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Speaker 1: The five KR and C A talk station.

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Speaker 2: At seven forty one to think about krc DE Talk Station.

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Speaker 2: Happy Friday Eve Thanks to everyone involved with the Empower

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Speaker 2: Youth Seminar series outstanding education opportunities over a wide variety

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Speaker 2: of subject matter, proving that tonight. John Kersey the writer,

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Speaker 2: former relations practitioner, and professor at Cuyahoga Community College in

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Speaker 2: Cleveland area for the past twenty three years. He writes

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Speaker 2: stories and posts about people at events in northeast Ohio

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Speaker 2: on his website, which you can find i on Cleveland

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Speaker 2: dot com. Bachelors degree from Wabash College, Master's degree from

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Speaker 2: Ohio State University or the Ohio State University, and he

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Speaker 2: also writes a weblog. But he's doing a seminar tonight

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Speaker 2: on an amazing, amazing, legendary sports hero, Jesse Owens Ohio

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Speaker 2: and Jesse Owens track and field phenomenon and symbol of resistance.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the boring show, John Kersey. It's great having

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Speaker 2: you on today, Brian, thank you for that warm introduction.

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Speaker 1: That's terrific.

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Speaker 2: Oh no, this listen. You've got to have massive, massive

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Speaker 2: respect for Jesse Owens in a period of time in

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Speaker 2: this country and you're talking about the Olympics in Germany.

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Speaker 2: He beat the Germans, which is a total embarrassment to

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Speaker 2: Adolf Hiller, and I just it's a phenomenon. It's really

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Speaker 2: a great story. And honestly, John, I did not know

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Speaker 2: Jesse Owens was from Ohio. So I'm an enlightened man

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Speaker 2: a little bit more so this morning.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, let's be exact. He was born in Alabama,

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Speaker 1: but his family came to Ohio when Jesse was eight

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Speaker 1: and a half years old as part of the Great Migration,

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Speaker 1: huge influx of blacks from the South to the north,

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Speaker 1: you know, getting away from sharecropping and cotton growing and

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Speaker 1: all of that. And he grew up in Cleveland. He

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Speaker 1: went to middle school, high school at East Tech in Cleveland.

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Speaker 1: He got two state championships from East Tech in the

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Speaker 1: early thirties, and he was a sensation in track. He

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Speaker 1: was known for being a track star, and he maintained

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Speaker 1: that until his sophomore year Ohio State when he became

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Speaker 1: a superstar when he broke four world records in the

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Speaker 1: span of about forty five five minutes at the Big

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Speaker 1: Ten Track Championships at ann Arbream, Michigan. And to this

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Speaker 1: day it is considered to be, by the way, the

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Speaker 1: greatest forty five minutes in all of sports.

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Speaker 2: To do something like that, that is great. To learn

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Speaker 2: a little bit more about his background, well, let me

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Speaker 2: ask you. I understand from at least the notes, and

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Speaker 2: I need to be talking about this tonight. Now. You

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Speaker 2: can either show up live to the Empower Youth Seminar

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Speaker 2: Studio three hundred Great Oaks Drive, just go to the

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Speaker 2: side annex entrance and walk on in, or log in

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Speaker 2: from home empower You America Dot, or just register ahead

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Speaker 2: of time. But you actually met Jesse Owens.

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Speaker 1: I did. I was a pimply faced fifteen year old

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Speaker 1: at a high school in Cleveland, and he came and

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Speaker 1: spoke at an assembly at my high school, and I

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Speaker 1: knew Jesse Owens was. I didn't know his life story,

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Speaker 1: but I was wise enough we were all done to

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Speaker 1: grab one of my fir bound notebook sheets of paper

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Speaker 1: and shove it at him, and he gave me his autographics,

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Speaker 1: his best of walk Jesse Owens. It's mounted on my wall.

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Speaker 1: My wife has got a couple of pictures with him

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Speaker 1: that's put next to it, and it's just a contant

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Speaker 1: memento of how great that experience was. But I didn't

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Speaker 1: write the book because just of that Brian, four years

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Speaker 1: ago was a one hundred anniversary of the Owen family

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Speaker 1: coming to Cleveland for them becoming Clevelanders, and I pitched

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Speaker 1: the idea of doing a speech about that for a

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Speaker 1: speakers program at Cohago Community College and they agreed. So

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Speaker 1: that led to me doing more research on Owen's for

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Speaker 1: the speech, and before I knew it, I was doing

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Speaker 1: so much research as a matter of fact, that there

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Speaker 1: will be a book coming out from Kenstate University Press

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Speaker 1: next year titled Jesse Owens Sensation, Superstar, Survivor Symbol, which

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Speaker 1: is really covering his entire life.

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Speaker 2: Nice alert of title to a love that. Now, can

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Speaker 2: I ask you specifically? I thought we had sort of

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Speaker 2: solved the problem of racism in this country, but it

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Speaker 2: generates a lot of business and a lot of political fodder.

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Speaker 2: So we've my feeling we've moved back. But in Jesse

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Speaker 2: Owen's time in the nineteen thirties, most notably at least

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Speaker 2: that period of time when he won the Olympics, obviously

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Speaker 2: we were awash with Jim Crow Laws or a whole

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Speaker 2: lot of a lot more racism back then, we still

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Speaker 2: had the existence of the Klan in the South. So

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Speaker 2: did he personally experience are you aware of in writing

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Speaker 2: your book Jesseo and Sensation, Supercar Survivor and Symbol. Did

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Speaker 2: he personally experience challenges with racism in this country? Or

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Speaker 2: was his prominence as one of the world's greatest athletes

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Speaker 2: something that minimized that.

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Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious, Brian Sadly it did not. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was discriminated against horribly even after winning all those

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Speaker 1: gold medals. The AAU actually stripped him of his amateur status,

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Speaker 1: and people who know a bit about Owens might remember

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Speaker 1: that he was resorted forced, basically humiliated to do things

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Speaker 1: run against the race horses to make money. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of like exhibitions. Yeah, that was going on in the

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Speaker 1: thirties and in the forties in his life. Three years

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Speaker 1: after the gold medals he filed for bankruptcy. He had

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Speaker 1: a very difficult period of life when he was married,

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Speaker 1: had three children and was just really finding it hard

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Speaker 1: to get by. In the late nineteen thirties, he went

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Speaker 1: back to Ohio State and was trying to get gain

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Speaker 1: his degree because he didn't graduate, but he really didn't

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Speaker 1: have the intellectual foundation in his high school experience to

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Speaker 1: get a college degree. Nowadays we have you know, tutors

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Speaker 1: and remedial learning and things of that nature, but they

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Speaker 1: didn't have that back then. So what basically turned his

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Speaker 1: life around was World War Two. He ended up being

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Speaker 1: an HR manager for the Ford Motor Company up in

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Speaker 1: Detroit and the will A Run plant where they were

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Speaker 1: making all the bombers that helped win the war, and

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Speaker 1: that gradually moved him from the survivor phase into a

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Speaker 1: symbol phase because during the Cold War, our State Department realized, hey,

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Speaker 1: we've got this guy that kind of proved to Hitler

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Speaker 1: that the Iberian supremacy was nonsense. So the State Department

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Speaker 1: actually began to use Owens for events and activities to

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Speaker 1: go around the world and be kind of like a

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Speaker 1: symbol of America.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm just wildly curious if if Joe Lewis ever

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Speaker 2: came up in the context of talking about Jesse Owens,

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Speaker 2: because it seems to me a parallel could be drawn

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Speaker 2: since Joe Lewis the boxer beat Matt Schmax Schmelling around

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Speaker 2: the same period of time, embarrassing Hitler as well. That

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Speaker 2: was a complete victory by a black man over what

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Speaker 2: was supposed to be a superior race all white folks.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Brian, they were friends. Joe Lewis came to Cleveland

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five. This was before he'd become the

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Speaker 1: world champion, but he was obviously the great hope for blacks,

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Speaker 1: and Jesse Owens met Joe Louis because this was just

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Speaker 1: after Owens had set those four world records. They became

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Speaker 1: very good and fast friends and became pals over the years,

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Speaker 1: and there's some great stories about that, and I covered

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Speaker 1: some of that in my book. I think the one

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Speaker 1: that's most Brian, The thing I'd be most interesting is

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Speaker 1: just the month before the Olympics began was the first

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Speaker 1: of the Lewis Smelling fights in New York City, where

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Speaker 1: Smelling had beaten Lewis and not to Germany didn't expect

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Speaker 1: that to happen, but boy did they ever take advantage

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Speaker 1: of it. Hitler contacted the captain of the Hindenburg got

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Speaker 1: a new seat reserved for Schmelling to get him back

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Speaker 1: to Germany as soon as possible. They did propaganda films

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Speaker 1: talking about Selling beating Joe Lewis and they curaded Shmelling

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Speaker 1: around in the Olympic village and that was the first

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Speaker 1: time that Schmelling met Jesse Owens. And let's just say

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Speaker 1: it was a pretty icy meeting because Owens was friends

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Speaker 1: with Lewis and he really resented the factor of what

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Speaker 1: Hitler was doing with smelling at that point.

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Speaker 2: How about that, Well, I'm glad I asked that question

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Speaker 2: that sort of popped into my head because I was

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Speaker 2: aware of the Lewis smelling fight, so parallels had been drawn.

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Speaker 2: I guess they had a lot of shared experiences given

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Speaker 2: the issues with race at that time.

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Speaker 1: They did, and sadly was also discriminated. Again. I think

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Speaker 1: the thing that makes the Lewis prasts a more sympathetic

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Speaker 1: figure in the American districy at least is Lewis did

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Speaker 1: enlist in the army and he was used in World

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Speaker 1: War II in that capacity. But sadly, just like all boxers,

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Speaker 1: you know, Muhammed Ali the same thing thirty years later.

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Speaker 1: You know, they have handlers, they have contracts. In the

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Speaker 1: case of Joe Lewis, sadley, he was addicted to drugs

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Speaker 1: and he retired and then had to come back because

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Speaker 1: he owed the irs ununbelievable of money, and Lewis's ending

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Speaker 1: was really tragic in terms about his boxing career and

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Speaker 1: later on his own life. Owens, by contrast, was much

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Speaker 1: higher regarded. In the last twenty years of his life.

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Speaker 1: Owens was a symbol and people kind of loved hearing

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Speaker 1: from him to go and make talks, and he would appear.

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Speaker 1: He came back to Columbus frequently. For example, he really

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Speaker 1: was one of the favorites in Columbus for speaking engagements

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Speaker 1: and of course activities with the Ohio State Athletics program.

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Speaker 1: That one of the very first scholarships, one of the

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Speaker 1: very first athletic scholarships in nineteen fifty was a Jesse

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Speaker 1: Owens Scholarship.

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Speaker 2: How about that, Well, you know what, I've learned a

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Speaker 2: whole lot today in just these few minutes. In time,

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Speaker 2: we're going to learn a whole lot more Tonight, empower

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Speaker 2: you America dot org. You can log in from home

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Speaker 2: and enjoy this wonderful presentation by my guest this morning,

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Speaker 2: John Kurzy, or show up live. I presume you'll answer

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Speaker 2: a question or two from the audience that people have them.

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Speaker 2: But I'm glad you're doing this Ohiolan, Jesse Owens track

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Speaker 2: and field phenomenon and symbol of resilience. That's night seven pm. John,

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Speaker 2: it's been a real pleasure talking with you this morning.

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Speaker 2: I appreciate the time you spill with my listeners. I'm

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Speaker 2: glad you're doing the seminar.

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Speaker 1: Tonight, Brian, thank you for having me.

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Speaker 2: My pleasure, brother, my pleasure, all day long.

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Speaker 1: It's