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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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Scott Hamilton
Olympic Hall of Fame
If you can fall, get up and do the next triple jump, you've got guts. You've got real good intestinal fortitude. And, it's amazing. It's the same with anything that you do. If you go into a test and you just choke, I mean you look at the paper and the words are just jumbled and you can't figure out -- I know I studied for this, I know I know this stuff. If you can get past that and you can just calm down and slowly, you're feeling the same thing everybody else has felt. You know, if you fall, sometimes it hurts. Sometimes you twist something and you can't really get up right away. Sometimes you get stitches. Sometimes you fall and your pants rip and you're humiliated in front of a large group of people. I mean, anything can happen. You just have to accept that you cannot succeed unless you're willing to fail. And, you fail a lot.
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Scott Hamilton
Olympic Hall of Fame
So of all the things that I'm proud of as far as my illness, it wasn't getting past the illness, it was getting through the day to day life of being away from a normal situation and healthy children. There was a lot of other kids like me who were sick and whose parents were very scared. And it's kind of an odd way to grow up. And so, getting past the illness and dealing with a lot of the hardship around it I think was something that gave me great strength. It wasn't so much that I faced the physical ailment or disability and won, it was: I accepted it and it slowly went away. But, everything that it brought was a little bit challenging.
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