Companions in Courage (22 page)

In order to pursue her dream, Julie dropped out of high school and went to Tampa to live with her grandparents. When she arrived
at Tampa Bay Downs to begin her career as a jockey, there was one problem—they wouldn’t let her through the gate. Not to be
deterred, the four-foot-tenand-a-half-inch, hundred-pound girl climbed the fence and made a beeline for the barns. When she
finally connected with Jerry Pate, a trainer, he said, “So, I’m told you want to be a jockey.” Julie didn’t hesitate: “No!
I’m
going
to be a jockey!”

Five weeks later, Julie sat in the winner’s circle. She won nine races, had four seconds and ten thirds in her next forty-eight
mounts.

Tampa Bay Downs trainer John Forbes describes what Julie faced as she made her way up the jockey ladder: “You’ve got to understand.
Nobody took girl riders seriously—they were a joke. Nobody thought a girl was strong enough. Nobody wanted to be the one to
get a girl hurt and nobody worried that a girl might beat him. It ate Julie up, to be considered a girl jockey. I introduced
her to someone as ‘jockette’ and she kicked me in the shins.”

Life was a constant battle. Fights with male jockeys, an estrangement from her mother, no high school diploma, a broken back
in 1980 and four months of rehab—all these only intensified her determination to realize her dream. In 1982 Julie won the
riding title at Atlantic City. She beat every man there and established herself. They now had to take her seriously. Two months
later she won two races at Pimlico, and in 1983 she won the Atlantic City title again.

Jump ahead three years. It’s 1986. Julie answers the phone and her mother’s quivering voice announces that she has been diagnosed
with cancer. End of estrangement. And even more reason for Julie to ride and win—to give her beloved mother a reason to live.

In 1987 Krone became the leading winner at Gulfstream Park, Monmouth, and the Meadowlands. She excelled as a jockey and in
1989 had her best year, winning 368 races. But her greatest accomplishment was still to come. She rode Colonial Affair to
the winner’s circle in the 1993 Belmont Stakes, the only woman to win a Triple Crown race.

Three months after her Belmont win, Julie Krone lost everything. Or almost everything. Riding Seattle Way in her third race
of the day at Saratoga, she neared the top of the stretch and seemed poised for a winning charge. Then the horse beside her
suddenly veered into her path, throwing her violently to the ground. Her legs twisted beneath her as she landed on her bottom
in the path of a charging horse, who struck her in the chest and catapulted her onto another part of the track. She screamed
in pain along with fellow jockeys Richard Migliore and Chris Antley, who fell nearby, the three a mess of sprawled limbs.

Julie spent eighteen days on a morphine drip. She survived two surgeries to repair her badly damaged ankle. Her punctured
elbow and the throbbing cardiac contusion in her chest required constant monitoring.

“I went through a real bad depression,” she says. “The pain ate at me. For two weeks straight, I was up all night. I cried
my eyes out.”

Three years later, riding at Gulfstream Park, her horse broke down and she hit the track, rolling and covering her head with
her hands. Both hands were broken. At the time she was tied for leading rider at Gulfstream, but now the new injuries and
the residual effects of the last one double-teamed her.

Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Julie was in a race for her life. Suicide beckoned when the devil appeared
in her nightmares. Fear hammered her like the hooves of the horse she tangled with, and depression kept her from even leaving
her bed. The girl who at two years old exhibited the innate skills of horsemanship now scared the animals. “Horses felt my
anxiety,” she says. “They got weird.”

Gradually though her daring and dashing spirit began to return. In the summer of 1996, a casual conversation with an old friend
in Saratoga, New York, who happened to be a psychiatrist, opened her eyes to the value of therapy. And there were, of course,
her many fans to bolster her flagging self-image.

“I was on a roller coaster of emotion. People wrote me long letters about their injuries and sent pictures of me their kids
did in crayon. It was overwhelming. It made me feel, like, fed. My lifeline was racing and winning. Then suddenly, it became
my friends and fans. Thinking you don’t need anyone, that’s not real life.”

Through intense psychotherapy, medication, and the love and support of family and friends, Julie returned to racing with her
old zest. She retired in 1999 and a year later, on August 7, 2000, became the first woman rider inducted into horse racing’s
Hall of Fame. She finished her high school degree and is studying psychology to help others with their challenges.

Julie is considered by many to be the greatest female athlete of all time. Skilled, tough, daring, determined, and honest,
she also knew fear. But when pushed beyond her human limits, she learned an important lesson—to let others care.

Welcome to the winner’s circle, Julie.

H
ighs and lows are a part of life. Up, down—agony, ecstasy—good days, bad days—joys, sorrows. We are all familiar with the
rhythms and tensions these opposites create in our day-to-day living. In the athlete’s life, winning and losing usually determine
the highs and the lows and provide the push to do one’s best to win.

Every athlete I know can list the highs and lows of his or her career and can tell you what contributed to both. I have learned
about another important quality in my career that I have been telling you about in the stories in this book—courage. It takes
courage to deal with the despair of defeat and not be thrown by it. It takes courage to feel the thrill of victory and not
be too inflated by it. It takes courage to learn from both winning and losing and to become a solid person who respects one’s
teammates, opponents, and the game itself.

In truth, the game is only a form that teaches us to be courageous enough to learn a simple lesson—to love, to respond, and
to share what we have with those who hurt.

When I played hockey, I didn’t play so I would learn that lesson. I played because I loved to compete, to skate, to juke and
jive, to score, to make the perfect pass, or to win the game, the division, the playoffs, and the Stanley Cup. However, hockey
taught me the importance of getting my priorities in order. I never played on a team that won the Cup. I played in the finals
but we fell short. I was fortunate enough to play on the winning World Cup team in 1996. I regret that my name is not on the
Stanley Cup, but I am very grateful for what I learned in my quest for it. I agree with both Grantland Rice and Vince Lombardi—how
the game is played is more important than winning, but wanting to win is everything. A contradiction? I don’t think so. Playing
well in victory and defeat has everything to do with what we learn from both.

Travis Williams and his teammates accomplished the ultimate high of personal, professional, and team success— a Super Bowl
ring. Personally he achieved success—money, reputation, family, and influence. He also experienced the agony of losing everything
he had.

Travis distinguished himself in track and field at Contra Costa College in California, where he set a national junior college
record for the 100-yard dash—9.3 seconds. Now that is fast! The first time Travis ever carried a football in a game was his
freshman year at Contra. In his two years there he played well enough to be drafted by the Green Bay Packers in the fourth
round of the 1967 draft. During his rookie year Williams returned four kickoffs for touch-downs, the first time anyone had
ever done that. It was a remarkable achievement considering that Travis was so nervous during rookie camp that Coach Lombardi
taped a handle on the ball so he wouldn’t fumble so much. Because Travis had game-breaking speed, other defenses keyed on
him. But in a playoff game against the Rams, he broke loose for two TDs from scrimmage, one a 46-yard sprint off tackle. The
high point of Travis’s career came on his birthday, January 14, 1968. The Packers beat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II,
22–14.

Because of his speed and his ability to find daylight, Williams was nicknamed “the Roadrunner.” In 1971 he was traded to the
L.A. Rams, where his highlight was returning a kickoff against New Orleans 105 yards for a touch-down. The next preseason
Travis blew out his knee, starting a downward spiral that he didn’t reverse until the last years of his life.

He spent the next two years rehabbing his knee and trying to get back into football; however, his money ran out and the open
spaces closed. He and his wife, Arie, had eight children to support.

“In 1967 I figured the money would last forever. Everybody thought I was rich and so did I,” said Williams.

He started working as a security guard with the Richmond, California, school district. He sold his five cars but the accumulated
debt was too much. In 1977, Arie and Travis lost their home. Travis looked back on that time with frustration: “The thing
that took a lot out of me was that I could have paid for the house when I bought it. But I thought I’d play ball forever so
I only put a down payment on it.”

For the next few years, life spiraled out of control for the Williams family. They moved to San Francisco. An aborted dream
of opening a restaurant; a job as a bouncer; an arrest for a felony battery; Arie’s arrest for contributing to a death while
driving drunk; and finally the children being sent to live with their grandparents—all these trials broke their spirit. Travis
and Arie separated after they finished their jail time and Travis took a job in a liquor store as a security guard, a combination
that eventually put him on the street living out of his car. His depression worsened and so did his drinking. He was homeless.

His life had gone from the ecstasy of a Super Bowl ring to the agonizing “security” of the “log”—a fifty-foot piece of timber
on a Richmond side street, used by the homeless for shelter.

Travis finally listened to the pleas of his children and came “inside” in 1988. Their support helped him. It also enabled
him to begin to make a difference in the lives of others. Homeless folk became his mission. He worked with Susan Prather,
an advocate for the homeless. He invited his homeless brothers and sisters into his home when the Bay Area got cold. He never
left the streets; he stayed to care. When Prather was asked about Travis and homelessness she said, “People either make it
out of homelessness, or they die trying. Travis came a long way.”

Travis died in February 1991 as a man who had found contentment after the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I can’t
say enough about Travis and the respect I have for him. He made mistakes; he lost everything this world has to offer, but
he never lost his heart. He became an advocate for the people he understood. He moved beyond the highs and lows of life. He
broke into the clear on his last run because he learned lessons from both places—the courage to respond to the love of his
children and to respond with love that continues to soothe the pain of his homeless friends.

T
he mystery of family dynamics fascinates me. My personal journey in therapy has deepened my conviction that a significant
part of who we are today finds its roots in the family system. Commitment to my own family is one of my highest priorities.
Marybeth and I want to challenge our kids to be independent and true to themselves and to balance that freedom with values
that will support them throughout life. Loving and raising kids can be the most rewarding and frightening challenge we will
ever face.

Ernie and Pam Kuehne of McKinney, Texas, must understand that. They have been there. They have felt the pride of success and
the tears of the pain that accompany the struggle.

Ernie’s childhood in the poor, rural community of Otto, Texas, contributed to his development as a determined achiever. His
self-sufficiency and take-charge attitude created in him a mix of strength and intense enthusiasm. After college and law school
he found success as a trial lawyer. He quickly made senior partner and soon acquired a small bank and an oil-and-gas firm
in Dallas. His intensity spilled over to his two sons and daughter. As he often said, “Ours is a family that wins and loses
together. We’re 100-percenters. When we do something, the only rule we have is you have to give it your all.”

Trip, Hank, and Kelli played sports as the main course of life. Pam remembers, “They played everything. Kelli was into ice
skating and tennis, and the boys were involved in baseball, basketball, and football. I remember when they got their first
set of real golf clubs. They used ’em as hatchets, then as swords.”

Ernie’s philosophy of success centered on honest feedback. His love for the children and the hard-driving fiery attitude he
stoked in them stood in striking contrast to Pam’s quiet, pleasant support. Ernie would observe, “Some people say, ‘Never
say a negative.’ But I don’t believe you tell someone they played good when they didn’t. Hey, nothing personal. Kelli and
Trip didn’t mind. Hank did.”

Trip sharpened his golf skills at Oklahoma State University and was a finalist in the 1994 U.S. Amateur. Kelli that same year
won the Girls’ Junior and went on to consecutive U.S. Women’s Amateur crowns in 1995 and 1996. But the word around the community
was, “They’re all good, but Hank, the younger brother, he’s the one to watch.”

Hank was different. He carried a few more clubs in his bag but also toted extra baggage. He had to come face-to-face with
dyslexia, attention deficit disorder (ADD), depression, and alcoholism. That he also possessed enormous talent only added
more pressure.

As a young man, Hank struggled with his grades. The insecurity every teenager comes to know struck him particularly cruelly.
He fell into depression and at the age of thirteen began to use alcohol as an escape. Even though the major contributions
to his academic problems were the twin devils of dyslexia and ADD, they were not diagnosed until later. The quiet desperation
would fuel a serious drinking problem.