Track Shoes

Jon's recent mention of the Emery family, our friends from Florence, OR, and Sandy's mentioning buying track shoes for her sons, reminds me of a story I should record to the family lore. It's not about Sampsons, but it is about the experiences we have had, however remotely, with other people's greatness.  Curtis Harding Emery II ("Tooey") was a superb all-round high-school athlete. In the spring of 1964 or 1965, he was a contender for the state track championships as a sprinter. I was on my way to Eugene to see the orthodontist, so the Emerys asked me to swing by a little hole-in-the wall shop just outside the city center of Eugene, to pick up a pair of custom-made track shoes for Tooey. I marveled at the shoes. They were feather light, had cleats under the ball of the foot, but had no sole under the heel at all. Rather, they had just enough fabric to hold the shoe on the foot.  I'm pretty sure that Tooey won his meet. In 2011 he was inducted into the Siuslaw High School Athletic Hall of Fame as its first honoree. But it occurs to me that given the date, the time, and the place, those shoes had to have been creations of Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon's legendary coach of distance runners. As the world knows, he and Phil Knight went on to find fame and fortune as the founders of Nike.  Recommended reading:  "Bill Bowerman and the Men of Oregon," by runner Kenny Moore.