You Let Some Girl Beat You? (19 page)

“Yes. I have a daughter named Susie. Is everything okay?”

Mom had been ironing in La Habra when the phone rang with a woman's voice on the other end claiming to be a sheriff in Mexico.

“Was your daughter, Susie, in Mexico?”

“No, but my daughter, Kelly, is in Mexico.”

“Do you have anyone there with you now?”

“Yes, my son, Jeff, is here.”

“Please, wait there for us to call you back.”

Mom prayed everything was all right, but deep down she knew better, the way every mother knows when something has happened to one of her children. How could anything have happened to Kelly?

Kelly had always been invincible. We always said she was the Meyers with nine lives. She relished adventure, once rolling a jeep during an off-road ATV escapade only to step away without so much as a scratch. From the moment she came into the world a month late, it seemed Kelly had been determined to make up for lost time. She had a zest for life and a beguiling way of enchanting everyone she met without ever trying. When she was only six, Mark brought Frannie home to meet the family.

Kelly looked up at her with her big blue eyes and said, “You don't really like my brother do you?” which melted Frannie's heart on the spot. Since that time, Kelly had grown into a beautiful, vivacious, young twenty-year-old who had the world at her doorstep.

It was summer break and Kelly was about to start her third year at Pepperdine University, where my sister, Patty, was coaching her on the basketball team. A friend invited Kelly down to Mexico in his old Volkswagen bus for a short vacation. Our youngest brother, Bobby, had wanted to tag along just like I had always wanted to tag along with David when I was young. Kelly was all for the idea, but Bobby had broken his ankle playing basketball the week before, so Mom didn't think he should go. Reluctantly, Bobby stayed home. For some reason Kelly had Susie's drivers license with her.

When the sheriff called again, this time Jeff answered. “May I speak to your mother?…. Mrs. Meyers, I'm afraid your daughter, Kelly, is deceased.” Jeff saw Mom's face and he knew immediately Kelly was gone.

The Volkswagen bus she and her friend had been traveling in got a flat, veered off the road, and tumbled into a ravine, killing them both instantly. I was at a car show in Detroit doing promotional work for Buick, one of the sponsors for the upcoming '84 Olympics. Once I got the news, I flew home immediately, as did my dad who was living in Chicago, and the rest of the family.

Neighbors flooded the house, bringing food and words of condolence. Kelly's friends camped out for days in the backyard huddling together, swimming in the pool, sleeping at night on the chaise lounges, unable to leave each others' sides until the funeral provided some sense of closure. But there could be no funeral without a body, and the body was still back in Mexico.

At the time, my brother, Mark, was working as a bailiff for Judge John Flynn, our neighbor and close friend. Judge Flynn did what he could to expedite things with a government known for dragging its feet unless someone offered to grease its palms. Meanwhile, a Rosary Mass was said. Five days later the Mexican government finally released Kelly's body so that a funeral could be held.

Time can be measured in breaths, heartbeats, waves rolling on and off the shore, little bits of expansion and compression, little births and little deaths, the unending dance of new green shoots with wilting ones, over and over. But a life is measured in memories, friends, moments of excitement, sorrow, joy, or fear. And they say when we come to the end of our lives, it's those things we didn't do that we regret—the adventures we were too afraid to try, the secret loves we were too timid to approach. Where I had been stubborn and introverted growing up, Kelly had been just the opposite. She was open and vivacious. Kelly grabbed life by the lapel and danced.

We took comfort in the knowledge that she had been so loved by so many, and that she had lived a great deal in her short life. I wanted to believe she had no regrets when it came time for God to take her back. But that's hard to do when someone dies so young.

The holidays would be approaching soon, and it was going to be a painful time for all of us.

Don's daughter was also named Kelly. At first, it was very hard for me to hear him say her name when she phoned. When a loss is still so raw, just hearing the person's name can make your heart ache. I know that in her own way, the same was true for Don's daughter. I'm sure hearing my name hurt her. She and I weren't far apart in age, and we still hadn't figured quite how to relate to one another.

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“She is quite possibly this country's top all-around athlete. But who knows the name Ann Meyers?” Such was the beginning of the November, 1983 issue of
American Way
magazine's profile piece, titled, “All Suited Up With No Place To Go.” On the opposite page was a full-page picture of me holding a basketball inside an empty locker room.

I was struggling to make $50,000 a year from broadcasting, doing product endorsements, and teaching basketball at youth camps, and now anybody traveling cross-country on American Airlines with five minutes to spare knew it. “A man at age twenty-eight who is labeled ‘the best' commands a $1,000,000 contract and legions of fans,” wrote George Harrar.

Tell me about it,
I thought.

My brother, David, had made $350,000 a year, and I was just as good an athlete. But like I told Harrar, “It's a man's society. Still, I have no right to complain. I was born with a lot of God-given talents.” And the truth was, I knew there was more to life than fame and money, especially now. If I had commanded a $1,000,000 paycheck that year, I'd have been overjoyed to give it up if it meant I could have my sister back. As for it being a man's world, well, who didn't know that? There was no point in moaning about it, other than it sometimes just felt good. And feeling good was something the Meyers had in short supply that fall season.

The holidays had come, and we were all looking for ways to get through them, to appear cheerful, when inside we were still reeling over Kelly's death. I had spent Thanksgiving with Donnie and his daughter, his parents, Scotty and Verna, and his sister, Nancy, and her family. It was wonderful to get to know them better and to see how close they all were. It also meant a lot to see how important it was to Donnie that they liked me and that I liked them. Though his divorce was finalized, there still remained a bit of awkwardness between his daughter, Kelly, and me.

Still, being back home for the holidays would have been much harder. A few of my siblings were still living there with Mom, who had become more and more depressed. Dad's leaving delivered the first blow, and Kelly's death was the knockout punch. While I'd grown up with a mom who had been to each of my games, making every one of my lunches, and taking me to doctor appointments, my younger brothers and sisters now had a mother who was barely able to do any of those things. Several of us older kids tried to help out financially as much as possible, but we all had obligations of our own. While my father hadn't totally dropped the ball in that department, his checks were always late. While no one was destitute, both parents were MIA when it came to providing emotional support for my younger siblings. It was a tough time for everyone.

Though it seemed to take forever, December finally passed. 1984 offered at least a distraction with the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. President Reagan branded the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire” and making the case for deploying NATO nuclear armed missiles in Western Europe as a response to the Soviets installing new nuclear armed missiles in Eastern Europe, which meant there'd be little chance the Soviet athletes would compete. Even without an arms race, we had snubbed them at the 1980 Olympics, and now they were playing tit for tat.

The response was that nearly all of the Eastern European Block countries announced they would not be participating in support of the Soviet Union, which meant the U.S. women's basketball team would probably take the Gold. I had brief pangs of nostalgia more than regret. It was hard. Part of me wanted to be out there competing, but rules were rules. I was no longer an amateur athlete. By now I was a broadcaster.

I'd done some work with ESPN, broadcasting with Robin Roberts in her early career. I also worked with Sports Channel Chicago, where I was their #1 analyst for most of their college sports, both men's and women's, while Don was broadcasting the Chicago White Sox games and doing ABC's Monday Night Baseball.

Word had gotten out that ABC was considering hiring a woman to broadcast the Olympic women's basketball games, which was a big deal because it had never been done before. I had hoped they would hire me for the job, since I was a local athlete and knew many of the athletes participating in 1984, like Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Carl Lewis, and Mary Lou Retton. I'd been a UCLA Olympian, competed in the Pan Am Games and other events leading up to the '80 Olympics. I was also well known by the folks at ABC because of my
Superstars
trifecta. As one of sixty-five Olympians appointed by the Mayor to the Olympic Committee, I'd hoped my selection to broadcast would be a natural, logical decision. So I was beyond thrilled and honored when I found out I had the job. It was a broadcasting breakthrough for me and for all women.

As the front man of the XXIII Olympiad, Peter Ueberroth was smart not to confirm that Soviet athletes would not be participating. Instead, he kept the men's and women's basketball schedule under wraps. Normally, the public would have been notified six months out which Olympic teams were competing, and their playing dates, so they could make travel arrangements and purchase tickets ahead of time. But Peter played it close to the vest, knowing that few would care if the U.S. teams were scheduled to play Africa because the odds were that the African teams would lose by a hundred points. However, everyone wanted a ticket to the U.S./Soviet games.

I didn't know the lineup of the women's basketball teams, and much to his chagrin, neither did ABA President, Bill Wall, the man who had underwritten our bid for a berth to the '76 Olympics. He and his secretary ended up standing outside selling tickets right before the games. Yet, they would always sell out.

In Los Angeles, there was no need to build ambitious structures as Montreal and Moscow had, since the Coliseum, USC, and UCLA provided ideal venues. One of the big fears everyone had leading up to the bid was that there would be too much traffic congestion in a city already choked by smog and freeway delays. Peter jumped that hurdle by convincing large and small Los Angeles businesses to divide the workforce into shifts from 8a.m.-1p.m. and 2p.m.-7p.m., thus freeing up the freeways and allowing LA workers to attend many of the games. All the events were packed.

The women's team had an excellent lineup. Cheryl Miller was the big local draw having played for USC and nabbed her second NCAA title. On par with Cheryl were Denise Curry, my former UCLA teammate, and Lynette Woodard, who had made the '80 Olympic team only to be denied competing. Lynnette, of course, had also competed in the
Superstars
with me. Rounding out the team was eighteen-year-old Teresa Edwards, the youngest player on the team, who would eventually compete in four more Olympics. Pat Summitt and Bobby Knight, who had both coached at the Pan Am games in '79, were the women's and men's coaches now.

Broadcasting the '84 Olympic women's basketball games was especially exciting for me because they were being held in Los Angeles. It was a wonderful honor. It was also another seismic shift for women in broadcasting, but apparently someone forgot to mention that to a couple of guys at ABC.

I worked with Keith Jackson doing color. ABC had paid millions for the rights to broadcast the '84 Olympics and, as a result, Roone Arledge decided not to spend much time on the events that he didn't feel would bring in a huge number of eyeballs for the sponsors. This meant that other than women's track, swimming, gymnastics, and volleyball, little time would go to many of the women's events, including basketball. Television was expensive, and live television, especially so.

ABC decided they were going to come to Keith and me for about a minute on a cutaway featuring the women's basketball. Although very few of the women's events were getting any coverage, and this piece was only a minute or so, the director didn't ask me one single question. We did a practice run-through and the entire time, all I heard was him asking Keith questions in the headset.

“You have to have Annie say something,” Keith finally said. “I'm not going to sit here while you ask me questions and not have your expert say a word!”

The director hadn't thought to get a female Olympic basketball player's take on the team. Keith made sure that wasn't going to happen when we went live. “She's the pro. Let her talk.” It's something that I will never forget, both the director's disinterest and Keith's response.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised. When it came to basketball, the broadcasting booth was very much the boys' sandbox, even as the emerging gender gap was being thrown onto the national scene in a big way. If Geraldine Ferraro could be the first woman added to the presidential ticket by a major party, then this was a perfect time to open the doors in broadcasting. But clearly, there were still those who hoped the women on the teams would keep their pretty little mouths shut.

Well, I wasn't about to keep my mouth shut. Not when I was being paid to do the exact opposite. When they came to us on the live shot, everything went off without a hitch. Keith was a real pro and, by that point, I probably knew more about women's basketball than anyone. But more than that, I was finally comfortable speaking publicly and giving my opinion.

My shyness off the courts and in front of the cameras made it surprising to more than just the other journalists that I would want to get into broadcasting. It was a shock to friends and family, too. It was a challenge, but there was nothing I loved more than a challenge—and I'd learned from the best.

In typical Los Angeles fashion, the Games opened to eighty-four pianists in white tuxedoes playing “Rhapsody in Blue,” while three-hundred dancers performed. But the most compelling moments featured one single man: Rafer Johnson

Rafer had become a good friend of mine, and my heart burst with pride when he took hold of the torch that day. Though many were too young to realize what Rafer had accomplished both as a decathlete and as a man in his lifetime, they still got the sense that they were witnessing someone very special. Rafer obviously felt the weight of his journey to sports history because he didn't feel as calm and collected as he seemed. There had been three or four rehearsals for the opening ceremonies, and he told me that something had gone wrong every time. First the stairs didn't open properly, then the unicopter crashed in the grass, Rafer got a cramp, the blimp lost its sign. There had always been something. But now it was the real deal, and it came off beautifully, and without a single hitch.

Being a UCLA track athlete himself who also played basketball under Papa for awhile, Rafer and his wife, Betsy, had followed my career both in and after school. Rafer and I played basketball together for a charity fundraiser each year that pitted a group of celebrity athletes against the Rams or the Raiders, whoever was the LA football team at the time. We'd play against Deacon Jones, Howie Long, Marcus Allen, Jim Plunket, and Merlin Olsen. When Rafer was voted team captain, which was most often, he was so nice about choosing me as his first pick.

“You're the best player on this court,” he'd say, whether we won or lost.

He was generous with his praise, his spirit, and with his time, which was largely spent on many of the same boards and committees I sat on. The Special Olympics board was our favorite. He had long been the face of the Special Olympics (along with Eunice Kennedy). When an event was held at UCLA my freshman year, I became a volunteer. By now, we had come to know each other very well.

Rafer and I often talked about how there were no individual athletes, even in individual sports. There was always a talented coach who could say just the right thing at the right time, a loving supportive family, teachers, and so many others who were responsible for helping an athlete fulfill his or her full potential. Now, both of us hoped to inspire and help others.

When he reached the top of the stairs on Opening Day, he held the torch out to the crowd before lighting the flame, which passed through to set ablaze the huge Olympic Rings, specially designed for that purpose. Within days, the U.S. women's basketball team was holding the gold.