Tom Waddell

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Major League Baseball player, see Tom Waddell (baseball).

Dr. Tom Waddell (November 1, 1937 - July 11, 1987) was the gay American sportsman who founded the international sporting event called the Gay Games, which was named such after the USOC sued Dr. Waddell for using the word "Olympic" in the original name "Gay Olympics".

[Image:http://www.glbtq.com/images/thumbnails/arts/waddell_t.jpg]

Contents

[edit] Early Life

Waddell was born Thomas Flubacher into a conservative Roman Catholic family in Paterson, New Jersey in 1937. Life was tough Tom, who struggled with his parents over his sexuality. As an exceptional scholar, Tom became aware that he was a homosexual early on in life and used athletics as a way to compensate for what he once felt was a shortcoming.

He excelled at football and track and field, but his home life continued to become more and more strained. In his teens, his parents finally split up and Tom was no longer welcome to live with either one. He packed up and went to live with the Waddell family for whom he had worked in the summer months.

The Waddells were former vaudevillian acrobats and dancers and offered a more stable and accepting home life to the young athlete. They eventually adopted him into their family, and Tom changed his name to Waddell. The colorful family gave Tom the opportunity to express his talents and encouraged him to take up gymnastics.

Continuing to excel at sports through his high-school years, Waddell eventually attended college on a full track scholarship where he planned on studying physical education. It was only after the death of one of his gymnastics teammates that Waddell became interested in medicine, and it would become one of the most successful driving forces in his life.

[edit] College Years

He attended medical school at the New Jersey Medical School and would later in life hold positions as a researcher at Stanford University Medical School, and as chief physician for San Francisco's public emergency clinic at 50 Ivy Street, now renamed the Tom Waddell Clinic.

It was the summer before he went to med school that Waddell met the first great love of his life while working at a summer camp for children. Sixty-three year old Enge Menaker was a well-known communist journalist who wrote columns about the unequal treatment of African-Americans and gay people in the United States. It was through Menaker that Tom began to develop his sense of justice and equality, and it was a relationship that would continue throughout his life. He joined civil rights marches and began speaking out at school about the injustices that were being committed against African-American’s.

In 1966, Waddell was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War, and it was a move that he greatly resented and publicly voiced his dissent about. However, Waddell accepted his fate and used it as an opportunity to further his medical training, becoming a preventative medical officer helping troops to ward off infection during combat. He was bound for Vietnam when, instead, a twist of fate assigned him to participate in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

The Olympics were shrouded in controversy as many Mexican college students felt that the money should have been spent on social programs instead of the Games. A crowd of 5,000 students led a protest before the event, which resulted in the killing of 300 people when the Mexican Army began firing into the demonstration. With very little training for the event, Waddell felt that his presence in the games could have a positive effect on social change. He competed in the decathlon, representing the United States, and finished sixth among the 33 competitors, but it was his influential voice rather than his placement that would truly have an impact on sports.

At the event two black American track and field runners, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, made a controversial stand against racism in the United States when they lowered their heads and made a fist symbolizing black power while receiving their medals. (See 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.) Waddell publicly supported the move and was threatened with a court martial from the United States Army. He eventually was discharged and would return to his love of medicine, but also became an outspoken gay rights activist when he moved to San Francisco.

[edit] The Gay Games

There he met Charles Deaton and the two men began a romantic affair that became highly publicized in gay society. In 1976, the two men became the first two gay people featured in the "Couples" section of People. While attending a gay bowling competition in San Francisco, Waddell became fascinated with the concept of developing a competition based on the Olympics, which would allow gay athletes to participate and celebrate their achievements. He took to the road and formed committees to help make his vision a reality. The first event was to be held in his adopted home city in 1982 and would invite participants from all over the world to compete in 16 different sports.

Modeled after the Olympics, Waddell at first called the event the Gay Olympic Games. The United States Olympic Committee filed a petition to seek an injunction from allowing the games to use the Olympic title.

Although previously the Rat Olympics, Police Olympics, Dog Olympics, and Special Olympics had all gone unchallenged, the USOC felt that the use of the name in a homosexual event would tarnish the reputation of their trademark. The injunction was eventually granted and hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise and signage had to be removed from the event in order to adhere with the court's decree. That set back, however, didn’t stop the games from being a success as over 1,600 athletes descended on the city to compete in the first ever newly named Gay Games. Waddell had made his dream come true and had given the opportunity for gay athletes from around the world to show that they can be a powerful force in sport.

[edit] Fatherhood

During the preparation of the event, Tom met fellow athlete and gay activist Sara Lewenstein. Lewenstein co-founded the Gay Games and served as vice president for San Francisco Arts and Athletics during the event. Though both gay, the couple wanted to have a child and was legally married in order to preserve the rights of both parents. In 1983, Jessica Waddell Lewinstein was born, and a new chapter of Waddell’s life seemed about to begin. The couple began planning the future Games, which would be held again in San Francisco four years later. The event would double in size, and the interest in the gay sports movement would continue to grow.

[edit] Death

Four weeks before the event was about to kick off, Waddell was sadly diagnosed with HIV and was suffering from pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. Not one to back down from a challenge, he still went on to compete at the sophomore event and earned a gold medal in the javelin competition. One year later on July 11, 1987, the 49-year-old died of complications due to the AIDS virus, his battle against HIV/AIDS is depicted in the award-winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt.

Waddell wrote an autobiography titled Gay Olympian with fellow sports writer Dick Schaap.

[edit] External Links

 This biographical article about an American track and field athlete is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.