Triathlon Troops: Sport Born in Marines Looking for a Few Good Athletes

     Anyone who doesn’t believe the sport of triathlon is the prime measure of athletic excellence should “tell it to the Marines.”

     After all, it was a small group of that enclave which reputedly generated the idea about a dozen years ago.

     “Actually, there were a couple different starts of it,” said Dave Ware, president of Mid-America Triathletes.  “One started when several members of the Marines were sitting around and getting drunk, arguing which among runners, bikers and swimmers made the best athletes.”

     So, they decided to do all three events back-to-back on Oahu in the first triathlon back in 1978.  That challenge, which saw 12 of 15 entrants finish, later grew into 1,000 participants completing the grueling 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run known as the Kona Ironman Triathlon.

     In 1979, Sports Illustrated referred to the event as “lunatic,” but a new breed of American athletes hasn’t viewed it as such.

     “The growth of triathlon is phenomenal!”  Ware said.  It’s taking off faster than any modern-day sport.  Some people got tired of just running, and were looking for a new challenge.  Bikers who developed injuries looked for other methods of keeping in shape.

     “A lot of people saw the Ironman on TV and thought it was a neat idea.  Triathlon gives you a goal to work on, and once you do, you’re hooked”

     Although it’s hardly recommended for the everyday athlete to try an Ironman event, participation in shorter triathlons doesn’t require as much training as most people might think.

     Ware’s first attempt was the completion of a standard triathlon of roughly .75 miles of swimming, 35 miles on the bicycle and 6.2 miles of running.  It took him less than six weeks to train for that event.  But if that sound too ominous, a mini-triathlon encompassing distances of a quarter- to half-mile of swimming, 10 to 15 miles on the bike and 3 to 5 miles of running can be easily found.

     “Obviously, if you haven’t ridden a bike since you were five years old or jumped into the pool for the first time, you’ll have trouble,” Ware said.  “But most three- or four-day-a-week athletes could comfortably finish a triathlon after just a few weeks of training.”

    

     The ultimate challenge of competing in three different sports draws some people into triathlons, while the degree of camaraderie attracts others.  Besides meeting people from throughout the Midwest and the country at triathlons themselves, St. Louisans can make countless appearances while they train.

     “A lot of people out of necessity train alone,” Ware said.  “But the triathlon club, YMCA and other groups feature training events where people can get together.  We have a Wednesday night bike ride with people of all different levels of ability, and a regular club meeting the first Monday of every month.”

     It isn’t hard to find an event in which to participate.  A sample of nearby cities that host triathlons are Belleville, Wood River, Alton, Jefferson City, Mexico and Columbia.

     But the most popular triathlon in the Midwest is the Bud Light-Lake St. Louis Triathlon scheduled for 8 a.m. Sunday at Lake St. Louis.  Now in its sixth year, the Lake St. Louis event has had to limit participation to 1,000 entries.  It is equally popular with spectators.

     “Triathlon is an exciting sport to experience,” Ware said.  “You constantly see interesting developments in all three individual events.  There used to be a lot of questions as to which are the better athletes.  But now, none of these is thought of as the top because triathlon is considered a separate sport in itself.”

Plowsharing Crafts Helps the Needy with Innovative Approach

By Jeffry Greenberg (West End Word)

     Excessive attention to individual gain often hinders the welfare of the world at large.  But the ‘family of man’ attitude of people like Rich Howard-Willms is certainly paying big dividends for some of our planet’s less fortunate inhabitants.

     Howard-Willms is manager of Plowsharing Crafts, a not-for-profit store in the University City Loop that helps the world’s needy by selling their craft items.  It is part of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) SELFHELP Crafts network.

     The entire program, which began in 1947, utilizes the services of 700 volunteers and a handful of paid employees to operate 110 shops across Canada and the United States.  The program aids some 30,000 families throughout the world.

     The St. Louis store, which opened in Maplewood, moved to 6301-A Delmar Blvd in 1987.  Howard-Willms has been with Plowsharing Crafts from the outset.

     “Members of the church (St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship) decided to start an outreach program, and this was a natural,” Howard-Willms said.  “I, being Canadian but married in America, couldn’t work for money at the time.  So, I ended up doing volunteer work.  Now, I’m the only paid person (small wages) among about 40 volunteers.”

     Plowsharing Crafts derives its name from Micah 4 in the Old Testament of the Bible: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks…”  According to Howard-Willms, the name was chosen because of the Mennonite Church’s historical peaceful stance.

     Instead of strength through military action, the church spreads peace by providing on-going financial assistance to communities in foreign lands.

     “The overall aim of the church is to help people help themselves,” Howard-Willms said.  “We do that by getting crafts from developing countries to our warehouses in Akron, PA and Hamburg, Ontario then sell them through stores in the United States and Canada.

     “We’re a small bucket in a large ocean.  But our purpose is sort of like the old adage, ‘To give a person fish for one day is OK, but to teach him how to fish lasts a lifetime.’  Helping people create their own kind of business and develop things on their own is the way to go.  That can effect real change.”

     Howard-Willms has seen the benefit of the program firsthand.  He was one of 18 store managers who visited India and Bangladesh on a three-week trip last winter.

     His group has encouraged people to work together in cooperatives then set up savings accounts for their profits.  Six years ago, there was not a single copying machine in Saipur, a town of 150,000 people in Bangladesh.  Townspeople had to travel 30 miles to use one.  But now, a group of three women runs a thriving business of six copy machines—the only business run by women among hundreds of stalls in this patriarchal society.

     A highlight of Howard-Willms’ trip was observing the soap-stone work performed by many of the descendants of those who built the Taj Majal.  But Howard-Willms also remembers the tremendous dust created by the work, which forced the operation to close for a full year.

     Deforestation is a long-term problem in that region of northern India.  But some of the problems elsewhere are of a more immediate nature.

     “In Calcutta (Kolkata), there are 15 to 20 million people living in a place where there used to be 1 to 1.5 million,” Howard-Willms said.  “It’s so crowded and dirty.  What we consider a slum here is nothing by comparison.

    “In Bangladesh, five months previously, three-fourths of the country had an incredible flood.  We saw incredibly poor and impoverished conditions, but the people accepted their lifestyles and were happy to meet us.  They gave us flowers and coconut juice and even sang to us.”

     The townspeople are extremely grateful for the work that the SELFHELP Crafts program has provided, and for the sales that are generated through stores and offsite locations such as Sunday bazaars.

     In addition to helping those in the poorest nations of the world, SELFHELP assists native American Indian tribes like the Zuni and Navajo as well as people in Appalachia.

     Among the extremely poor of more developed countries are women, who traditionally receive fewer employment opportunities than me.  Also aided are handicapped people and rural dwellers who wish to remain in their home environments instead of seeking work in big cities.

     “We make connections with people in these areas,” Howard-Willms said.  “The way that the process works is that people make things and get paid right on the spot because they need it then.  We ask them to set a price instead of just giving them an amount of money.  Shipping, tariffs and export taxes are tacked onto the price we charge.  If $1 is the price, 50 cents goes to them and 50 cents to us.”

     Some of the Plowsharing Crafts products and prices are a large iron chess set from Cameroon ($295) and a smaller soap-stone version from Kenya ($95), beautiful wooden toys from Sri Lanka (each under $10), spiritual note cards from El Salvador (pack of six for $3) and jute coasters and placemats from Bangladesh (75 cents to $4.25). No taxes are charged.

     Other goods include hand-carved onyx from Pakistan, lovely sweaters from Uruguay and the Philippines, sets of carved wood zebra, elephant and giraffe bookends from Kenya, and rugs from Thailand and India.

     Howard-Willms admitted that, as a history major at the University of Waterloo (Ontario), he, like most SELFHELP managers, has no formal business training.  But that certainly isn’t evident in the program’s progress.

    SELFHELP has been growing at a phenomenal rate, with total sales more than tripling from $1.5 million to $5 million over the past 10 years.  Lack of financial knowledge has indeed been overshadowed by other qualities.

     “My main interest in school and real life are peace and justice issues,” Howard-Willms said.  “I came to St. Louis with the Peace in Justice Ministry.  Since none of us had any business acumen or background, we went into it blindly, and with large steps of faith.  It’s done better than we ever anticipated.

 

     “It’s a very satisfying feeling because you can see definitely that the work helps directly.  We always ask them if there’s anything else we can do, and they just say, ‘Give us more orders.’  Their lives are so different from ours, but until you see it, you can’t appreciate what we have.”

CYSTIC FIBROSIS: MOTHER KNOWS VALUE OF MENTAL OUTLOOK

     Most participants struggled through at least one of the six events of Saturday’s Cystic Fibrosis Corporate Games at John Burroughs School.  But in view of some of the barriers she has had to overcome in the past two decades, not even the obstacle course could be considered overly challenging for Deluxe Printers’ employee Alice Bacon.

     The west county woman not only has a 20-year-old son with cystic fibrosis, but she also gave birth to a second son who died of that affliction at the age of six months.

     “I was pretty uneducated as far as the disease was concerned, so it wasn’t a shock or devastating situation at first,” Bacon recalled.  “I didn’t even learn that my son Charlie had the disease until I visited with the doctors and had him tested after my first son (Stephen) died.”

     Bacon has learned a great deal since that time.  In addition to becoming familiar with postular drainage (where the chest is continually pounded on to help clear the lungs) and other medical treatments, Bacon is more aware of the role played by exercise and a high protein and high carbohydrate diet.

     But as important as the physical aspects are in attempts to keep the disease in check, Bacon believes that the mental outlook is equally significant.

     “It takes a total positive attitude from the whole family,” Bacon said.  “I’ve seen kids close to my son’s age who have abused themselves and given up.  You either accept it (cystic fibrosis) or don’t accept it.

   “A lot of it is how the child is diagnosed.  You have to look at CF as a normal part of life.  It doesn’t mean that your child will have a full life, but it usually helps if he continues to do therapy and you push him to the ultimate limits.  My attitude and my husband’s (Charles, Sr.) made the difference to where my son is today.”

     The Bacons have every reason to be proud of their son.  He just completed his sophomore year as a business major at Northeast Missouri State University.  In addition to performing all his necessary medical functions, Charlie runs every day and plays tennis in warm weather.

     The basic knowledge of both physical and mental health is probably more important to CF patients than to the general public.  But even if all the considerations are followed slavishly, there are still no guarantees of long life.  Few CF victims live past their 20’s.  That’s just one item in which Bacon believes the general public must become educated.

     “People shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions about CF,” Bacon said.  “We’re not going to hide in the closet.  We’re very willing to let people know about the disease so they can be educated.

     “It’s important that people are educated about all these things so they’re treated like normal human beings and not just people to feel sorry for.  Some certainly can’t do what my son is capable of, but almost all are capable of making something of themselves.”