A Visit to the Home of Renaldo Nehemiah
by Steven McGill
I’m the kind of person who will complain about being too busy one minute, and then will do something to make myself even busier the next minute. It’s the hurdler in me, I guess. Hurdlers learn that to feel comfortable means to run slowly. So you always want to do things to make yourself uncomfortable so that you can continue to grow. After finally becoming a published author this past September at the age of 52 with the publication of A Hurdler’s Hurdler: The Life of Rodney Milburn, Olympic Champion, I didn’t take very much time at all basking in the glow of the accomplishment. Instead, my first thought was, what do I want to write my next book about?
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I had several ideas. One was to write a novel. In the Creative Writing class I teach, I had my students write a short story a couple months ago, and I did the assignment along with them. I was very pleased with the story I wrote, which was inspired by a dream I had had not too long ago. I then got the idea of writing a series of short stories based on dreams. So I developed a good plot line for a second story, and realized that, if I left the ending open-ended, I could grow the story into a large piece, potentially of novel length.
But I also had the idea of writing another biography in mind. As I’ve said before, sports biographies were what led me to fall in love with writing, and biography remains my favorite genre, even though I teach a lot of literature and have read a lot of the classics. On my own time away from school, I mostly read biographies of sports figures and jazz musicians, simply because I like to watch sports and listen to jazz. So, when thinking of who I would like to write a biography about, two names instantly came to mind: Kim Batten and Renaldo Nehemiah. Batten, one of the greatest 400m hurdlers ever, won the 1995 World Championship and the 1996 silver medal in that event. And Nehemiah, of course, is probably the greatest 110m hurdler who ever lived, having broken the world record three times (twice in 1979 and again in 1981) as well as being the first 110 hurdler to break the 13.00 barrier.
I had written lengthy profile pieces on both of them in the past for this website. The one on Nehemiah was in 2005, and the one on Batten was a few years after that. In interviewing both of them, I came away super-impressed with their depth of thought and feeling, as well as their ability to articulate their feelings with clarity and openness. It would make sense to follow up with a longer project that delved deeper into one of their lives beyond the obvious stuff of their track careers.
I actually contacted Batten first, but she politely refused, citing that she’d like to write her own story when the time comes. I can respect that, so no hard feelings whatsoever there. I then contacted Renaldo, and he expressed a willingness, though not an enthusiasm for the idea. Later I would come to realize that he’s not the kind of person to say “Yeah, let’s do it!” If he agrees to take on a project, that means he has thought about it at length, weighed the pros and cons, and has come to the decision that it’s a worthy adventure.
So that was back in November of this past year when we agreed to go forward with the project. I made plans to visit him in his home in Maryland during my spring break, and I did so a few weeks ago in late March. As I discussed in a recent blog post (yes, I still blog every blue moon or so), I stayed in his home for about two and a half days. It was time spent getting to know him in a relaxed atmosphere where he felt free to be himself. I got to meet his wife Lynn and his stepson August. He picked me up from the airport, he let me stay in his guest room, he took me out to lunch, cooked me dinner on both nights I was there, and cooked me breakfast on the morning that I left. There were just norms of politeness for him; he had no need to try to impress me, and he’s not the guy who puts up a front for anyone anyway.
During the time we met face to face (it was my first time ever meeting him in person; the interview in 2005 was done over the phone), we spent a total of about six hours in interview sessions. My aim was not to get enough material to put a book together, but to gather enough material to create a plausible sketch of an outline, covering the timeline from his childhood days growing up in New Jersey to his current life as a sports agent, husband, father, and stepfather.
In the three weeks or so since that visit, I have continued to do research on his athletic career and professional career. As any biographer will tell you, people’s memories can’t be trusted, so there is no such thing as having too much researched information. I’m coming to realize that, as a biographer, the life of your subject becomes your life. That wasn’t necessarily the case with the book on Milburn, partly for the simple reason that he was no longer alive, but also because I didn’t feel comfortable with delving too deeply into his personal life. With Renaldo, he has already said that he has nothing to hide, he knows he’s not perfect, he knows he’s made mistakes, so this book has the potential to be much more vast in scope, much more layered, much more intricate, much more personal.
A biographer is an historian, except we study the history of a certain individual, not of a time period. But in researching the history of that person, you inevitably end up researching the lives of other people who were/are in that person’s life, and of the era(s) in which they have left their imprint. This past Friday we had a half day at school, and I spent the entire afternoon on the internet, digging through archived articles about Renaldo from the University of Maryland newspaper. It was tedious work, but it was so cool digging into the past and making connections between this person I was reading about from 1979 to the person I had met a few weeks ago in 2019. That’s what biography does – it shows you how the past is connected to the present, to the point where there is no difference between the two.
The more research I do, the more I realize there is to do. During our talks at his house, we agreed that it would be a good idea for me to interview more people from various periods of his life in order to expand the breadth of the project and to gain more perspectives for the book. So, about two weeks ago, he sent me a list of 35 people to interview – from family members to old neighborhood friends to old teammates to old coaches to current mentees (he mentors youths in a church program) to ministers to old rivals. I’ve conducted three interviews so far, each one lasting an hour-plus. As my wife said when she saw the list, “Thirty-five names? That’s at least thirty-five hours.”
Yes it is, and there’ll be more names I’m sure. The Milburn book was a whole lot of work, done during planning periods during school, at home after school, and during summer breaks. This book will be a whole lot of work, done under similar conditions. So, right now in my life, I’m a full-time high school English teacher, I’m a private hurdles coach who coaches approximately six hours a day on the weekends, I’m the editor and primary contributor of an online magazine, I run two or three major hurdle camps per year, and I have a home life to manage. Bruh, I’m busy. So why did I take on this project? Why did I seek it out?
Because that’s what hurdlers do. And I’m still a hurdler in my heart and in my soul and in my bones. Also, I feel that this is a project that will challenge me in a way that I need to be challenged as a writer if I am to continue to grow as a writer. To be the writer of another person’s story is a sacred calling, and it will bring out the best in me as a person. There will be times when I’ll feel like I’ve taken on too much, but I’m ready for that and I’m not afraid of it. To me, it’s important to be a well-rounded person; it’s important to use all avenues of expression that I have available to me to make a difference in the world. The writer, the coach, the teacher, are all one, and are therefore equally important in my overall development.
That’s how I’ve always been. When I was a college student, I wrote poetry in my free time. Writing has always been a vital means of expression for me. I guess you could say I’m a late bloomer in the sense that it wasn’t until I turned 52 that I could call myself a published author. But now that I am, I want to leave a mark. Biography is a genre that I feel is slept on for its literary value. I want this book on Nehemiah to be one of the most awe-inspiring books ever written, just like Nehemiah was the most awe-inspiring hurdler who ever laced up a pair of spikes. It’s an honor that he accepted me as the person who could help him bring his story to life.
So I will conduct those interviews. I will do more research. I will put a draft together. I will edit and revise that draft until it can be called a final draft. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take, and I’m not concerned about that now. One hurdle at a time – that’s how we do things.
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