Ex-Quaker star, who died in 2005, established R.I. long jump record in 1936
By BOB LEDDY (TAFWA)
R.I. Track & Field Foundation
30 May – – It was the afternoon of May 30, 1936 under clear skies in 70-degree temperatures at the Brown Interscholastic Track & Field Championship. The meet was held at the Brown University Stadium, but under vastly different circumstances from state meets of the modern era. Timers used hand-wound, sweep-dial stopwatches, for instance. Finish line photos and wind gauges would’ve been considered articles of science fiction. Archival images of events like this usually depict the officials (an all-male and mostly middle-aged lot) wearing suits and snap-brimmed Fedora hats.
Track and field was for men, and men only – on the oval and off. “Young ladies” could cheer if they so desired. Like the modern tools of track measurement, the age of enlightenment was too far into the future to contemplate – if it could be imagined it at all.
“Mister! Put that number on the front!’’
I remember being a nascent track official in the 1960s, when I worked alongside older guys who would occasionally wax sentimental about meets of yesteryear. Mostly, they said, an athlete was referred to as “mister’’ (as in, “Mister, put that number on the front!’’) It was an era when the authority of an official was inviolate, and little mercy was extended to a lad in uniform who would dare flaunt the rules. If the coach was God, the chief official was seated at his right hand.
One of the young “Misters’’ present at Brown Stadium on that late-spring day in 1936 was a junior from Moses Brown School named Donald Blount. He was entered in the long jump (known, in the vernacular of the times, by the clunky title of “broad jump’’.) On one of his attempts, Blount sprinted down the cindered long-jump runway, hit the toe board and landed at a distance of 24 feet, ½-inch (7.32 meters). For young Don Blount, that accomplishment must have been exhilarating. Yet neither he nor anyone else at that meet could have dreamed that the mark would have the lasting power to reach over the course of eight decades.
A groundbreaking leap
The adjective “Beamon-esque’’ comes to mind. In Blount’s case, his 1936 jump was as groundbreaking then as Bob Beamon’s long jump heroics would be at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. Beamon’s leap of 29-2.50 (8.90) stood for nearly 23 years before fellow American Mike Powell bettered it by 5cm in 1991. (Reportedly, Beamon was unfamiliar with metrics, so the announced 8.90 meters didn’t resonate. When he was told that he’d jumped an imperial distance of more than 29 feet, Beamon collapsed. The long grasshopper-like legs that powered him to the far end of the long jump pit suddenly went limp.)
But back to young Mr. Blount. It turned out his accomplishment was contemporarily ironic as 1936 was an Olympic year, and provided a global stage upon which American sprinter Jesse Owens shocked the Nazi government by setting new standards on the Berlin Stadium track.
New shoes for the occasion
So we note the 80th anniversary of Blount’s feat at Brown Stadium. That his jump has (according to all available records) survived as a standard for so long is astonishing in a high school track league that once boasted the presence of future Olympian Robert Howard, a Shea High student in the early 1990s; his high school P-R was 22-4.75 (6.83) in winning the ’93 state title. Howard, who has since passed away, became a multiple Division I long and triple jump champ while at the University of Arkansas, and competed at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, Ga., and the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. (He holds the R.I. mark in the triple jump.)
In a telephone interview with The Providence Journal in the mid-1990s, Blount, a Barrington resident, recalled his performance at the Brown Interscholastic meet. He spoke of his mother buying a new pair of athletic shoes for him to wear, and the surprise he experienced after his 24-foot jump.
Donald Franklyn Blount (1919-2005) went on to Dartmouth College (Class of ’41). His acumen in the long jump was no high school fluke. He continued to compete at Dartmouth, where his best distance was 24-7 (7.49), fourth on the school’s all-time list. In addition, Blount also competed in the high jump. After graduation he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Air Corps during World War II, serving as a flight instructor on bases in Norfolk, Va., and Jacksonville, Fla. He retired with the rank of Lt. Commander.
After the war, Blount worked as a production manager at the former Wamscutt Mills, and later entered the field of stock brokerage. His life was full and rich, with a marriage of 63 years that produced four children, seven grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. But his name has become synonymous with Rhode Island high school track, via a 1936 performance still alive 16 years into the 21st century.