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Not for a Million. By that time it was so dark that the only light in the stadium was the Olympic flame, glowing dully through the fog. Mrs. Mathias, huddled patiently in the stands, watched the start of the 1,500-meter race, at 10:30: "We could see the orange spurt when the gun started the runners, but the fog was so dense we could see nothing else." Fighting foot cramps and a sick stomach, Bob staggered across the finish line five minutes and eleven seconds later to clinch his title. When he got his wind back and found his mother, he said: "Mom, how did I ever get into this? I wouldn't do it again for a million dollars."
But next day, standing on the victory pedestal as he had promised, Bob had changed his mind. Says his mother: "When my child stood out there with 80,000 people at attention, and they raised the flag and the massed bands played The Star-Spangled Banner just for him, I thought my heart would burst."
When the news of Bob's victory was flashed to Tulare, the whole town exploded into a celebration that lasted most of the night. Factory whistles blew, auto horns honked, somebody started a parade and led it with a big sign: "Bob Mathias for President." The Tulare Advance-Register rushed out an extra with a 114-point banner headline: MATHIAS WINS OLYMPIC TITLE. "Biggest headline I've ever run," says Editor Tom R. Hennion.
When Bob came home, two weeks later, 10,000 Tulareans lined the road from the airport to the town. Mayor Elmo Zumwalt presented Bob with the keys to the city. At the Elks Club, the reception was so warm "that we threw away the key." Governor Earl Warren's speech of welcome was heard by thousands of happy Tulareans at the fair grounds. Nowadays, Southern Pacific railway conductors call Tulare "Mathiasville." Signs at both ends of town proclaim: "Tulare, Home of Bob Mathias, Olympic and U.S. Decathlon Champion."
Big Man on Campus. The honors kept rolling in on Bob Mathias, culminating in the Sullivan Award as the nation's most outstanding amateur athlete. Bob was besieged with offers of athletic scholarships. But Dr. Mathias, who can afford not to accept such offers, firmly turned thumbs down. "I wanted Robert to go to school with no strings attached," Dr. Mathias explains. "They should give the scholarships to boys who can't afford to pay their own way."
Bob entered Pennsylvania's Kiskiminetas Springs School to get ready for college, the next fall entered Stanford. There, as he keeps piling up new records as a track and football star, he is inevitably a popular Big Man on Campus and rushing chairman of his fraternity (Phi Gamma Delta).
None of the adulation seems to have changed Bob much. He likes to go to dances occasionally (he has no steady girl). He brushes off all discussion of his triumphs with an embarrassed grin. At his white stucco home in Tulare, just a good javelin throw from the local high school, he still shares with brother Jimmy an attic bedroom, a cluttered place littered with Bob's medical specimens (he once wanted to be a doctor like his father), his model airplanes, and a sign he once rescued from a rubbish heap: "A winner never quits and a quitter never wins."