A Gold Medal for Conscience
18 A G LD MEDAL BY MICHAEL BURGESS Refusing to attend the Olympics in Nazi Germany for won Jack Shea a different kind of respect. Conscience n 1932, Jack Shea had the did in the Olympic Games.’” Jack Shea’s victory in the thrill of his life, winning Little did he know then 500-meter speed skating two speed skating gold that his prayer would be event was the first gold medals in front of friends answered in his hometown medal for the U.S. in the and family in Lake Placid, just a few years later. By 1932 Winter Olympics. INew York. Winning gold had 1929, Shea, a student at Lake been Shea’s dream since Placid High School, had won childhood, when Lake Placid the North American champi- native Charles Jewtraw won onships, repeating the feat in the first gold medal in speed 1930. He was called “the skating at the first Winter Lake Placid Phenom.” When Olympic Games in Chamonix, Governor Franklin Roosevelt France, in 1924. visited Lake Placid in September “Charlie Jewtraw put Lake 1929, Shea was asked to Placid on the map,” Shea told show the governor the new Sports Illustrated years later. speed skating oval. “He drove “Speed skating was here in up in a big open Packard,” the wintertime, and every kid Shea recalled, “with that between Lake Placid and famous smile and his distinc- Saranac Lake wanted to be tive cigarette holder, and after like him. … When I said my we had talked, he said, prayers before bed, I ended ‘Young man, maybe I’ll see the same way every night: you here two years from ‘Lord give me the opportunity now.’ That’s one thing that LAKE PLACID OLYMPIC MUSEUM LAKE PLACID OLYMPIC to repeat what Charles Jewtraw sticks out in my mind, NEW YORK archives • SPRING 2016 19 A G LD MEDAL LAKE PLACID OLYMPIC MUSEUM LAKE PLACID OLYMPIC Shea skating in a 1932 Olympic event because when I crossed the democracy into a dictatorship.
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