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Stephen Jay Gould
Evolutionary Biologist and Paleontologist
Nothing much to say that's beyond the personal that I don't choose to discuss. I was real sick for about a year and a half, and through some combination of good medicine and a little bit of determination, I got better, thank goodness. There's this great desire, since it was pretty miserable and I had to spend a lot of time struggling to get well, to think there was something worthwhile that came out of it. That's what people ask me all the time. "Well, what did you learn having to change the direction of your life?" I wish I could say that it did, since I had to spend the time and there was a certain amount of pain and suffering involved in it. I would like to say, "Well it changed everything. I got a great insight to my whole life." But it wasn't, basically it was a most unwelcome interruption that had to be dealt with. I don't know what else to say about it.
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David Halberstam
Pulitzer Prize for Journalism
As this tension built and I became the enemy of the government, and my stories went under more and more criticism from Washington and Saigon, there was an additional moral, ethical burden on me, if I was taking on the government of the United States, just to be out in the field more than anybody else. To be there, to see battle, to put myself on the line. The one thing I could not afford, it seemed to me, given the way I had been raised up, and the kind of values that I had had imposed upon me in my childhood and in my professional apprenticeship -- I could not be an armchair person sitting in Saigon doing it theoretically. I had to be out in the field, seeing more battles, if possible, than anybody else at that time. Later, Peter Arnett saw more combat than anybody else, but I had to be there. It was implicit in my role. It was very deliberate on my part.
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Dorothy Hamill
Olympic Hall of Fame
I really would get violently ill. So I never ate very much before I competed because I couldn't keep it down. I often thought it was really like going to your own execution. You know, from the time I got up in the morning I'd be counting, looking at the clock and saying, "Okay, I've only got 12 hours until I'll be finished," and "Nine hours until I'm finished," and "Five minutes from now I'll be finished." It was just -- I couldn't wait 'til it was over. But once I got onto the ice, and once the music started -- after about :30 seconds -- I was okay. But it's just that first :30 seconds, which is why I would always do, you know, one of those easy jumps that kind of -- you didn't really have to worry about maybe missing it, and then the next couple of jumps were always the tough ones, because you're still full of energy before you get exhausted at the end of the program.
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Dorothy Hamill
Olympic Hall of Fame
I just got so darn nervous when it was competition time, I completely flipped out. I mean, you're trying to trace these perfect circles, which are gone now today. They don't do those anymore. You get nervous and you hyperventilate and you see your life flashing in front of you and you start shaking. You know, you can't trace those circles. Also I was blind. Nobody knew I couldn't see. So the year before the Olympics I got glasses, so that helped a lot. There were all of these factors I think that contributed to part of my not feeling confident and being shy.
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Dorothy Hamill
Olympic Hall of Fame
I ended up in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer after six months in the ice show. I was skating 13 shows a week. I was getting up at six o'clock to do AM Podunk, wherever we were, and the reporters saying, "We're not going to cover the ice show unless we can have Dorothy to interview." And here I am: shy! What am I going to say? I have nothing to say. I'm just a dumb ice skater. If you want to ask me about ice skating, I can tell you about skating, but don't ask me about anything else because I don't know anything else. You know, for all the hours I trained, all the double Axels I did, I didn't go to school, I didn't read, I didn't learn about anything else. And it was very difficult. I was completely unhappy.
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