Athletic Director Bill Cleary To Be Honored at Atlanta Games

By John C. Lawrence

Special to the Gazette

Sit and talk with Bill Cleary for an hour about his Olympic experience and you won't hear a single story about goals scored or game situations. "Bringing people together," he says with an easy, knowing smile, "that's what the Olympic experience is about. It makes the global village idea seem quite real and much less threatening. For two weeks every four years the world is a better place."

Cleary, Harvard's athletic director and a veteran of two Olympic Games, is clearly onto something. There is something about the Olympic Games that sets them apart, not just from every other sporting event but from almost every other occasion.

Something draws men, women, and children - even those who can't tell a luge from a bobsled - to television sets and radios across the world.

And this summer, as the world tunes in to Atlanta, Ga., it will catch one more glimpse of Cleary when the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) honors him as a "Golden Olympian," one of the "100 greatest living American gold-medal champions."

Universal Human Element
While there is surely an element of nationalism in the allure of the games, their main attraction lies in a universal human element, much more profound than even that depicted by the often wildly hyperbolic commentary of network announcers.

Cleary, who has had 36 years to reflect on his Olympic experience, puts it succinctly: "When it's all said and done, it's the friendships and the memories and the discipline you get that really make a difference in your life."

To the average Harvard undergraduate, Cleary is the affable athletic director, ruddy faced and beaming, best known for bringing an NCAA hockey championship to Harvard as head coach in 1989. Many are unaware of his storied past. But Harvard faithful revere Bill Cleary as one of their own, a Harvard graduate and two-time Olympic champion.

At 21, he took a year off from Harvard to win a silver medal in ice hockey at the Olympics in Cortina, Italy. Four years later, he and his teammates captured the gold in Squaw Valley.

"I've been very fortunate," says Cleary. "At a time when I felt lucky enough to cross the Charles River, the Olympics brought me across the Atlantic Ocean and introduced me to people from every country of the world."

For the past three decades, he has taken part in impromptu reunions with fellow Olympians, from the former Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia to Sweden and France, all people he refers to as "friends" whether he has met them many times or merely once.

And here at Harvard, he has been coaching legions of Harvard athletes to their own places on Olympic teams.

A Parade of Champions
While Cleary considers the medals and accolades secondary, he is about to receive one of the highest honors of any Olympian. On July 18, the eve of the modern Olympiad's celebration of its 100th anniversary, the USOC will single out 100 former Olympic champions who have been named "Golden Olympians." Cleary will be among an extraordinary group, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mark Spitz, Evelyn Ashford, and Bruce Jenner.

The honor is an especially fitting tribute to Cleary. As USOC
President LeRoy Walker said in describing the honorees, "These Olympians are a tribute to the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. They are not only great athletes, but great people."

Like the Olympics, there is something about Cleary that sets him apart. He has spent his entire adult life in service to Harvard, to amateur athletics, and to the Olympic ideal. He has done so with genuine joy and compassion.

Although he has never attended the summer games, at the opening ceremonies in Atlanta, Cleary will be, once again, among friends - and once again, the world will be watching.