[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 62 (Friday, April 27, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E695-E696]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO COACH LeROY WALKER

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DAVID E. PRICE

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, April 27, 2012

  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the 
life and legacy of an inspirational and beloved North Carolinian, Dr. 
LeRoy Walker. Coach Walker, as most of us knew him, passed away on 
Monday at the age of 93 in Durham, the North Carolina community he made 
his home for six decades. He achieved many firsts during a lifetime 
dedicated to excellence in athletics, character-building, and service 
to the community.
  Coach Walker was born in Atlanta in 1918. He was the youngest of 13 
children and went on to become the first from his family to graduate 
from college, earning eleven letters in athletics and All-American 
honors in football at Benedict College. After earning a master's degree 
at Columbia University, he came to North Carolina Central University in 
Durham, where he would serve as track coach for 38 years.
  At NCCU, Coach Walker trained All-Americans, National Champions and 
Olympians. In 1976, he was the first African-American to coach the 
United States Olympic track team, helping American athletes bring home 
over 20 medals. This is a remarkable record of achievement, but for 
Coach Walker it was not merely about athletics; what made him happiest, 
he said, was seeing his former athletes succeed as strong citizens in 
their communities.
  While serving as track coach, Coach Walker worked his way through a 
doctoral program at New York University, becoming the first African-
American to earn a Ph.D. in biomechanics. He went on to serve as NCCU's 
Chancellor and as the President of the National Association of 
Intercollegiate Athletics. According to the Associated Press, even 
though he'd earned other titles--Doctor and Chancellor--Coach Walker 
still asked people to call him ``Coach.'' ``When you call me that, it 
means you're my friend,'' he said.
  Having touched so many lives in our state, Coach Walker went on to 
touch lives across the world. After retiring from NCCU, he served a 
distinguished term as the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, extending 
through the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He was the first African-American to 
fill this post. As he brought the games to the city where he was born, 
Coach Walker reflected that his life--from a childhood spent in the 
segregated South to a professional life of great distinction--seemed 
like a Hollywood movie. But his was also a story that embodied the 
ideals of the Olympic Games--competition paired with sportsmanship, 
perseverance, universal respect, understanding and peace between 
peoples. The Committee could not have chosen a better leader.
  We mourn the loss of Coach Walker, but we give thanks for the 
generous and exemplary life he lived. I extend the condolences of this 
House to Coach Walker's family, to the NC Central community and to all 
across the world who called him ``Coach.'' And I request, Mr. Speaker, 
that the fuller accounts of his life and work contained this week in 
the Raleigh News and Observer and the New York Times be included.

[[Page E696]]

               [From the News & Observer, Apr. 24, 2012]

       Former NCCU Chancellor, USOC Head LeRoy Walker, Dies at 93

                            (By Ned Barnett)

       Dr. LeRoy Walker, a historic leader in the U.S. Olympic 
     movement and a hugely accomplished coach and educator in 
     North Carolina, died Monday in Durham, his home for more than 
     60 years. He was 93.
       Walker was the first African-American to head the U.S. 
     Olympic Committee and was instrumental in bringing the 
     Olympic Games to his native Atlanta in 1996.
       In his long life, he overcame poverty and discrimination to 
     earn honors as an athlete and coach, but he also was an 
     academic. He was the first African-American to earn a 
     doctorate in biomechanics, and he went on to become 
     chancellor of N.C. Central University.
       ``LeRoy Walker was truly a remarkable human being, a great 
     teacher, a great leader as chancellor, and a great 
     international figure in competitive sport, especially the 
     Olympics,'' said William Friday, president emeritus of the 
     UNC system and a friend of Walker for 40 years. ``I don't 
     know of a man who has had a greater impact in his world than 
     did LeRoy. He will be greatly missed.''


                        Walker as an inspiration

       Walker was a member of more than a dozen halls of fame, but 
     his admirers said his most impressive legacy may be not in 
     what he accomplished, but in what he inspired and enabled 
     others to achieve.
       George Williams, who followed in Walker's path to become 
     coach of the U.S. Olympic track and field team, met Walker in 
     1976 when he sought him out for advice. Williams had just 
     been hired at as track coach at St. Augustine's College in 
     Raleigh, and Walker, then coach at N.C. Central, gave him 
     guidance on coaching and his book on biomechanics. Williams' 
     teams went on to win 32 national titles and produced 36 
     Olympians.
       ``Every championship I won was Dr. Walker's championship,'' 
     said Williams, who learned of Walker's death while at track 
     practice at St. Aug's. ``With all the lives he touched, Dr. 
     Walker's life will go on and on. He taught us, and we'll 
     teach others.''
       During his track coaching career at N.C. Central from 1945 
     to 1983, Walker coached athletes to 11 Olympic medals and 
     coached athletes to every Olympic Games from 1956 to 1976.
       Williams said Walker died in hospice care after a brief 
     illness, but had been alert and engaged until recently, 
     smiling regularly with Williams and others during lunches.
       ``It's a sad day,'' Williams said. ``We lost an ambassador 
     and a great track coach. I lost a dad and a friend. But the 
     legend will continue.''


                           Building character

       A product of an earlier era in sport, long before the taint 
     of steroids and college players routinely leaving school 
     early for the pros, Walker saw athletics not as an exclusive 
     activity, but as part of developing a strong overall 
     character.
       At Benedict College in South Carolina, Walker earned 11 
     letters in athletics and All-America honors in football as a 
     quarterback and still graduated in 1940 magna cum laude.
       ``It's probably shaped my attitude toward athletics and 
     academics,'' Walker told The News & Observer in 1996. ``Don't 
     tell me because you are an athlete you can't ...''
       Can't wasn't a word that Walker paid much attention to, 
     even in a time when African-Americans faced open 
     discrimination.
       ``I have lived through some terrible pains of 
     segregation,'' he told The N&O, ``but I never talk about 
     them. I just tried to overcome whatever pains were there.''
       Walker said at the time of his being named president of the 
     U.S. Olympic Committee, ``There are a lot of disenchanted 
     blacks, women and Hispanics in our country who feel they will 
     never get their just due no matter what they accomplish. I 
     think I serve as a model of the idea that if you constantly 
     pursue excellence, in spite of everything you have suffered, 
     there are enough fair-minded people out there who will 
     eventually recognize your talents.''


                           Atlanta and Harlem

       LeRoy Tashreau Walker was born in a poor area of Atlanta as 
     the youngest of 13 children. He grew up in Harlem after the 
     death of his father when he was about 9 years old. He was the 
     only one in his family to go to college. He would later earn 
     advanced degrees, lead the Olympic movement and shape 
     thousands of lives as an N.C. Central track coach and 
     chancellor from 1983 to 1986.
       Walker was proud of helping to bring the Olympics to 
     Atlanta, but he also insisted that the Olympic torch be 
     carried through Durham. When it got to N.C. Central, he 
     carried it himself and lit a gold cauldron in front of 500 
     cheering people before the gymnasium that bears his name.
       ``I wanted to share this with you, wanted to make sure you 
     got to witness and be part of this,'' he told the crowd. ``I 
     knew you'd be as overwhelmed by this as I am.''
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Apr. 24, 2012]

        LeRoy T. Walker, a Pioneer of U.S. Olympics, Dies at 93

                         (By Richard Goldstein)

       LeRoy T. Walker, a leading American track and field coach 
     who was the first African-American to coach a United States 
     men's Olympic track team and to serve as the president of the 
     United States Olympic Committee, died Monday in Durham, N.C. 
     He was 93.
       His death was announced by North Carolina Central 
     University, where he gained coaching renown and was later the 
     chancellor.
       When he marched into Atlanta's Olympic Stadium as U.S.O.C. 
     president at the head of the 645-member American delegation 
     to the 1996 Summer Games, Mr. Walker achieved a celebrated 
     homecoming in an America far removed from his boyhood.
       He was born in a segregated Atlanta, the youngest of 13 
     children. He was the only member of his family to attend 
     college, receiving a bachelor's degree from a historically 
     black college, Benedict College of Columbia, S.C. He was 
     thwarted in his hopes of becoming a physician because medical 
     school spots for blacks were severely limited and his family 
     was poor.
       Nonetheless, he received a master's degree from Columbia 
     University and a doctorate from New York University in 
     physical education and allied fields.
       As the head track and field coach at the historically black 
     North Carolina Central in Durham, known as North Carolina 
     College when he arrived there in 1945, Mr. Walker developed 
     Olympic medalists and numerous national champions and all-
     Americans. (He was the chancellor of the college from 1983 to 
     1986.)
       The best known of those athletes, Lee Calhoun, won gold 
     medals in the 110-meter hurdles at the 1956 Melbourne and 
     1960 Rome Games, and Larry Black, Julius Sang and Robert Ouko 
     won gold in relay events at the 1972 Munich Games.
       When Mr. Walker was named the Olympic men's track and field 
     coach in 1974, in anticipation of the 1976 Montreal Games, he 
     looked back on an era in which black coaches received limited 
     exposure.
       ``We didn't get to the major track meets and we were living 
     in a separate world,'' he said. ``In 1956, when Lee Calhoun 
     won a gold medal, they thought of Calhoun as a great athlete 
     but not necessarily of LeRoy Walker helping to produce a 
     Calhoun.''
       Mr. Walker coached his 1976 American squad, featuring the 
     hurdler Edwin Moses and the decathlete Bruce Jenner, to gold 
     medals in six events at Montreal.
       He was treasurer of the United States Olympic Committee 
     from 1988 to 1992 and a senior executive who helped lead 
     preparations for the 1996 Atlanta Games, with a six-figure 
     salary, a post he gave up when he was named the unpaid 
     president of the U.S.O.C. in October 1992.
       Beyond his technical knowledge of track, Mr. Walker was 
     respected for his insistence on discipline and his 
     motivational skills. He was known as Doc or Dr. Walker.
       ``Not that other coaches didn't have Ph.D.'s, but Dr. 
     Walker's title had become a handle over the years,'' Vince 
     Matthews, the 1972 Olympic 400 meter champion, once said. 
     ``He looked more like a business executive than a track 
     coach, with glasses and distinguished streaks of gray in his 
     dark hair.''
       ``I like to think of the Doc tag as something in terms of 
     closeness,'' Mr. Walker said, ``not something different from 
     everybody else.''
       LeRoy Tashreau Walker was born on June 14, 1918, the son of 
     a railroad firefighter. When his father died, his mother, 
     Mary, sent him to live in Harlem with a brother who owned a 
     window-cleaning business and restaurants, and who became his 
     surrogate father. Returning to the South, he played football 
     and basketball and sprinted at Benedict College, graduating 
     in 1940. He received his master's degree from Columbia the 
     next year.
       Mr. Walker was named the football and basketball coach at 
     North Carolina College in 1945 and developed a track team as 
     a means of conditioning his athletes. He received a doctorate 
     in biomechanics from N.Y.U. in 1957 while continuing to 
     coach.
       He was president of the Athletics Congress (now USA Track & 
     Field), the national governing body, from 1984 to 1988. He 
     advised or coached Olympic teams from Ethiopia, Kenya, 
     Israel, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago; helped organize an 
     American-Pan African meet; and took an American track squad 
     to China.
       Mr. Walker is survived by his son, LeRoy Jr.; his daughter, 
     Carolyn Walker Hoppe; three grandchildren; and three great-
     grandchildren. His wife, Katherine, died in 1978.
       Before he drew national attention, Mr. Walker often faced 
     dispiriting times in the South, especially when he took his 
     teams on the road. ``We would go down into rural Alabama, and 
     I'd have to drive 200 miles before I could find somebody who 
     would serve us,'' he told Ebony magazine.
       When he was named the president of the U.S.O.C., he told 
     The New York Times that he marveled at the road he had taken 
     as ``a guy born in Atlanta, where segregation was rampant.''
       He added, ``It sounds Hollywoodish, yet there it is.''

                          ____________________