Ted Haydon

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This story was originally published in the June 1985 Illinois Runner.

Ted Haydon

Copyright © 1985 by David Diego Rodríguez

On April 16, 1985, Ted Haydon suffered a brain hemorrhage after a track practice and died on May 3 in Billings Hospital at the age of 73.

With the death of Ted Haydon, pioneer in track and field and reknown coach, we lose a great man. We’ll miss many things, but one in particular. With his unflappable manner and his quips, he helped athletes realize that sport was not the most important thing in life.

Many of his athletes preferred to be insulted by Ted rather than complimented by any other coach. Practices featured banter such as:

"Ted, could you recommend a pair of fast shoes?"

"Don’t worry, they’ll all keep up with you."

"Ted, how can I improve my times?"

"Run shorter races."

"Ted, should I do long, slow distance running?"

"Yes, but not during the race."

Ted was born Edward Morgan Haydon on March 29, 1912, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. His father left Canada to study religion at the University of Chicago in 1914 and later became Professor of Comparative Religions there. As a student at the University of Chicago, Ted played football on the junior varsity squad for two years and then left the sport to concentrate on track and field. He specialized in the hammer throw and hurdles, and he was team captain his senior year. Ted graduated in 1933 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and won an honors scholarship to attend graduate school at Chicago to study sociology. He left school after one year in order to get married and work a full-time job.

For the next sixteen years, he worked out of storefronts as a social worker for juvenile delinquents and helped organize self-help programs that later became models for some of the social activism of the 1960’s.

By 1967, Ted was smoking so many cigarettes the room would seem to spin around for him, so he went to see his doctor who told him he needed exercise. After a fourteen year hiatus from track and field, he returned to the university fieldhouse to work out in the afternoons.

Soon track coach Ned Merriam asked him to help out on a voluntary basis. When Ned retired in 1950, the university asked Ted to take the job. During this era, the University of Chicago Track Club was formed.

Ted was the first to compete as a member of the University of Chicago "club" in AAU meets. "In social work, I ran around in circles," Ted said. "Now I do the same thing on the track and get points for it."

Eventually, the better runners in area gravitated to the club. Lawton Lamb, who had graduated from the University of Illinois in 1952 and had run on the two-mile relay team that had set an American record at the Drake Relays, suggested to Ted that he be allowed to run for the University of Chicago even though he never attended school there. "I work out on your track everyday," Lawton said. "Why shouldn’t I represent you?" Ted agreed and handed him a Chicago singlet.

In those days out-of-college athletes could only continue their competing in exclusive, wealthy downtown athletic clubs which discriminated against Jews and Blacks. The Chicago club was open to everyone. "We do not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, or talent," Ted said.

Although he dedicated most of his time to his coaching, Ted received a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1954.

When runner Hal Higdon returned to Chicago in the late fifties after serving in the Army, he felt there weren’t enough meets. "I nagged Ted to have more meets," Hal said. "Ted was cooperative with us in our madness. We always looked up to the Boston Marathon, so we were looking for road races near home. That’s when we started the road races in Jackson Park."

Ted showed up to time them, but only because someone wanted to race. "The road races got going without Ted," Hal said, "but he would throw holy water on them. Ted was an athlete’s coach."

When Frank Loomos tied the indoor world record for the sixty-yard low hurdles, Ted said, "The record is the result of an explosive start, fantastic acceleration, impeccable form over the hurdles, a driving finish, and a set of timers with poor reflexes. Let us know anytime you want another world record, Frank, and we’ll get the right timers out."

Dick Gregory, who held the half-mile record at Southern Illinois University, asked Ted if he could perform stand-up comedy at the annual track club dinner in 1959. Ted said, "Why not?"

Dick bombed that year and the following year, but in 1961, he made everyone laugh very hard. A few weeks later, he performed at the Playboy Club and was soon a national success. Ted was always proud of the fact that Dick had gotten his start at the club dinner.

As coach to the U.S. Olympic track team at the 1968 Olympic Games Mexico City, Ted always made sure the athletes made their workouts. He was so busy coaching, his wife Goldie never saw him. But even at the Olympics, Ted never let his athletes take track and field too seriously. Before the final heat of the Mexico City 1500, a very nervous Jim Ryan asked Ted to say a prayer for him. Several minutes later Ted told Jim, "I decided not to say a prayer for you. I’ll save it for something that’s really important."

Although Ted would relieve the pressure his athletes felt, he also encouraged them by supporting their efforts. When runner Ken Young (founder of the National Running Data Center along with his wife Jennifer) was browsing through the record books and discovered that the indoor twenty-five mile world record was only 2:45, he asked Ted if he could help him stage an indoor marathon on the old clay track. Ted agreed.

"I knew I could break that record," Ken said, "because I could run 2:45 for a marathon. That was 209 laps around a 220 clay track. We had seventeen runners. By the time we finished, the inside lane was smooth and shiny. It took about a week before it was powdery again. I finally brought the record down to 2:35:52."

"With Ted everyone got a chance to run," Ken said. "He gave as much attention to the slower runners as the record holders. He once told me he got more pleasure watching seven- or eight-minute milers improve than seeing people set records."

"Ted’s strong point was his psychological treatment of runners," Ken said. "He always knew the right thing to say to get you to perform. I’ve never seen anyone else who could do that. Most runners would work the meets, but we’d go to Ted’s house to eat before the meet. One time I really pigged out. Of course, I didn’t race too well. Ted came up to me and said, "The hungry wolf leads the pack."

Ted could never understand how a coach could drive his athletes so hard. At one meet another coach had been yelling at his runners on the track; this coach turned to Ted and said, "My runners are in good position." Ted said, "Yes, they’re still upright."

At another meet, one of the sprint races ended in a virtual dead heat. After a confused discussion, the officials picked a sprinter who was wearing bright orange as the winner. They sensed this would start a big argument with the coaches and runners, so they consulted Ted. Ted took the results card and wrote, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5…" right down the list of names. No one ever said anything else about the race.

When Wendy Miller wanted to start masters track competition in the Midwest, he went to Ted. "Ted was having his own track meets, so I was afraid he would think we would take away competition," Wendy said. "But he gave us lists of runners and helped me out of those problems I had with the AAU. He has a real genius to exist with different factions. Ted was a master at being able to walk away with nobody mad at him."

"He helped us at our very first meet. And he drove out to our last meet this year at Sterling on March 31st to watch some of his runners. We were short on volunteers, so I said, ‘Ted, we need another timer.’ He unzipped his jacket to show he had two stopwatches around his neck. He grinned and said, "You never know when you may have to time."

Members of the University of Chicago Track Club have competed in every Olympics since 1956. Ted was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1975. In 1982, the city of Chicago proclaimed his 70th birthday "Ted Haydon Day.

"I have nothing but admiration for the man," said Jack Bolton, coach for the Marquette Park Track Club and a UCTC member.

"You can trace most things back to Ted Haydon. We were pretty close. From the time I turned sixty-five, he always sent me a complimentary indoor pass. As busy as he was, he could still find time for a friend. To me, he was the greatest. He had a great sense of humor. That’s what endeared him to runners. To sum it up, he was a great man!"

 

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Copyright © 2001 by David Diego Rodríguez

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DavidDiegoRodriguez@msn.com

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.