Relaying A Gold Message

Palisadian Ulis Williams Has Gone from Olympic Champion to College President

Forty years have passed since Ulis Williams won a gold medal as a member of the United States’ 4 x 400 meter relay team at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. And while that was clearly his defining moment as an athlete, the man once dubbed ‘The Compton Comet’ is just as proud of his achievements off of the track. Williams has not rested on the laurels of his gold medal victory. Instead, he has invested his time and energy into education and is now the President and Superintendent at Compton Community College. ‘Just as I did not anticipate running track, I did not at first aspire to become a college president,’ Williams says. ‘I just put forth my best effort the same as I had in track and, through dedication and hard work, I eventually acquired the qualifications to be where I am today.’ While living in Santa Monica, Williams and his wife Sandra used to walk to Pacific Palisades and eventually they grew to enjoy its relative tranquility. In 1998, they leased a home on Haverford and two years later moved two blocks from the Via bluffs. And while he enjoys the community in which he lives, Williams has not forgotten the one from which he came. ‘Compton has changed a lot since I was in high school, but there’s still a lot of pride,’ Williams says. ‘I always wanted to give back to the community that gave me my start in life and I’m glad I have the opportunity to do that. I want to help make others’ dreams come true.’ The son of a sharecropper, Williams spent his childhood years on a cotton plantation in Mississippi with no dreams of a better life on the horizon. That changed when his family moved to Compton in 1957 and the 15-year-old was introduced to the sport he would go on to dominate. ‘I started running track because friends on my block ran track,’ Williams remembers. ‘At the time, the only sports I knew about were baseball and basketball. But Fred Kennedy, a P.E. teacher at Enterprise Junior High where I was going recognized I had potential and told the coach at Compton High about me. So when I got there, the coach said he wanted me to try out for cross country. I didn’t even know what that was… I thought it was some sort of treasure hunt.’ It didn’t take long for Williams’ God-given talent to surface. He quickly established himself as one of the top prep runners in Southern California and in 1961 he won the state championship for the 440 yards. The following year he was named Amateur Athlete of the Year and Freshman Athlete of the Year at Arizona State University. In 1963, Williams was first in the 400 meters at the NCAA national championships. ‘That Olympic year was difficult for me because I won every race from the time I was a junior in high school until I was a junior in college,’ Williams recalls. ‘Then, in January I pulled a muscle in my left leg during the Los Angeles Times Indoor Games at the Sports Arena. I remember the pain vividly. It was like someone had hit me with a baseball bat. I had never been injured before so it was a new experience for me. I didn’t run for about six months but fortunately the Olympics were later in the year, so I was able to run in the Olympic Trials and I finished second.’ At the Olympics, Williams ran third in a foursome that finished in 3:00.7 and set a new world record. A broad smile still crosses his face every time Williams relives that cloudy October day when he raced into the history book. ‘I had been running the anchor leg all the way up to the finals,’ Williams remembers. ‘Right before the final, we huddled and suggested a new running order to our coach [Bob Giegengack]. Ollan Cassell would lead off, followed by Mike Larabee, myself and Henry Carr. I think it gave us a psychological advantage because our opponents had to readjust to us running in a different order.’ Williams has vivid memories of the race. ‘Mike [Larabee] gave me a two or three-yard lead, but the guy from Trinidad-Tobago passed me on the backstretch, but not by enough to cut in front. I was holding the baton in my right hand and he was hitting my arm as we rounded the last turn. We ran side by side for awhile, then I accelerated to open a seven or eight yard lead.’ It appeared the United States was on its way to an easy victory, but Carr started his run too late and Williams was forced to pull up, almost causing him to drop the baton (which would have meant automatic disqualification). Williams fell as he handed off to Carr, sliding on the crushed brick track, but he had maintained the team’s lead and Carr went on to win by nine yards, almost a full second ahead of silver medalist Great Britain. ‘Standing on the victory platform was sort of an anti-climactic feeling,’ Williams says. ‘For the first time in years, I had no immediate challenge. I was wondering what I would do next.’ Upon returning to America, Williams became involved with the Boy Scouts of America, though he longed to return to his roots one day. He got his chance when he was hired as the assistant track coach at Compton College in 1970. The team tied for the conference championship and won it outright the following year. In 1975, he received his master’s degree in Urban Studies and Planning from Antioch College in San Francisco. He was hired as Compton’s Director of Community Services and Athletics and has remained at the college ever since. ‘When he became President, Ulis invited all of his Olympic teammates here and it was so special to see the camaraderie between them,’ says Compton College’s Director of Public Information Stan Myles, who remembers watching Williams compete in the Compton Relays’once among the country’s premiere track and field events. ‘He is such a positive role model for the students because he’s from here and they can see what someone can do if they set goals and work hard to achieve them. He was a phenomenal runner but more importantly, he’s a nice human being.’ Williams took over as President on an interim basis in 1996 and became Compton College’s 11th permanent President the following year. Since then he has overseen construction of a new Vocational/Technology Center, plans for a new math/science building, raised $3.2 million for an Olympic track and has worked out an agreement with Major League baseball to build a youth academy on campus’a project expected to break ground at the end of the month. Under his leadership, the College is finalizing a long-range institutional plan, ‘Renaissance 2000,’ to meet the needs of future residents. ‘I believe success is where opportunity meets preparation,’ Williams says. ‘The most important resource in any country is the people. An educated society is really what maintains civilization. Ignorance and greed will cause its demise. Everyone cannot be a leader but education will enable citizens to hold their leaders accountable.’ When he’s not influencing the lives of his students, Williams is making a difference here in the Palisades. An active member of Palisadians for Peace for two years, he mans the booth every Sunday during the Farmer’s Market. ‘I understands unfairness and racial inequality because I grew up in a segregated society,’ he says. ‘Everyone should want peace. Governments seem to think war is the way to solve problems, but if we spent as much time developing sophisticated minds as we do developing sophisticated weapons, perhaps peaceful resolutions would be easier to find.’