Milt Campbell, the 1956 Olympic decathlon champion, who received an honorary degree from Monmouth University for his public service, is a member of the New Jersey Hall of Fame Class of 2012. The induction ceremony is June 9 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. JIM REME/Monmouth University With help from Monmouth University professor Dr. James Mack and Rumson’s Tim McLoone, Milt Campbell will be in the limelight where he belongs.
Mack and McLoone were co-sponsors of Campbell’s nomination for the New Jersey Hall of Fame, which honors residents who have made significant contributions to society and the world beyond.
This year’s induction ceremony will take place on June 9 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.
Among the inductees that Campbell, the 1956 Olympic decathlon champion, is going in with are Bob Hurley, the Hall of Fame basketball coach at St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, the late Wellington Mara, owner of the New York Giants football team, Oscarwinning actor Michael Douglas, and National Book Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates.
Mack, who was the force behind Campbell’s being awarded an Honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Monmouth University in 2008, said it was his honor to nominate one of the greatest athletes in U.S. history and a true trailblazer.
Jim Thorpe, Bob Mathias, Rafer Johnson, Bill Toomey and Bruce Jenner are all household names. They made names for themselves as “the world’s greatest athlete” when the United States was dominating the Olympic decathlon.
But one name that does not roll off everyone’s tongue is Milt Campbell. He was the person between Mathias (Campbell won the silver medal behind Mathias in 1952) and Johnson (whom he beat for the 1956 gold medal).
Campbell, a native of Plainfield, has always been the forgotten one of this exclusive Red-White-Blue Club, but on June 9 that will not be the case as he takes center stage.
“It is very special to me, saying that you contributed to the growth of your state,” he said. “It’s fantastic to me.” It is an honor well deserved and overdue. Not only is Campbell one of the greatest athletes the Garden State has ever produced, but he was an extraordinary social worker who helped heal the racial wounds of the 1960s.
Campbell moved back to Plainfield after the 1967 Newark riots, believing that education was more important than guns.
He helped bridge the gap between the white and black communities. He took a keen interest in public schools and education, and founded the Chad School in Newark. He was an adviser to the Model Cities program in Newark and ran programs for the underprivileged.
“I’m proud of the fact that I would come back to a troubled town and make a lot of sacrifices,” he said. “It was my turn to come back and give back. That’s the way I was brought up.”
ToMack, that is Campbell’s greatest gold medal.
“Milt’s athletic achievements are just one side,” Mack said at the time of Campbell’s honorary degree. “Everything he did with the community and social work was outstanding. He inspired the young.
“His work with the community and social causes is as great as his athletic achievements,” he added.
That is saying a lot, considering the breadth of his accomplishments. Few are in his league.
McLoone, who co-coaches the Rumson-Fair Haven High School girls cross country and indoor track and field teams and is a former competitive runner himself, noted that Campbell was the gold standard when McLoone was growing up in North Jersey and going to Seton Hall Prep.
“Sometimes decades go by and memories fade,” he said. “Milt Campbell was the living legend when I was growing up. What he did was unprecedented.
“I was always surprised he didn’t get the recognition [of the other decathlon champions],” he added.
Like Mack, McLoone was honored and proud to nominate Campbell.
Besides his well-known Olympic medals, Campbell was an all-state football player at South Plainfield. He went on to play for Indiana University and in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns, where he was a teammate of the great Hall of Famer Jim Brown and was coached by a legend, Paul Brown. He went on to play in the Canadian Football League with the Montreal Alouettes.
While at Plainfield High School, he was an All-American swimmer — good enough in the sport to be included in the National Swimming Hall of Fame in Florida.
Of course, it’s his feats in track and field that stand out the most. He was still in high school when he made the 1952 Olympic team that competed in Helsinki, Finland, yet he still took home the silver medal. He was a world-class hurdler, setting a world record for the 120- yard hurdles as well as world indoor bests in the 60-yard hurdles.
Following the 1952 Olympics, he dedicated the next four years to learning and mastering the 10-event test of endurance. By 1956 and Melbourne, he was ready, even if the prognosticators weren’t. After Johnson won the U.S. Olympic Trials, Campbell became the forgotten man. He was picked to do no better than third place, with Johnson the favorite and the Soviet Union’s Vasily Kuznetsov picked to be his main rival.
Campbell wasn’t concerned about his loss at the Olympic Trials. The goal, he said, was to make the team.
“Make the team is all you had to do,” he said, adding that the trials were a chance to “see where you are.”
When it came time to compete at the Olympics, the 6-3, 207-pound Campbell wasn’t going to be denied.
“I took charge from the beginning,” he recalled. “I told Rafer the day of the decathlon that I was going to walk away with it. It was my time.
“I knew I had paid the price,” he added.
It was his time, and he did run away with the gold, setting a new Olympic record with 7,937 points.
Campbell’s triumph was historic for more than his Olympic record. He was the firstAfrican-American to win the decathlon, and with it the title “World’s Greatest Athlete.”
“I have a record that will never be broken,” he said.
Campbell was a trailblazer for the black athlete in the same vein as Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Muhammad Ali.
“We were getting America to look at the black athlete,” he said, adding that he and the others knew they were “breaking down barriers.”
After winning his Olympic gold medal, Campbell then walked away from the sport.
“My desire in life was to be the best,” he explained. “I did it and then moved on.”
Campbell, now 78, will always be a member of the exclusive decathlon champion club. He still follows the events and has attended every Olympics since his Melbourne triumph.
“I’m looking forward to the [2012 London] Games,” Campbell remarked. “I’m a cheerleader for these [Olympic] kids.”
Campbell has been invited to this year’s U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore., and to Germany this summer, where it is celebrating 100 years of the decathlon. It was at the 1912 Games in Stockholm that Sweden’s King Gustav V proclaimed Jim Thorpe “the World’s GreatestAthlete” after his decathlon victory. It’s a title that has stuck with the event winner ever since.
At the gathering this summer, Campbell will have one further distinction, that of being the oldest living decathlete. The honors just keep coming his way. Better late than never.