The plentiful track and life achievements of Wynnefield’s Herb Douglas began at the 1942 Penn Relays

Herb Douglas took a roundabout route to the Penn Relays in 1942. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, he decided to look elsewhere when his hometown university wouldn’t offer him a scholarship and he chose Xavier, a historically black university in New Orleans.

Running leadoff on the 440-yard relay team, Douglas joined two other Pennsylvanians – William Morton of Coatesville and Clarence Doak of Pittsburgh – along with Howard Mitchell to carry Xavier to the win, the first by an HBCU institution in a Championship of America relay, in 41.7 seconds.

“The Penn Relays was the epitome of track,” Douglas said in a recent phone interview from his home in the city’s Wynnefield section. “I went to Xavier in 1940 and we weren’t able to compete in our freshman year. So we waited and ran in 1942. We had three guys who could have been at Penn but went to Xavier. I think I influenced them.”

That began a storied career for Douglas, the bronze medalist in the long jump at the 1948 London Summer Games and, at 98, the oldest living African American Olympic medalist. In addition to his collegiate success in track and field at both Xavier and Pittsburgh, he became an international figure in the sport as well as in business, where he became one of the first African American vice presidents of a North American company.

Douglas, who has been a Penn Relays official for the last 11 years, had been looking forward to a special return to this week’s carnival, where historically black colleges and universities would have been honored on the 100th anniversary of their debut at Franklin Field.

Of course, the coronavirus pandemic put an end to those plans and to three days of competition at the 126th Penn Relays. It also halted preparations of all the track and field athletes worldwide for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, with the hopes they will get a chance at the Games next year.

Douglas can identify with them. World War II forced the cancellation of the Olympics in 1944, when he was 22 and in his prime.

“I think I would have been better in ’44,” he said, “but I got four more years and I didn’t stop training. I worked hard toward my goal. The athletes today will regroup because they’ve put in the hard work, and they’ll go to work every day training.”

Douglas’s goal came to fruition in 1948. Having graduated from Pitt earlier that year, he jumped a career-best 25 feet, 3 inches at the Olympic Trials with his idol, Jesse Owens, watching. He had met Owens when he was 14 in 1936, the year that Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics with Adolf Hitler looking on in disgust.

“He was my mentor and my leader,” Douglas said. “He told me to get an education. I told him I ran the 100, the 220 and the broad jump. He’s what encouraged me to go that way. I won three Pennsylvania state [high school] championships.”

Douglas said he was one of eight athletes of African American descent on that U.S. Olympic track team. After arriving in London by boat, the eight slept on cots in an Army Quonset hut. On the track, however, they stood out with their performances. Former Penn State sprinter Barney Ewell, who edged out Douglas in the long jump at the 1942 Penn Relays, and middle-distance runner Mal Whitfield won three medals each.

Willie Steele captured the long jump at 25 feet, 8 inches. Douglas’ best effort was 24-9, and he finished one centimeter out of tying for the silver medal. It was a bittersweet return home with little recognition for the black medalists.

“Put yourself in my position,” he said. “You couldn’t go down and sit on the first floor of your local movie theater. You had to go to the back. Down South, African Americans had to go to the back of the bus. You can understand why African Americans held together and were working to beat the world.”

Douglas returned to his hometown after one year at Xavier to help his father, who was blind, operate a parking garage in the Shadyside section of Pittsburgh. He returned to school in 1945, enrolling at Pitt, where he won four NCAA championships in the long jump and one in the 100-yard dash, and three AAU long-jump titles. He held the school long-jump record for 33 years.

Douglas also played football in his first year, walking on and earning a scholarship from coach Clark Shaughnessy.

“He must have been pretty liberal during that time to give me a scholarship at Pitt because [former coach] Jock Sutherland never looked our way, being colored,” he said. “I was no football player, but I was fast. I really couldn’t be covered. I think that taught them to work toward getting sprint guys as receivers and to guard in the defensive backfield.”

That season, Douglas became the second African American ever to score a touchdown against Notre Dame. He noted later, “I got more [media] coverage out of that than winning an Olympic medal.”

He went on to earn a master’s degree in education from Pitt and later went into business, working for Pabst Brewing Co. In 1963, he joined Schieffelin and Co. in Philadelphia, a premium wine and spirits firm that is now Moët Hennessy USA, and eventually became a vice president – only the third African American vice president of a major North American company – during his 30 years there, the last six as a consultant.

“I had a father who went blind when I was five and he taught me the basics of life – analyze, organize, initiate, and follow-through,” he said. “You follow those principles and you can make it anywhere, and that’s what I did in corporate America.

“What gave me the confidence was running track. I knew I could run and jump as well as anybody in the world. So that transcended into anything else I tried to do.”

“What gave me the confidence was running track. I knew I could run and jump as well as anybody in the world. So that transcended into anything else I tried to do.”

It has been a full life for Douglas, whose mother lived to 96 and his father to “20 days short of 92,” he said.

He is a member of the Pitt Athletics Hall of Fame and has been a university trustee. He founded the Jesse Owens International Trophy given to an athlete who possesses the talent and humanitarian qualities of Owens, and the Jesse Owens Global Award for Peace. He has met six U.S. presidents and Nelson Mandela. He has mentored Olympic gold medalists Edwin Moses and Roger Kingdom.

He shows no signs of slowing down. He will miss going to the Penn Relays where he “sits on the corner turn with a yellow [official’s] cap and does nothing,” he laughed.

For him, it all started at Penn. Xavier coach and four-time Olympic medalist Ralph Metcalfe brought him to New Orleans in 1940 and trained him throughout his freshman year, when freshmen couldn’t compete under NCAA rules at the time. Metcalfe left after the Pearl Harbor attack and enlisted in the Army, but Douglas credits him for teaching him what it takes to be a world-class athlete.

“When you get to this age,” he said, “what is the most important thing? It’s not always money. It’s memories.”