When Carl Lewis received the Jesse Owens Award last week, for once no one strained to hear boos. The applause was pure. Ruth Owens, who could not accompany her husband to Berlin in 1936, told how especially touching it was for her "to see Carl out on the track there in Los Angeles. Jesse would have been proud." Lewis thanked her, and though he had not planned to say anything of the kind, declared for athletes generally, maybe for past Owens Winners Mary Decker and Edwin Moses particularly, "We are people too; we make mistakes. But we do our hardest."
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