FORKS — An Olympic champion brought a message of inspiration to West End children this week.
Billy Mills, now 70, won an Olympic gold medal in 1964, breaking an Olympic record for the 10,000 meter race in the games held in Japan.
He was the second Native American to win an Olympic gold medal, the first being Jim Thorpe, who won his medal in 1912.
Mills ¬– an Oglala Lakota Sioux born in Pine Ridge, S.D. — spoke to Quillayute Valley elementary school students in Forks on Monday and Tuesday and to Quilleute students and the public in LaPush on Wednesday.
Mills said that his childhood “training” for the Olympics consisted of riding a one-speed bike 30 miles round-trip to a lake where he would swim to the other side to play in the cherry trees.
“I didn’t know that was exercise,” he said. “Back then, we found ways to entertain ourselves.”
After winning his gold medal, he decided to work to inspire children to achieve.
“I felt like that gold medal was a gift from a higher power,” he said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
“When you feel like you’ve been given a gift from a higher power, in our Native American culture, you are supposed to give back.”
He didn’t know what to give back until he read a story about a tree that gave life and breeds harmony.
“The fourth time I read that story, I realized that that is what I got from sports,” Mills said.
For the past 12 years, he has traveled about 300 days a year, spreading the word about unity through diversity, he said.
“I am talking about trying to bring a more positive life or energy to the children of the world,” he said.
Forks Elementary School Principal William Miller invited Mills to the schools.
“I met Dr. Miller in Alaska years ago, and I was so impressed by how he empowered the young Native Alaskans,” Mills said.
Miller said he was thrilled to have a second encounter with the runner.
“I can tell you from my past experience that the message he gives sticks with children,” Miller said.
“Students five, even 10, years later have come back to me to say that Billy Mills said this or that.”
Father’s lessons
Mills’ mother died when he was 9 and his father when he was 12. He said he never forgot his father’s lessons.
“When my mother died, my dad told me that I was like a bird with broken wings, but that if I followed his advice I’d have wings of an eagle,” he said.
His father drew a circle in the dirt with a stick and told him to stand in the middle and look inside his heart, mind, body, spirit and soul.
“I’ll tell you what you will find,” he said his dad told him.
“You will find anger because you lost your mom.
“You’ll find hate because some people have expressed hate toward us.
“You will find jealousy because we don’t have things of material value, but jealousy blinds you.
“You have to look deeper, where the dream lies.
“It is the pursuit of the dream that heals you.”
Mills said those words stood with him through some of the toughest times of his life.
And he explains the secret to victory.
“It is the passion of what you’re doing and a willingness to accept defeat but not failure,” he said.
During his talk to the elementary students in Forks, Mills said one student shared his dream of being a general in the military, another her dream of being a veterinarian.
“They don’t know, but they are inspiring me much more than I am inspiring them,” Mills said.
“You could see the sparkle in their eyes.”
Although he will continue to travel, Mills said he will travel about 50 days less a year in order to support his wife, Patricia, in her own dream of being an artist.
“She supported me all these years; now it is my turn to support her,” he said.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
