Doug Williams of ESPN Endurance interviewed me and then quoted me in an article entitled Legacy of Prefontaine still lives on

Pre's Rock: The Story of the Accident

Pre's overturned car.  May 30, 1975.

I went to Eugene today with Nike's Product Costing team.  Our last stop was Pre's Rock where I tell the story of Pre's death.

As I was speaking, a man who was cleaning the shrubbery along Skyline stopped his work, leaned against his rake, and listened.  As I lead up to the point of the actual accident he raised his hand.  I stopped and asked if he had a question.

He asked me, "Do you want to know what really happened?" .......