Do You Believe in Miracles? an Oral History of The

Do You Believe in Miracles? An Oral History of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team Interviewer Alex de los Rios Interviewee Leonard Shapiro Table of Contents Statement of Purpose Biography Historical Contextualization Interview Transcription Interview Analysis Appendix Bibliography Statement of Purpose The purpose of this oral history project to is to provide a deeper understanding of the hockey game between the United States and the U.S.S.R. at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid New York. The examination of the interview with Leonard Shapiro, who covered the game for the Washington Post, and the events surrounding the game, will provide for a better understanding on why the event was much more than just a hockey game. Table of Contents Biography of Leonard Shapiro Leonard Shapiro was born on February 2nd, 1947 in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in Syosset, Long Island and went to Syosset High School. After graduating from high school, Leonard went on to the University of Wisconsin where he majored in Journalism. He then went on and got his Masters in Journalism from the University of Missouri. Thinking that he was going to be a political reporter, he joined a program at the University that sent him to Washington to be a political correspondent for The Washington Post. After he graduated, he returned to the Post and earned a job taking scores from local high school athletic teams. He eventually became a staff writer for the Post. In 1980 the Post sent him to Lake Placid, New York to cover the Olympics. He covered all of the games in which the U.S. Hockey team played during that time. He was the Washington Post correspondent at the game against the Soviets and his story was immortalized on a commemorative mug honoring the game. In the year 2000, Shapiro was named a Distinguished Graduate from the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism. Leonard Shapiro is currently a columnist for the Post and covers mostly the NFL and professional golf, and also writes Sports Waves, a weekly column on television and radio coverage of sports. He is married to Vicky Shapiro and three children, Jennifer, Emily, and Taylor, ages 27, 23, and 14 respectively. Leonard Shapiro currently resides in the state of Virginia. Table of Contents A Time of Crisis: A History of the United States Before, During, and After the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid Bill Shirley, a sports writer for the Los Angeles Times, wrote: “It was West vs. East, Capitalism vs. Communism, the good guys against the bad guys. The Final score was USA 4, USSR 3. The good guys won” (Shirley).1 After the game, fireworks lit up the sky as people danced in the streets chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” (Eskenazi 50). When the U.S. team arrived at the White House the day after the Olympics, they were greeted by screaming fans that, among other things, hanged manikins dressed in the Soviet Red (Marsella). One could ask how a hockey game could mean so much. However, sports have been known to impact more than just the sports world. Jesse Owens’ upset Hitler’s “Master Race” during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin thereby debunking Hitler’s theory of white supremacy. In the 1968 Mexico games, in the heat of the Civil Rights movement, black track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised there fists and bowed their heads during the playing of their national anthem as a symbol for their black pride. The political statement was so bold that the two were stripped of their respective medals. Sports can have an effect on the overall population of a country or the relationship between two rival nations. They can boost patriotism and shock the world. Because of the poor state of the United States and its several conflicts with other nations in 1980, the Olympic Hockey game between the United States and Soviet Russia was one of those sporting events. 1 Refer to Appendix A for picture. After World War II, the two remaining superpowers of the world were the United States and the U.S.S.R. Even though they were allies in the war, the two countries clashed drastically. Neither country could wholly agree on terms during the Yalta Conference after World War II. Disputes stemmed from Russia’s desire to establish communist government in the liberated and defeated countries of Eastern Europe and the United States’ opposition to this. The two finally agreed on terms that would allow the countries to hold free elections and elect their own government officials. The United States was criticized after the conference when it was learned that Russia did not let countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, but rather, communist governments were established, non-communist parties were suppressed, and elections were held rarely. Moreover, problems arose from the simple fact that Russia was a communist country run by a dictatorship while the United States was based on capitalism and a democratic government. In 1949, the United States established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with its European allies in an effort to contain the spread of communism in Europe.2 In retaliation to NATO, Russia and its allies established the Warsaw Pact (Schwartz 9).3 While the countries never fought each other directly, hence the term “Cold War,” the United States and Russia supported ideological causes in underdeveloped countries such as Afghanistan and Vietnam in order to spread their ideals and influence. Furthermore, both countries prepared for nuclear war by building up their respective militaries and constructing countless nuclear missiles. However, in 1972, President Gerald Ford of the United States and the Soviet leader 2 Spain, France, Denmark, Belgium, and Great Britain were all part of NATO with other countries joining later on (Schwartz 9). 3 Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, and Bulgaria were part of the Warsaw Pact either by choice or forced by the Soviets (Schwartz 9). Lenoid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I).4 The treaty put a ceiling on arms productions and stabilized the arms race (Hargrove 134). Throughout the 1970’s, it seemed as the Cold War was all but over as neither country did anything to threaten the other. Conflicts between the two countries were minimal if at all present when President James Earl Carter was elected in 1976. When Carter went into office in 1977, he introduced programs to boost the economy, administrative and social reform. However, Carter was unable to get his ideas to be turned into legislation in congress and consequently, his popularity rating dropped. Furthermore, the U.S. economy was in a dismal state. Inflation rose to 12% in 1980 and unemployment was up 7.5% the same year. Furthermore, volatile interest rates reached a high of 20% twice in 1980. In an effort to curb inflation, Carter asked Congress to place a 5% ceiling on federal pay raises. He also asked businesses to hold down wages. However, more vigorous efforts were needed or the United States, and possibly the rest of the world, would fall into an economic crisis. Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda of Japan stated that if Carter did not lower inflation in the U.S., the world economy would be hurt drastically (Policy 186-87). Despite all his efforts, Carter was unable to lower inflation during his Presidency because of lack of commitment by businesses to meet his demands. Seemingly the only positive side to Carter’s presidency was that he was able to maintain peace with the Soviets. However, on Christmas Day in 1979, the Soviets shocked Carter and the world when its forces mobilized and invaded Afghanistan. The invasion of Afghanistan marked the first time since World War II that the Soviet Army took up arms in a foreign land (Melanson 14). Furthermore, the invasion went against Brezhnev’s proposal for a détente, or peace program, between the United 4President Carter would sign and then later denounce the SALT II in 1979 (Haas 109). States and Russia (Hargrove 158). President Carter called the invasion “a grave threat to the peace” between the United States and Russia and that the Soviets had “blatantly violated international rules of behavior” (Gwertzman). Carter also noted that it was “no longer possible to do business as usual with the Soviets”(Haas 112). Carter reacted to the invasion by placing a trade embargo, suspending high technology sales to the Soviets, and boycotting the Summer Olympics in Moscow (Hargrove 155). Russia did not respond to Carter’s actions and Brezhnev kept the Russian army in Afghanistan in order to prop up the failing Communist regime in that country (Schwartz 114). Carter went on to retract the SALT II from consideration in Congress (Schwartz 114).5 Later, Carter’s closest aid said that the invasion changed Carter as a person. He said that it “toughened him and made him more forceful” (Hargrove 155). The Russian invasion of Afghanistan was probably the most suspenseful period of the Cold War since the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, this was not the only crisis bothering Carter and his administration. A month earlier, radical Iranian students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, taking 66 hostages in the process (Schwartz 113). The Iranian revolution started well before the embassy takeover but at the time, Carter was pre-occupied with the effects of the Camp David Accords6 between Egypt and Israel (Hargrove 137). The result of this was that the Carter administration did not receive much information on what was happening in Iran. Furthermore, the people in Washington did not respect the Ayatollah’s Islamic vision.7 All this contributed to the shock experienced by the Carter administration when reports of the embassy take over 5 Carter said later that the failure of SALT II “was the most profound disappointment of my presidency” (Haas 112).

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