Mark Montieth: IU long jumper’s Olympic medal in 1956 was just the beginning of a golden life

No public funeral service was conducted this week to honor Greg Bell, who passed away early on the morning of Jan. 25. That was his wish, which seems appropriate for a man who lived below the radar of the general public despite living one of the most accomplished and dramatic lives of any Indiana athlete. Or resident, for that matter.

Bell’s greatest recognition came from winning a gold medal as a long jumper in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Such a feat in a niche sport will get you a prime location in the Indiana Track and Field and Cross Country Hall of Fame Museum in Terre Haute, but it also guarantees a degree of anonymity. Bell was one of three Garfield High School graduates to earn gold medals in successive Olympics, following Clyde Lovellette (1952) and preceding Terry Dischinger (1960), both of whom gained greater fame in basketball.

Bell didn’t begrudge their recognition. Besides, long jumping wasn’t his greatest achievement. It took more time and effort to overcome the racism of his era and the abject poverty of his family’s circumstances and then become a dentist who practiced into his 90th year. It took more willpower to overcome the impact of the condition that altered the skin tone that had subjected him to so many personal challenges. And it took more character to overcome all the obstacles he faced and leave the world at age 94 with only one regret.

Bell’s story could fill a book, and indeed he wrote an autobiography called “The Longest Leap.” It’s difficult to condense his life, but here goes.

He was born on a 36-acre fruit and vegetable farm south of Terre Haute, the sixth of nine children. Bell called it a “truck farm” because his father, who was 58 when Greg was born, earned his income by driving the produce into town to sell. The family’s home burned down when Greg was an infant—he suspected it was an accident caused by one of his older brothers—and they moved into a 20-foot-by-40-foot barn on the property that housed chickens. Greg lived in it for 12 years.

The children slept in separate stalls, three to a bed. Greg joked that he had to leave a bookmark to preserve his place if he got up in the middle of the night. The kids also shared bathwater on Saturday nights — “and you hoped you weren’t the last one in.”

The barn had no electricity for the first six years of Bell’s life. But he didn’t have negative memories of his childhood experience, because the family was close-knit.

“We had a reasonably happy lifestyle,” he once said. “I never knew anything better.”

Their lives were uprooted, however, when the federal government took over the Bells’ property along with thousands of other acres in the area outside Terre Haute to hide weapons during World War II. They were paid just $1,500 for it, forcing a move closer to the city to find bare-minimum housing on the south side of town.

“It would have been a ghetto if there had been enough people to make it a ghetto,” he said.

The move into the Garfield High School system turned out to be a break. Encouraged to try track and field as a sophomore, he placed second in the long jump in the state track meet as a senior in 1948. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to college, and with no scholarships available, he worked blue-collar jobs until he was drafted into the Army in 1950. He spent two years in Europe, where he resumed long jumping. His highlight was a victory in the European armed services championship meet in 1952.

Upon returning home, he landed a job with Allis-Chalmers, which manufactured heavy equipment for construction and agriculture. He worked his way up to earning $1.69 per hour and figured that would be his lot in life, but a fortunate illness altered his fate. When he became bedridden with tonsillitis, his mother called Dr. William Bannon, the only doctor in town who would make a house call to a Black family. Bannon saw Bell’s trophy and inquired about it. Once convinced Bell wasn’t seriously ill, he stood in the doorway and issued a life-changing command.

“Get your ass out of bed and go to school. You have some talent!”

Bell hadn’t even considered college, and he didn’t bite on Bannon’s edict immediately. Bannon stayed on him, driving him to track meets throughout the Midwest to compete. Bell continued improving.

Finally, after a year and a half, he was persuaded to enroll at Indiana University. He had made good grades in high school, with only one C on his record—a source of his only regret—so he qualified. Bannon took him to meet IU’s track coach, Gordon Fisher, and asked that a scholarship be awarded. Fisher hesitated, at which point Bannon reminded Fisher of the sway he held within the university. Fisher relented, and Bell was in.

Self-taught as a long jumper, Bell won the gold medal in Australia a year later with the second-longest leap in Olympic history—25 feet, 8-1/4 inches, behind only Jesse Owens—despite having to run around a curve and on a soft, granular surface of crushed brick on his approach and into wind gusts that reached 35 miles per hour. All the competitors faced the same challenge, however, and Bell won the event by 8 inches.

Although Bell’s feat received mention in newspapers throughout the country, and he was honored in Terre Haute, he didn’t become a household name. After returning to campus to resume classes, he ran into a friend who commented that he hadn’t seen him lately. The friend had not heard about the gold medal.

Bell was a sophomore when he won his gold medal, so he still had plenty of collegiate competition ahead of him. His best leap was 26 feet, 7 inches in the NCAA meet in 1957, a record that stood for seven years.

Bell graduated from IU with an English degree but spent his final year on a pre-med course. He chose dentistry over medicine because it provided a better outlet for his artistic skills, and he was able to see immediate results for his efforts. Kind of like long jumping.

After teaching at Howard University for one year and then working as a dentist in Terre Haute throughout most of the 1960s, he accepted a position as the head of dentistry at the state hospital in Logansport, treating kids with mental illness and/or criminal records.

He took pride in his ability to relate to them.

“They’re just people,” he said. “Some of them are really weird, some are quirky and some are downright mean. But I found that people respond to how you treat them. I treat them humanely, but I’m not soft.”

Bell could never afford to be soft. Challenges kept coming his way. At about 40, he developed vitiligo, an autoimmune disorder that causes the loss of skin color in patches. The irony was that a Black man who had been subjected to racism in his youth was turning white. He tried at first to mask it with cosmetics but finally relented and accepted his fate.

“I don’t care what color I am,” he said. “I just wanted to be a color.”

He could have drawn motivation from anger over the obstacles in his life but chose another source. He was inspired by a desire to reward the people such as Bannon, who had shown faith in him. He wrote a poem called “I Believe in You” to express those thoughts. It began:

“There seems to be no limit to what a man can do

If buoyed up by the current of an ‘I believe in you.’

He can climb the highest mountain, swim the widest sea

He can be whatever person he believes himself to be.”

There was one exception, however. According to Marshall Goss, the Hall of Fame Museum’s director, Bell kept a chip on his shoulder from one negative experience. That C he received in high school English? He believed he deserved better, but his teacher at Garfield told him, “No Black boy is worth more than a C.” His greatest regret was never being able to show her his graduation certificate as proof of his English degree from IU.

Bell had something better to share with people, however: his gold medal. He kept it in a wooden container shaped like Australia that he had made. He took the medal whenever he met with kids and let them hold it. Worn from all the friction, it will now become part of his exhibit in the Hall of Fame Museum. And that will have to serve as the place to celebrate his legacy for the man who didn’t want a service.

Why?

“He didn’t want to impose on people, and I think he thought if he had a viewing or funeral, people would feel they had to come from some distance,” Goss said.

They would have. But those who knew will remember.•

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Montieth, an Indianapolis native, is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer. He is the author of three books: “Passion Play: Coach Gene Keady and the Purdue Boilermakers,” “Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis,” and “Extra Innings: My Life in Baseball,” with former Indianapolis Indians President Max Schumacher.