Rafer Johnson: Literally a champ, essentially a leader

By Art Spander

“Now the young world has grown old; gone are the silver and gold.” Lyrics from a song recorded by Frank Sinatra, among others. About the passing of time. About memories.

I thought of the words when I heard that Rafer Johnson had died at 86. Maybe because he was a man of both silver — if only once — and gold.

Also, because we were classmates at UCLA. He was a friend, as was his younger brother Jimmy, no less an athletic star, who became a Pro Football Hall of Famer as a defensive back with the 49ers.

Rafer, such a distinctive name. Such an unpretentious person.

A champion literally, with that narrow victory over C.K. Yang — another UCLA student — in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

A leader essentially, who would be elected student body president and in time be known for his global support of human rights.

The Johnsons were from Kingsburg, some 25 miles from Fresno. As was Monte Clark, who went to USC, played in the NFL and in 1976 was 49ers coach.

Sports were a way of life in the San Joaquin Valley, the sons of farmers and oil workers winning games and fame. Bob Mathias, a two-time Olympic decathlon champion, was from Tulare; Frank Gifford, the football great, was from Bakersfield.

No television, no internet. Kids played. And studied.

College campuses were quiet. As did others at UCLA, Rafer went to class. Unlike most others, he went on to sporting greatness.

Not as a forward on a middling Bruin basketball team in 1959 — Denny Crum, who would go on to coach Louisville to two NCAA championships, was a teammate — but as a sprinter and long jumper. 

Track and field was prominent in the days before the Giants and Dodgers moved to California. Johnson did have that silver from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and was involved in school activities.

Still, he never big-timed anyone, particularly a sports writer from the school newspaper, the Daily Bruin. You’d see him around campus in what was the unofficial attire of the era, a white shirt with a sweater draped over his shoulders. He was humble. He was purposeful.

The passing of others is a reminder of our own mortality. We exist in our own fantasies, cushioned against reality. When in 2016 the death of Arnold Palmer was announced, a well-known golfer who idolized Palmer told me, “I thought he would never die.”

It’s been a tragic few months for sports. We've lost Tom Seaver — another from the Central Valley — Joe Morgan, Paul Hornung, Bob Gibson, Diego Maradona. Now Rafer Johnson.

I last talked to him four or five years ago. It was at halftime of a UCLA basketball game at Pauley Pavilion, just a couple of alums discussing the state of the team and the state of the world.

NCAA championship banners, won after both of us had graduated, hung from the beams. Rafer didn’t have anything to do with those, although he played for John Wooden decades earlier.

Rafer’s contributions to the school and society are of a different type.

He was at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. in June 1968 when Robert Kennedy was shot, and he leaped in to help capture the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.

He was chosen to carry the torch into the stadium and climb the steps to the rim of the Coliseum, lighting the permanent torch to start the 1984 L.A. Olympics.

UCLA would have sports heroes such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Troy Aikman and Evelyn Ashford.

But there has never been anyone like Rafer Johnson.