You Determine Your Destiny
The amazing story of LeRoy T. Walker came to a conclusion Monday April 23, when he died at the age of 93. His story of "firsts" in college and international athletics inspired thousands of student-athletes, coaches and peers in his 60-plus year career.
Walker was the first African-American to serve as president of the NAIA and later would become the first African-American president of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). Walker was an acclaimed track and field coach as well as university president, professor, student-athlete and sometimes a diplomat, using sports to bridge differences.
"Dr. Walker was a great example for today's coaches, student-athletes and administrators," Jim Carr, NAIA President and CEO, said. "We are honored that he was an NAIA president, and we hope that his legacy of character lives on in those who remember him and follow his example."
Current U.S.O.C. Committee Chairman Scott Blackmun echoed those sentiments, "We join the entire Olympic family in remembering and appreciating the vast contributions he made to the worldwide Olympic Movement throughout his 93 years of life. He devoted himself to the betterment of sport, and we were fortunate to have called him our president."
'You determine your destiny'
The grandson of slaves, LeRoy Tashreau Walker was born in segregated Atlanta in 1918, the youngest of 13 children. After his father, a railroad fireman, died when Walker was only nine, his mother sent him to live with an older brother Joe in Harlem, New York.
"My mother and Joe told me, 'You determine your destiny. Don't let somebody else tell you what you are capable of doing,'" Walker told the Chicago Tribune in 1992.
Walker would spend the rest of his life following that good advice. He became the first member of his family to go to college when he was recruited to play basketball, football and run track for Benedict College, a historically black institution in South Carolina. He earned 11 sports letters at Benedict and graduated magna cum laude in 1940.
Walker wanted to become a physician, but his family was poor and there were few spots for blacks in medical schools. He earned a master's degree from Columbia University in health sciences and physical education, and he became a coach at Benedict. After a brief stint at Prairie View A&M, he went to North Carolina Central University, where he coached football and basketball and developed a track program to condition his athletes.
His track program would become legendary, and in 1971, his accomplishments earned him induction into the NAIA Hall of Fame in Track and Field. While he was coaching, he earned a doctorate in biomechanics from New York University in 1957, becoming the first African-American to do so. Walker was named the U.S. Olympic men's track and field coach in 1974, becoming the first African-American to coach a U.S. Olympic team.
Walker coached numerous all-Americans and national champions and eventually, Olympians. Walker coached two-time Olympic gold-medalist hurdler Lee Calhoun, who won his medals at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne and the 1960 Games in Rome. He also coached the gold-medal-winning relay team at the 1972 Munich Games.
Walker was known as Doc or Dr. Walker, as much for his demeanor as for his academic credentials.
"Not that other coaches didn't have Ph.D.'s, but Dr. Walker's title had become a handle over the years," Vince Matthews, once told The New York Times. Matthews, the 1972 Olympic 400-meter champion, said Walker was a different kind of coach. "He looked more like a business executive than a track coach," Matthews said.
Of the hundreds of collegiate athletes he coached, fewer than 12 did not graduate on time.
"That was because we had two daily practices, and the second one was in the library," Walker told the Chicago Tribune.
Walker noted that his experience as a successful student-athlete had made him believe others could succeed.
"It's probably shaped my attitude toward athletics and academics," Walker told the Charlotte News & Observer in 1996. "Don't tell me because you are an athlete, you can't."
Leadership for the NAIA and the USOC
Walker was a professor of physical education at North Carolina Central University when he first joined the NAIA Executive Committee (a precursor to today's Council of Presidents) in 1973. In 1980, Walker was installed as the 41st president of the NAIA, becoming the first African-American to serve in that role, which provided oversight of the NAIA and its executive director, a post held at that time by Harry Fritz. Also notable was that Walker was the first African-American president of any intercollegiate athletics association, as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) elected James Frank as its president the following year.
One of Walker's first tasks at the NAIA was to appoint a task force to consider changes to the NAIA's governance structure to modernize it and to ensure that it was consistent with NAIA bylaws. He also set about developing a long-range plan for the Association.
In 1983, Walker became president of North Carolina Central, a post he held for three years as he continued to be a prominent track and field coach, active in the Olympic movement. In 1984 he became the first African-America president of the former Athletics Congress (now known as USA Track & Field), and he was the chairman of North Carolina Amateur Sports, the local organizing committee for the U.S. Olympic Festive in 1987. That same year, he was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. A few years later, Walker was the USOC's treasurer and then its senior vice president of sport for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. His ascension in the U.S. Olympic movement was complete in 1992 when he was elected the 22nd president of the USOC, the first African-American to serve in the post. Walker's term covered the years leading up to the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, his boyhood home.
When Walker was named president of the USOC, he acknowledged that it had been quite a journey from being unable to use the same drinking fountains as whites to leading the Olympic delegation of an entire nation.
"I think I serve as a model of the idea that if you constantly pursue excellence, in spite of everything you have suffered, there are enough fair-minded people out there who will eventually recognize your talents."
Indeed, every university and organization Walker has every served has named awards, facilities and even streets after him. The NAIA continues his legacy through the prestigious Dr. LeRoy Walker Character Award given annually to a student-athlete who has demonstrated outstanding academic achievement, campus and community leadership embracing the five core character values of the NAIA Champions of Character initiative
Walker's legacy will live on, much like the values he instilled in his student-athletes.
