Two men who have
devoted a good part of their lengthy lives to our sport are
currently in NY area hospitals.
Stan Saplin, for
years the "voice" of the field events at meets at Madison
Square Garden, and one of the sport's great historians (he's
on Track and Field News' masthead as the mag's historical
editor), slipped into a coma last week, suffering from water
on the brain. He has since regained consciousness, but is
still in the intensive care unit at NYU Medical Center. It's
still not certain what was the cause, but Allen Dawson is
still in a coma at the North Shore University Hospital on Long
Island. As the story below states, Dawson coached NFL Hall of
Famer Jim Brown at Manhasset H.S. in the 1950s. He also
appeared as the "Marlboro Man" in print ads. In
addition, he was the assistant coach at Long Island's C.W.Post
College during the early 1970s when the team included a young
runner named Vin Lananna, now the successful coach at
Stanford.
Dawson took over
the head job t Post from Roy Chernock in 1975 and immediately
hired Lananna as his distance coach. The two worked
side-by-side until 1980, and retained a very close
relationship through Lananna's coaching moves to Dartmouth and
Stanford. Said Lananna, "He's been my right hand man since
1980".
In a year that
will always be remembered for September 11, there has also
been a startlingly vast number of sad stories in our small
world of track and field. Please remember Stan Saplin and
Allen Dawson, two of our unsung heroes, in your prayers as
they struggle to regain their health.
Walt Murphy FROM
NY's NEWSDAY (Reprinted With Permission) By Bart Jones
December 3, 2001 A legendary athletic coach at Manhasset High
School whose protégés include football Hall of Famer Jim Brown
was critically injured when he was hit in the head with a
shot-put shot during a freak accident at practice, authorities
said yesterday.
Allen Dawson, 80,
was knocked unconscious when he was struck on the back of his
head by the 12-pound iron shot on Friday during practice at
the high school, Nassau County police said. He was taken to
North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, where he was
listed in critical but stable condition yesterday.
Police said the
accident occurred when Dawson, who is retired but working as a
volunteer coach, was measuring a throw by one of the girls on
the team about 4:10 p.m. He apparently wanted to measure the
throw because it was one of the girl's best efforts. Another
team member proceeded to make a throw, but Dawson apparently
did not hear the athlete's warning that he was about to
release the shot. "Evidently he threw it and it hit him in the
head," said Detective Jeffrey Grossof the Sixth Precinct. "It
was a horrible accident."
Police did not
identify the team member who threw the shot because he is a
minor, but said no charges have been filed because they
believe what happened was an accident.
"I know he felt
terrible about the incident," Gross said, referring to the
athlete. Dawson's family, however, said they were uncertain as
to precisely what happened on the field. They said that,
according to medical personnel, Dawson may have simply
suffered an aneurysm on the field at the time the student was
throwing the shot.
"It was a sudden
event," said Dawson's wife, Mary. "It could have been
coincidental."
The family said
the last thing they want is for the student to feel guilty
about what happened, because Dawson's entire life has been
about encouraging young people. Dawson's wife said his
prognosis was not good, though the family and numerous
friends, colleagues, students and former players were praying
for his recovery.
"He has not
regained consciousness and we do not know if he will," she
said. "He's in a coma."
The couple,
married 55 years, live in Westbury. Messages of concern about
Dawson began pouring in quickly. Reached at his home in Los
Angeles yesterday, Brown, the former star running back of the
Cleveland Browns whom some consider the greatest athlete
America has ever produced, said he was saddened by Dawson's
misfortune.
"He's an
unbelievable human being, just a beautiful man. I remember him
as always having one of the greatest attitudes you would ever
want to see in a person. He never coached in the negative,"
Brown said. "He was an integral part of Manhasset when I was
there. He was Mr. Manhasset. He was always a part of the
community," he said.
Dawson coached
Brown in both football and track and field at Manhasset in the
early 1950s (Brown was a high jumper). When Brown was inducted
into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he mentioned Dawson in his
speech, Dawson's family said. The North Shore hospital was
jammed with well-wishers on Saturday, including many of the
athletes Dawson is coaching now.
In a remarkable
career that has spanned more than a half-century, Dawson
coached football, basketball and track and field at Manhasset.
He also coached track and field at C.W. Post campus of Long
Island University in the 1970s, turning a relatively small
school into a major track and field power, and producing a
string of All-American athletes.
Dawson became a
leading track and field official as well, working such major
competitions as the Penn Relays at the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the Millrose Games in Madison
Square Garden. He also officiated at some of the U.S. Olympic
trials, his family said.
Another of his
protégés at Manhasset was Ken Howard, who later starred in the
television series "The White Shadow," which ran from 1978 to
1981. The show was about a white man who coaches a team of
black inner-city boys.
Sports wasn't the
only area in which Dawson excelled. By age 18 he was a
successful model, appearing on billboards in places including
Times Square for advertisements that hawked everything from
Listerine to cigarettes, his relatives said. A health nut who
also worked for years as a lifeguard at Jones Beach, Dawson
never smoked or drank.
"He often joked it
was the only time he put a cigarette in his mouth - when he
had to pose," said one of Dawson's sons, John.
James Herbert, 39,
who was an assistant track coach at Manhasset from 1991
to1996, said "he was a super athlete, a physical specimen, a
good-looking guy."
As recently as
last week Dawson was coaching at a track and field meet at
Bethpage State Park.
A World War II
veteran who served four years in the Pacific and captained his
own ship, Dawson started coaching in Manhasset in 1947 when he
landed a job as a physical education teacher in the district's
Munsey Park Elementary School. He went to C.W. Post in the
early 1970s and "retired" a decade later. But his love of
sports would not let him stay away from the playing fields, so
he continued as a volunteer.
His wife said that
if he does not survive one small consolation will be that his
downfall came as he was doing what he had devoted his life to.
"That's the way he'd want to go, doing something he loved,"
she said, adding: "The shot put was one of his favorite
events."
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