Park Forest’s Julius Mercer knows that the 400-meter low hurdle race is one of the most difficult in track, combining speed, endurance and concentration.
There are 10 hurdles to clear. There is no room for error.
Mercer has cleared the hurdles on the track effortlessly hundreds of times.
In his 55 years on earth, however, his personal hurdles are another story.
In both the race and in life, the difference between winning and losing is often one misstep.
Mercer talks about his life in his book, “A New Fire in You,” released earlier this year.
Mercer granted me a lengthy interview about his trials.
This is the first of two columns on Mercer.
The First Hurdle
Mercer, the third son of Frederick and Elizabeth Mercer, was born in the U.S. Army Hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where his father was stationed.
When Frederick Mercer retired in 1973, the family moved from Germany to Park Forest, and almost from the start, the tall, skinny youth at Westwood Junior High School gravitated toward athletics where he became a two-year starter on the basketball team.
The gangly newcomer, who was born with bowed legs, would often be teased by classmates about his physical appearance.
It made him angry, he said, but he was able to deflect the taunts by trying to be funny. He thought that by telling jokes and becoming a comedian in the eyes of his peers he could offset their insults.
At Rich East High School, with his legs now straight, Mercer was both a high and low hurdler on the track team.
In his senior year, he was unbeaten during the regular season but didn’t place in the state. He was named the school’s Most Valuable in the sport. No one mentioned college to Mercer. Why should they?
He was a casual student at best and graduated high school with a 1.6 grade point average.
No one bothers with a 1.6 grade point average.
The Second Hurdle
During the summer of 1979, Bloom High School track coach Lonnell Poole, who had ties to Butler Community College in El Dorado, Kansas, helped get Mercer into the school.
It was a great adjustment, Mercer said, in both connecting with the community and improving his grades.
He graduated Butler in 1981 with a 2.1 grade point and was on the national top rated junior college track squad.
His emerging abilities were enough to get prestigious college programs interested in him.
Mercer picked Kansas State University — the school that offered him the best deal and its new track coach Steve Miller, at one time coached at Bloom.
Whatever academic skills he discovered at Butler were quickly lost at K-State. Small classes morphed into ones attended by hundreds. Mercer couldn’t cope.
What he did enjoy was running track and partying — too much partying. At the end of his junior year, he received a letter from the school.
He was dismissed.
“I cried like a baby,” he recalled.
The Third Hurdle
More Top Picks Ratings
With the help of two sociology professors, Mercer spent five days a week in the library during the summer of 1983 at Kansas State getting A’s and B’s in four courses.
It was enough to get him back into school.
His track scholarship was gone but he was able to stick it out with the help of basic education grants and a $15,000 loan.
His hurdling improved. He was an upset winner of the 400 lows in the Big Eight championships, third in the NCAA meet and sixth in the U.S. Track and Field Championships.
He was ready for the 1984 Olympic Trials in Los Angeles, building stamina and strength with six-mile runs.
Those runs also put stress on his once-bowed legs. He began having knee pains, but kept on running.
He moved to Los Angeles where he ran for the Stars and Stripes Track Club. His hard work and past success gave him a sixth-seed in the 400 lows in the Olympic Trials.
All he needed was a good finish in his first race to move on. Mercer was in the lead halfway through despite the sudden sharp pain in his left knee. At the seventh hurdle, he chopped his step — it was all that pain – and the other runners passed him.
He was out of the Trials and he remembers through his searing agony his track club coach berating him, thinking him a quitter.
“You had the cake in your hands, and you didn’t want it,” the coach screamed.
The Fourth Hurdle
Life was tough for Mercer and his new wife in the late 1980s. Their home in was located in an area of Los Angeles dominated by two deadly gang rivals, Bloods and the Crips.
He found jobs at a health club and later at a children’s treatment center.
This was a difficult moment in hard times. He was in an unstable life in a volatile neighborhood.
No one was safe.
Once, his brother-in-law, who was visiting them, got into a fight with a young man over a video game and head-butted the other man. Three weeks later, Mercer’s brother-in-law was shot dead.
The Fifth Hurdle
When Mercer opened his eyes he was told he was in the psychiatric ward of a Los Angeles hospital room. He did not know why he was there; let alone how he got there.
The last thing he remembered was driving home hours ago. The time from then until now were completely erased from his mind.
“What am I doing here,” he asked?
They told him.
Police found him hanging from a lamppost; his coat wrapped around his neck like a noose.
Mercer, star athlete in high school and college, a top-tier track performer in the 400-meter low hurdles, and a man one of his coaches said “was always a joy to talk to,” tried to kill himself.
Still without a memory of those grim hours, Mercer asked himself one question:
“Why?”
Next Time: More hurdles to leap.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance journalist and can be reached at [email protected]