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"FAST AS FOY" -- Reprinted with Permission of Perry Flippin - San Angelo Standard-Times -- all rights reserved

Monday, August 9, 2004
 

BRAVE OLYMPIAN NEVER RETURNED FROM WORLD WAR II

The Olympic Games always bring to my mind a long dead relative whose name will be forever enshrined among the world's great athletes.

As a child, I heard relatives describe a precocious cousin from California named Foy Draper.  He visited my mother's family at their Lynn County farm about 150 miles northwest of San Angelo.

Foy could run a hole in the wind.  He outran guineas -- feathered rockets that can outrun roadrunners.

Foy's mother -- my great aunt Elizabeth Lee Draper, nee Queen -- was born in 1883 in San Angelo.  Foy, born in 1913, had a hard childhood.  He developed a peculiar bone condition that warped his rib cage -- probably caused by deficient diet.  He was about 5-fee-8, with powerful legs that helped him set a national high school relay record in California.

At the University of Southern California, Foy became a teammate of Frank Wykoff, who won Olympic Gold medals in 1928, 1932, and 1936.  For a decade, Wykoff was known as the fastest man on Earth.

Even so, Foy posted the second fastest time in the world in 1936.  A newspaper headline a year declared Wykoff's 10.5 second victory over Foy in the 100 meters an upset.

As the 1936 Olympics approached, USC's coach Dean Cromwell trained the 400-meter relay team. Foy and Wykoff joined Mary Glickman of Syracuse and Sam Stoller of Michigan, the only Jews on the U. S. Olympic team.  They trained diligently to perfect their conditioning, timing and speed.  The Berlin games were intended to showcase Hitler's Aryan athletes as the super race.

The day before the contest, American coaches told Glickman and Stoller that Jesse Owens of Ohio State and Ralph Metcalfe of Marquette, both black athletes, were replacing them.  Neither Owens nor Metcalfe had practiced the tricky baton handoffs.

Glickman and Stoller, who outran Foy and Wykoff before the games, angrily protested that the coaches were bowing to Nazi pressure because they were Jews.  Cromwell insisted the chosen foursome had the best chance to win.
 

The World Record Stood 20 Years
 

On Aug. 9, 1936 -- 68 years ago today -- Owens and Metcalfe led off the first two legs of the relay.  Wykoff finished 15 yards ahead of the nearest rival.  Their time, 39.8 seconds, set a world record that stood for 20 years.

On Dec. 1, 1956, Abilene Christian's Bobby Morrow, en route to winning three gold medals in Melbourne, Australia, snapped the tape in 39.5 Seconds.  (Incidentally, six years ago, the 400-meter relay team from Fort Worth Wyatt set a high school record of 39.7 seconds.)

Gold medalists at Berlin received oak seedlings as souvenirs.  Foy planted his on the USC campus in Los Angeles.  Years later, USC dedicated the oak to Foy.  A marble plaque bore names of the team members.  I called USC recently and learned the Draper Oak toppled two years ago, a victim of bad roots.  The replacement oak will be re-dedicated this fall after the Olympics.

Twenty years ago, I stood in Berlin's Olympic stadium and beheld Foy's name with that of Jesse Owens -- a kind of immortality for all those heroes now gone.

As war clouds gathered in 1940, Foy enlisted in the Army Air Corps and headed for pilot training in San Antonio.  My mother, Foy's first cousin, was a graduate student at the University of Texas.  She recounted his visits to Austin and chuckled about swiping his good luck charm -- a tiny monkey.

With the war under way, Foy flew to North Africa, and joined the 97th Squadron of the 47th Bomb Group at Thelepte, Tunisia.  He flew an A-20B "Havoc," twin engine attack bomber.  On Jan. 4, 1943, shortly before the fateful battle of Kassarine Pass, he took off to strike German and Italian ground forces at Fonduck, Tunisia.  Foy and his two crewmen never returned.

I was born in 1944, too late to know Foy.  I always wondered what happened to him.

With the magic of the Internet, details are turning up.

A Missing Air Crew Report, declassified in 1982, reads like a police blotter.  Cause of missing crew?  Enemy aircraft.  Nothing glorious about an Olympian dying young or his two valiant comrades 7,000 miles from home.  A scrap of paper from the National Archives.

Pilot:  Draper, Foy.  Captain. 0-406719. K.I.A.

With his name are those of Staff Sgts. Kenneth Gasser and Sidney Holland, their service numbers and the sad initials for Killed In Action.

Another click on my desktop mouse land me via the Internet near Carthage, the ancient capital of Tunisia, and site of the American Military Cemetery.  There, under rows of white marble markers rest the remains of 2,841 Americans.  A limestone wall bearing the names of another 3,724 men still missing surrounds 27 manicured acres.

One cross appeared on my computer screen with the following inscription:  Foy Draper, Captain, Jan. 4, 1943.

No epitaph.  No parting endearment.  No date or place of birth.

Like a mirage, Foy resists my approach.  But a unit history led me to Foy's 86-year-old comrade, Costa Chalas, living in retirement at Plymouth, Mass.

By telephone, the astonished old veteran described with fond detail his experiences with Foy in the North African desert.  Chalas, born in Sparta, Greece, and schooled at Boston Latin, served as a communications specialist.  He said Foy was an excellent pilot with a happy disposition and a willingness to share war's hardships.

Chalas led me to Colorado and Washington state, for interviews with Foy's aged comrades.  He also sent me a wonderful video from his 50th anniversary return trip in 1995 to the grave of my kinsman, who never grew old.

END

Special Acknowledgment:  Thanks to Perry Flippin and the San Angelo Standard-Times Daily Newspaper for allowing the article "Fast As Foy" to be reprinted at our web site.