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LOS ANGELES – Rafer Johnson, who won the decathlon at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome and helped subdue Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin in 1968, died Wednesday. He was 86 years old.
He died at his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, according to family friend Michael Roth. No cause of death has been announced.
Johnson was among the world’s greatest athletes from 1955 until his Olympic triumph in 1960, winning a national decathlon championship in 1956 and a silver medal at the Melbourne Olympics the same year.
His Olympic career includes wearing the American flag at the 1960 Games and lighting the torch at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to open the 1984 Games. Johnson has set world records in the decathlon three times amid a rivalry fierce with his UCLA teammate CK Yang from Taiwan and Vasily Kuznetsov from the former Soviet Union.
Johnson won a gold medal at the 1955 Pan American Games when he was only competing in his fourth decathlon. At a welcome meet in Kingsburg, Calif., He set his first world record, beating the mark of two-time Olympic champion and his childhood hero Bob Mathias.
On June 5, 1968, Johnson was working on Kennedy’s presidential campaign when the Democratic candidate was gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Johnson joined former NFL star Rosey Grier and reporter George Plimpton in apprehending Sirhan Sirhan moments after shooting Kennedy, who died the next day.
“I knew he was doing all he could to take care of Uncle Bobby at his most vulnerable moment,” Kennedy’s niece, Maria Shriver, said over the phone. “His dedication to Uncle Bobby was pure and real. He had protected his friend. Even after Uncle Bobby’s death, he remained close.
Johnson later called the assassination “one of the most devastating moments of my life”.
Born Rafer Lewis Johnson on August 18, 1934 in Hillsboro, Texas, he moved to California in 1945 with his family, including his brother Jim, a future NFL Hall of Fame inductee. Although some sources cite Johnson’s year of birth as 1935, the family said this was incorrect.
They eventually settled in Kingsburg, near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. It was within 25 miles of Tulare, the hometown of Mathias, who would win the decathlon at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics and was an early inspiration for Johnson.
Johnson was an outstanding student and played football, basketball, baseball and track and field at Kingsburg Joint Union High. At 6-3 / 3 and 200+ pounds, he looked more like a linebacker than a track athlete.
During his freshman year of high school, Johnson’s coach took him to Tulare to watch Mathias compete in a decathlon, an experience Johnson said later prompted him to take up the grueling sport of 10 events. .
As a rookie at UCLA, where he received scholarship and track and field scholarships, Johnson won gold at the 1955 Pan American Games and set a world record of 7,985 points.
After winning the national decathlon championship in 1956, Johnson was the favorite at the Melbourne Olympics, but he pulled a stomach muscle and strained a knee during training. He was forced to retire from the long jump, for which he had also qualified, but attempted to dump the decathlon.
Johnson’s teammate Milt Campbell, a virtual stranger, gave the performance of a lifetime, finishing with 7,937 points to win gold, 350 ahead of Johnson.
It was the last time Johnson came second.
Johnson, Yang, and Kuznetzov had their way with the record books between the 1956 and 1960 Olympics.
Kuznetzov, a two-time Olympic bronze medalist whom the Soviets called their “man of steel”, broke Johnson’s world record in May 1958 with 8,016 points.
Later that year, in a double Soviet-American meeting in Moscow, Johnson beat Kuznetzov by 405 points and claimed the world record with 8,302 points. Johnson won over the Soviet audience with his courageous performance in front of what had been a hostile crowd.
A car accident and a back injury prevented Johnson from competing in 1959, but he was in good health again for the 1960 Olympics.
Yang was his main competition in Rome. Yang won six of the first nine events, but Johnson led with 66 points before the 1,500 meters, the final event of the decathlon.
Johnson had to finish within 10 seconds of Yang, which was no small feat as Yang was much stronger at distance than Johnson.
Johnson finished just 1.2 seconds and six yards behind Yang to win the gold medal. Yang won silver and Kuznetsov won bronze.
At UCLA, Johnson played basketball for Coach John Wooden, becoming a starter for the 1958-59 team. In 1958, he was elected president of the student body, the third black to hold the post in the history of the school.
“He stood up for what he believed in and he did it in a very classy way with grace and dignity,” Olympic champion swimmer Janet Evans said over the phone.
Evans last saw Johnson, who attended her wedding in 2004, at a luncheon in her honor in May 2019.
“We were all there to celebrate him and he just didn’t want to be in the spotlight,” she said. “It was one of the things I loved about him. He didn’t want credit.
Johnson retired from competition after the Rome Olympics. He began acting in films, including appearances in “Wild in the Country” with Elvis Presley, “None But the Brave” with Frank Sinatra and the 1989 James Bond film “License to Kill”. He briefly worked as a sports TV presenter before becoming vice president of Continental Telephone in 1971.
In 1984, Johnson lit the Olympic flame for the Los Angeles Games. He took the torch from Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Olympic great Jesse Owens, who ran him to the Colosseum.
“Standing there and looking out, I remember thinking ‘I wish I had a camera,’” Johnson said. “My hair was straight on my arm. The words seem genuinely inadequate.
Throughout his life, Johnson was widely known for his humanitarian efforts.
He served on the organizing committee for the first Special Olympics in Chicago in 1968, working with founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Johnson founded California Special Olympics the following year at a time when positive role models for the intellectually and physically disabled were scarce.
“Rafer has really paved the way for many of us to understand the responsibilities that come with being a successful athlete and the number of lives that you can impact and change,” Evans said.
Maria Shriver remembers meeting Johnson for the first time at age 10 or 11 through her mother Eunice.
“He and I joked that I’ve been in love with him ever since,” she said. “He was truly an extraordinary man, such a loving, kind, elegant and humble man who handled his success in such a beautiful way and remained so true to himself throughout his life.
Peter Ueberroth, who chose Johnson to light the Olympic torch in 1984, called him “just a grown up, a wonderful human being.”
Johnson has worked for the Peace Corps, March of Dimes, Muscular Dystrophy Association, and the American Red Cross. In 2016, he received the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor for his extraordinary achievements. The school track is named after Johnson and his wife Betsy.
His children, Jenny Johnson Jordan and Josh Johnson, were athletes themselves. Jenny was a beach volleyball player who competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and is on the coaching staff for the UCLA beach volleyball team. Josh competed in the javelin at UCLA, where he was an All-American.
Besides his 49-year-old wife and children, he is survived by his son-in-law Kevin Jordan and four grandchildren.
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