Olympic Games Opening Ceremony: 1984

My brother, whose star-studded life is a continuing astonishment, won tickets to the opening games of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

My mother made this announcement while visiting me in Connecticut shortly before the start of those games 28 years ago.

“He doesn’t want to go,” she said. “The seats are good ones–$300 a piece. But he thinks it will be too much bother since he has to ride a bus and it promises to be a long day. So he gave me the tickets. You want to go?”

My husband had been out to sea, as usual, for awhile and the submarine wasn’t due back soon. In the days of airline deregulation, tickets were relatively cheap–especially if my mom paid for one of them. So, the boys (2 and 4) and I got seats on mom’s flight home and away we went.

A dream had come true. I was going to the Olympics.

Sort of.

I was an Olympics denizen. Indeed, on the airplane to LA, I tied for first place in the Olympics trivia contest. The stewardesses had to flip a coin to decide who won the bottle of wine. I lost, but what did it matter? I had a ticket!

When the day came, we parked the children with my in-laws and Mom and I caught a bus at a local college. The Harbor Freeway was practically deserted that day (indeed, Southern California folk left the freeways to the Olympic visitors. My father hadn’t driven through downtown so fast in 20 years!). We pulled up to the Coliseum parking lot and got in line.

There were a lot of lines to enter, even in those pre-terrorist days.

As the time drew closer to start and the metal detectors were backed up, we fretted. President Reagan was sitting in our section of the Coliseum–everyone had to be carefully searched. We could hear the trumpets blaring, the crowd cheering, but the line took forever.

By the time we entered and found our seats (we’d been to the LA Coliseum many times attending UCLA football games), the opening games had been going on for nearly half an hour.

But what an afternoon! Bands, music, thrills, derring do, even an entire end of the Coliseum stacked with grand pianos and black tie pianists playing Gershwin. The wonders and awe did not end.

We even participated in a giant card stunt–the entire stadium filled with the world’s flags.

The most dramatic moment was waiting for the torch to arrive and light the flame. This Olympics was the first time a torch had been run across a nation in the weeks preceeding the event. Folks lined streets all around the country to watch it run by–we did it ourselves in Torrance.

A Navy wife friend of mine had run with the torch in New York as it wended its way across the country. But the name of the final torch bearer, the one who would run it up the stairs and light the flame, had been a carefully kept secret.

He was a crowd favorite, particularly for the UCLA fans: 1960 decathalon gold medalist Rafer Johnson.

It took him a long time to climb all those steps!

A bit of history for us, and a lovely afternoon.

My family attended many events–particularly volleyball since my brother knew some of the Olympians. I went to college with one of the American track stars. But who could ever forget such a thrill as watching that opening?

Good luck to all in London this year, particularly Sonoma County favorites Kim Conley, Ryan Hall and Silas Stafford!