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ARKADELPHIA
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T
oday I broke down and cried again, as Florence Griffith Joyner's
autopsy reports were released. My heart filled with admiration
and pride when I watched her run -- admiration for
her faultless stride and strength, for her grace, for her
obvious strain to excel! achieve! I'm ME and I am a runner! -- and
such was her beauty and strength that I shared in her pride when she
won, breaking all records and accepting her role as fastest woman on
Earth. |
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L ike "Lightning", Death came as suddenly as stunning world records for Florence Griffith Joyner, the fastest woman on Earth. 
O thers found it harder to fathom how a woman as vital and athletic as Florence Griffith Joyner -- "FloJo" to the world -- could have died in her sleep at the age of only 38. An explosive sprinter who had obliterated records on her way to three gold medals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, she was also an incomparable stylist who startled the track world with her low-cut, one-legged spandex bodysuits and her six inch long painted fingernails. But Griffith Joyner also had a history of medical problems and had felt sluggish the day before she died of an epileptic seizure. "At different times this year she got real tired," says her older sister Kathleen Wiggs, 45. "She felt a little tired that day." The autopsy report released Thursday October 22 indicates Joyner suffered a fatal epileptic seizure in her sleep. E ven as a child growing up in the Watts section of Los Angeles, Griffith Joyner showed uncommon resolve. The seventh of eleven children born to Robert Griffith, an airline technician, and his wife, Florence, a homemaker, "she was a very focused little girl," says Wiggs, adding that her sister was so fleet of foot "we called her Lightning." She took up running at age seven and kept at it even after doctors diagnosed a heart murmur when she was in junior high school. A track star at UCLA, Griffith Joyner went on to win an Olympic silver medal in the 200 Meters in 1984, then emerged from a brief retirement (and a stint as a beautician) to set world records that still stand in the 100 Meters and 200 Meters in 1988. A fter retiring, she designed uniforms for the NBA's Indiana Pacers, co-chaired the President's Council on Physical Fitness and taped episodes of the new Hollywood Squares, which aired, sadly, the very week she died. Plans for an autobiography were also in the works. "She accomplished so much in her life, yet still had so much she wanted to do," says her friend Debra Turner. "She just never slowed down." [abridged and edited from -- ALEX TRESNIOWSKI, LORENZO BENET, KELLY CARTER and SUSAN CHRISTIAN-GOULDING in Los Angeles and MARY HARRISON in St. Louis] |
McClure & Trowbridge: Leading the way in the 21'st century
