THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607180538
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAT DOOLEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 222 lines
It is tucked away among the books in the den of his Richmond home.
Still in its original black, rectangular case, a long, inch-wide ribbon of yellow, black, blue, red, green and white stripes is folded neatly above it.
Dr. H. Thompson Mann, a Norfolk native raised in Chesapeake, doesn't think about the medal too often.
But everywhere he has lived in the last 32 years - from Chesapeake to San Francisco to Richmond - it's had a special place in his home.
``Whatever house we lived in, it's always been in one place,'' says daughter Alexandra, 31.
She hadn't even been born that October night in Tokyo when Mann broke the world record for the 100-meter backstroke at the 1964 Olympics.
Finishing in 59.6 seconds, Mann, then 21, led a four-man medley relay team to victory, becoming the first person to break one minute in the 100-meter backstroke.
He also became the first Hampton Roads native to bring home a gold medal.
Now a doctor of internal medicine, Mann, 53, lives in Richmond's West End, with wife Veronika, and sons Edward and James, both 15. Alex, a graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University, lives nearby.
``The moment I won the gold medal, I was done with it,'' says Mann, tall and wiry, his dark brown hair now white. ``I don't think about it. It's just something I did.''
But every four years when the Games get under way, people ask him to speak to clubs and schoolchildren. Curious patients and friends coax him into bringing the medal to his office.
And he remembers.
Harold Thompson Mann and brother Marvin Jr., were raised in a two-story brick home in the Hickory section of Chesapeake.
Their mother, a pianist, taught school. Their father, Marvin Sr., was a country doctor who moved the family from Richmond when the boys were young.
Marvin Sr. worked long hours and made housecalls. Thompson, who often tagged along, knew by age 11 he would be a doctor.
The Manns encouraged their sons to follow their dreams.
When the brothers showed an interest in swimming, Marvin Sr. took them to community ponds and pools. They swam on teams at Richmond's Ginter Park and the Country Club of Virginia.
When Thompson, in particular, showed promise, winning meet after meet, their father built a pool in the back yard.
He excelled in the backstroke. But his heart belonged to basketball.
In his freshman year at Great Bridge High, the 6-foot-1 Thompson played center on the junior varsity team. Marvin, 15 months older and 6-foot-6, was a varsity star.
Back problems in his sophomore year kept Thompson off the court. By the next year, his back had improved but a painful knee ailment kept him from playing.
``I don't think I spent two seconds feeling sorry that I couldn't play basketball,'' he says.
Instead, he kept score for the team. And honed his backstroke.
``I would have been very upset had I not been able to swim,'' he admits, sinking his angular frame into the green leather chair behind his desk.
Great Bridge didn't have a swim team, so Thompson trained at the country club and the Boys Club of Norfolk, whittling seconds off his stroke.
He earned a partial swimming scholarship to the University of North Carolina.
``I guess I thought I was going to be a great swimmer someday,'' he says.
In 1961, he broke the national freshman record, but later struggled to shave his time. ``I was fast,'' he says, ``but didn't know how to swim a race.''
Robert Alexander, who was priming a group of swimmers for the '64 Olympics, invited Thompson to Verona, N.J., to train.
While most athletes swam in pools that summer of '63, Alexander's group swam in a lake with bulkheads and lane markers.
Thompson learned to relax instead of getting tense in competition.
At the 1964 World's Fair in New York, he broke the world record - swimming the 100-meter backstroke in 1 minute - and qualified for the U.S. Olympic team.
He would be an alternate in the 400-meter medley relay - the 100-meter backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke were not Olympic events in '64.
Then, a surprise in Tokyo a few weeks later: All 100-meter swimmers would be eligible for the relay. There would be a swim-off for the relay team three days before the start of the Olympics.
Thompson played the outcome over and over in his mind. ``I envisioned winning,'' he says.
``I didn't question at all whether I was going to make the Olympic team or break the record.''
His time: 59.8 seconds, an unofficial record.
``I made the team,'' he says, smiling broadly.
About 7 p.m. Oct. 16, 1964, Thompson Mann dove into the water to take his position at the starting block. He emptied his mind of the frenzy around him.
The blur of 12,000 cheering faces. His father, waving from the stands above. His mother, brother and friends back home. The 6-foot-6 German swimmer in the next lane.
``My first lap I was essentially numb. It seemed effortless,'' he says, blue eyes glimmering like crystalline pools. ``I went out a second faster than I've ever gone out - probably too fast.''
On the return 50 meters, he struggled, but touched back less than a minute later. No one had swum the 100 faster.
The Germans picked up the silver, the Australians the bronze.
A proud Marvin Mann Sr. wore the gold medal home to Hickory while Thompson and some Olympic swimming buddies toured Asia, , giving shows and teaching children to swim.
Returning in January 1965, Thompson was welcomed by a marching band, reporters, friends and family and then escorted home by motorcade.
He competed in the World Student Games in Hungary in the summer of '65 - taking home a gold.
But swimming had become secondary. ``I just didn't have the incentive,'' he says.
He graduated from the Medical College of Virginia in 1969.
When he met his future wife on a blind date in Richmond that spring, she didn't know he'd won a gold medal.
``It was kind of love at first sight,'' says Veronika Mann, the daughter of a physician who moved from Budapest to New York when she was 11.
She was a graduate of Barnard and a buyer for a clothing store. Mann invited her to dinner at the home of one of his professors ``sight unseen,'' she says.
``And then I guess he got a little worried,'' she adds, chuckling. ``He called me a couple of nights before and asked me out for a beer.''
They married just over a year later, and moved to San Francisco with Alex, Veronika's 4-year-old from a previous marriage.
There, Veronika renewed a longtime love of swimming, and sparked Thompson's interest after a five-year layoff. They joined masters' teams, swam the length of Golden Gate Bridge, to Alcatraz and competed in rough-water swims.
``We all swam together,'' says Alex, who started around age 10. ``It was the one thing we had in common and we talked about it all the time.
``Even when we went on vacation, we would find a place to swim.''
In 1981, Veronika gave birth to Edward and James, fraternal twins. In '82, the family returned to Richmond, where Mann began a practice and the couple devoted themselves to raising their children.
Their sons, too, swam competitively, though the family now goes only for leisure dips - often in the same country-club pool where Mann began.
Veronika Mann doesn't remember when she learned about her husband's gold medal. ``He was so much more than that,'' she says.
By the time he reaches his office at St. Mary's Hospital at 8 a.m. each weekday, Thompson Mann has cleared away a pile of homework and made rounds.
Before he heads home, he'll fit in two more sets of rounds and a stream of patients.
Lunch is nibbled between consultations. Sometimes, it's a hot dog stuffed into the pocket of his knee-length white coat as he zips out the door.
``If only I had half his energy,'' says Kelli Moffitt, his 32-year-old assistant.
Like many patients and co-workers, Moffitt didn't know Mann had won a medal - until she found an old newspaper article and heard people talking.
On this day, a box lunch sits on his desk. A Coca-Cola from down the hall touts on its label 68 years of Olympic competition.
The medal, which he brought to show a visitor, lies in its open case.
Moffitt, who breezes in to ask a question, catches sight of the gold.
``Oh,'' she says, gently fingering the medal. ``Is this it? It's the first time I've ever been this close to one.''
Mann later says he planned to donate the medal to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which inducted him in 1984.
``But the Olympics are coming up, people are asking me to give talks and everybody wants to see it,'' he says as though surprised.
``I've kind of had second thoughts.'' streak. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
H. Thompson Mann in 1964.
Color photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/The Virginian-Pilot
H. Thompson Mann has considered donating the gold medal he won in
the 1964 Olympics to the swimming hall of fame in Florida, but says
he's having second thoughts.
Graphic
OLYMPIC HERITAGE
Native Virginians who have won Olympic gold medals:
Frank Benjamin Havens; Arlington; 1952; canoe and kayak.
Norvel Lafayette Lee; Eagle Rock; 1952; boxing, light heavyweight
(178 pounds).
William Willard McMillan; Frostburg; 1960; shooting, rapid-fire
pistol.
H. Thompson Mann; Norfolk; 1964; 400-meter medley relay,
backstroke.
Ollan Conn Cassell; Nickelsville; 1964; athletics, 1,600-meter
relay.
Steven Earl Riddick; Newport News; 1976; athletics, 400-meter
relay.
Benita P. Fitzgerald; 1984; Dale City; athletics, 100-meter
hurdles.
Pernell Whitaker; Norfolk; 1984; boxing, lightweight (132
pounds).
Norman Dean Bellingham; Fairfax; 1988; canoe and kayak, 1,000
meters.
Former U.S. Olympians with ties to South Hampton Roads:
1992: Medina Dixon, ODU, women's basketball; Buddy Lee, ODU,
Greco-Roman wrestling; Julian Wheeler, Navy, boxing.
1988: Diane Bracalente, ODU, women's field hockey; Anne Donovan,
ODU, women's basketball; Yogi Hightower, ODU/Virginia Beach, women's
field hockey; Christy Morgan, ODU, women's field hockey; Cheryl Van
Kuren, ODU, women's field hockey.
1984: Beth Anders, ODU, women's field hockey; Anne Donovan, ODU;
women's basketball; Jan Trombly, ODU; women's team handball; Pernell
Whitaker, Norfolk, boxing.
1976: Nancy Lieberman, ODU, women's basketball; Steven Earl
Riddick, Norfolk State, track.
1964: Gray Simons, Norfolk, wrestling; Tom Trethewey, Virginia
Beach, swimming; H. Thompson Mann, Norfolk, swimming.
1960: Frank Benjamin Havens, Harborton, canoeing; Gray Simons,
Norfolk, wrestling; Skip Sweetser, Virginia Beach, rowing.
1956: Frank Havens, Harborton, canoeing.
1952: Frank Havens, Harborton, canoeing.
1948: Frank Havens, Harborton, canoeing.
U.S. Olympic medal winners with ties to South Hampton Roads:
H. Thompson Mann, Norfolk native: Gold medal in swimming in 1964.
Beth Anders, ODU field hockey coach: Bronze medal as player in
field hockey in 1984.
Medina Dixon, former ODU basketball player, Norfolk resident:
Bronze medal in 1992 for women's basketball.
Anne Donovan, former ODU basketball player, former ODU women's
assistant coach and current head coach at East Carolina: Gold medals
in 1984 and 1988 in women's basketball.
Frank Benjamin Havens, resident of Harborton on Eastern Shore:
Silver medal in canoeing in 1948; gold medal in 1952.
Steven Earl Riddick, Norfolk State track coach: Gold medal as
part of 4x100 relay team in 1976.
Pernell Whitaker, Norfolk native, Virginia Beach resident: Gold
medal for boxing in 1984.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY OLYMPICS
SWIMMING by CNB