Stewart Blue, track and field: a love story

         No one we know loves the sport of track and field more than Stewart Blue. He might have his equals, but no one loves it more.

       And it's been that way for almost 60 years.

       He was a standout high school track guy and even better in college ... and he has remained involved with the sport ever since, for decades now as a meet official, a timer, overseeing an event, as an umpire or as a referee. 

       So he knows the rules, he has to OK the disqualifications and he has to care ... and he does. 

       The tall man loves him some track and field, and appreciates its athletes.

       If there is a meet at Texas A&M, he will be there. If there is a meet at LSU, count on Stu. The Louisiana high school state meets? He's missed only two since 1972, only because they conflicted with college conference championship meets to which he was committed.     

Stewart, with daughter
Jamie and wife Karen.

     (In one of those, his daughter was running as a quartermiler for Louisiana-Lafayette, the school that when Stewart was competing -- also as a quartermiler -- was known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana.)

      He loves his wife and his daughter, son-in-law and two grandkids, and he has a life. But track and field is, a part of his being.

      A number of recent bouts with prostate and brain cancer have been hurdles to clear. But he's been hurdling since those early 1960s days at Byrd High School in Shreveport.

     As a Byrd senior in 1965, he was part of the last state championship team for Coach Woodrow Turner, the last of nine top-class titles in a 12-year span. Blue finished second in both the high and low hurdles at the state meet.

     He was a popular figure with competitors, open and friendly and garrulous, easy to spot (he's 6-foot-4) ... and talented.  

     He lives now, as he has for years, in Lafayette. But he also spends much time in Cut Off (deep on the bayou in southeast Louisiana; home of LSU head football coach Ed Orgeron). That's where daughter Jamie Blue Guidry lives with her family.

      She is marketing director for the company that owned the plane that crashed in Lafayette last December on the day of the LSU-Oklahoma national semifinals football game, and Stu and his wife Karen have been in Cutoff to help with the two grandchildren.

      And this year -- as with everyone else -- Stewart's track-field schedule was rudely interrupted. It ended with the SEC Indoor Championships before the pandemic hit.

     But he’s looking ahead to 2021. 

     On the schedule — if conditions permit — are the SEC and NCAA indoor meets at Arkansas, the completion of his 45th year of meets at LSU, the Olympic Trials next summer as an umpire, and the referee job at the SEC Outdoor Championships at College Station in May.

      For this article, however, we reflect and take a long look back.

---

     Stewart credits Woodrow Turner and Scotty Robertson, two of his Byrd coaches — legends both — for giving him his greatest career boosts and motivation.

     First, though, came a Robertson evaluation. After a week of basketball "games" and drills in a P.E. class as a sophomore in 1962, Stewart heard that basketball wasn't a fit.

     Scotty's bad news: “He said that I couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time," Stu remembers. "The good news (for him) was that I would not a basketball player; that my name would be ’floor’ if I tried because I couldn’t jump off the floor.”

     But Woodrow Turner, listening to that conversation, called Stu over to his desk.

     “He started to flatter me, which was his norm,” he recalled. “Since I had thrown the discus at Youree Drive [Junior High] and won consistently he said to go out and work with Jack Pyburn -- his 170-foot [state-record] discus ace -- in his sixth-period track class.”

       So he became a discus thrower at Byrd and also a hurdler, although his junior high coach didn't think that would happen. But Turner had a vision.

      “As I look back, he was a unique individual," Stu says. "He

Stewart Blue, Byrd High hurdler

had a knack for looking at a kid and dreaming of what [track or field] event that kid could do...and then he would sell it to him.”

      And Turner “flattered me by saying that I looked like a fine future hurdler....who could also throw the discus....and if I walked the way he said walk, talk the way he said talk, stay away from booze, cigarettes and girls, and remove the word ‘can't’ from my vocabulary, that he'd get me a scholarship in two years. At 6-4, 148 pounds, and nerdy, I bought into it.

     “Then the unthinkable happened. I would win both hurdles races and the discus, a triple that was unheard of in track and field. As promised, two years later the [college] coaches started coming.”

     That included majors (such as LSU, Tennessee, Baylor, Houston, Tulane), most of the state schools [then-Division II]  and even the U.S. Military Academy was a possibility.

       He made a last-minute decision to attend USL, not the usual call for a North Louisiana athlete or Byrd graduates, not what his family or friends recommended or wanted.

       But he liked Lafayette from competing in the Southwestern Relays and he eventually found the area to his liking ... for good.

       At USL, after a rough start and thoughts of transferring, he surprisingly began running the 440-yard dash and sprint relays, events he had not run at Byrd.

      “Scared to death,” he recalled. “I began working under a grad assistant whose philosophy was that everyone is a quarter miler until they prove they can run something else.”

       Another surprise: He adjusted quickly, setting a USL school record on his first try … at home in the Shreveport Relays college division on the Byrd track and beating ex-Byrd teammates Greg Falk and Jimmy Hughes, both All-Staters at Byrd who finished first and fourth in the state meet and were now at Northeast Louisiana.

     It was especially a surprise for Coach Turner and Hughes, who “laughed at me” when he said he would run the 440 (because the hurdles field was filled). They weren’t laughing after the race.

     That spring, he won the Gulf States Conference 440-yard title, again beating Hughes and Falk. (He won the event again as a senior in 1969.)

     He settled in at USL after a rough start and thoughts of transferring, picked up a nickname “Bluebird,” and became the school's best quartermiler to that point.

      And he built a good relationship with Bob Cole, the USL coach who put together a squad that won conference titles in Blue’s first three years there.

    “After I graduated I traveled with Cole to all of the meets and helped him at home [meets],” Stu said of his start in officiating. “We fished constantly at his Toledo Bend camp after he retired in 1984 and when he was in town, I wined and dined him … still.

      “He turned out to be my best man when I married and I took care of him while he fought cancer and until he died in 2007. I was honored when his children asked me to deliver his eulogy. Coaches called him my ‘daddy.’

       “He had the personality of a brick wall. But he knew how to communicate and motivate and he knew how to love people, if not show it. John McDonnell (who came from Ireland to run distance races at USL in the mid-1960s), as the most prolific track coach in the NCAA of any sport, gave Cole credit for all of his successes and for teaching him how to motivate athletes.”

       After graduation, Stu's goal was to be with the FBI, but it did not develop. What did after a few weeks of waiting was a position with a drug company in New Orleans. He went into sales and left in 1993 as Pfizer’s Houston-New Orleans district manager, starting his own consulting company with two former teammates.

       Meanwhile, his track and field world expanded. He began helping USL conduct its home meets, expanded his area high school connections and when Pat Henry became the LSU coach in 1988, he found a champion.

     Henry's LSU teams won 27 national championships until Texas A&M hired him away after the 2004 season, and he's added nine with the Aggies. And Stewart Blue is a believer.

       “He has built the overall finest facilities in the world in College Station,” Stewart opines, “$100 million worth. Oregon will open its world’s finest outdoor facility next spring and I am anxious to be there working the [Olympic] Trials.”

     He works meets at ULL, LSU and Arkansas, but with any conflict, his first allegiance is to A&M, no matter that it’s a five-hour trip.

       “They do everything right,” he says, “and gave Pat a venue that has made track and field better.”

      Stewart can (and does) name-drop many of the greats — athletes and coaches — he’s met, a who’s who of American track and field. Good story about one of them: Carl Lewis.

     Lewis was helping coach at his alma mater, University of Houston, and as a meet referee, Stu had to ask him to leave the competition area during the long jump. Gist of story: He had to tell the gold-medal, prima donna (“Do you know who I am?”) to return to the coaching area in the stands.

     Lewis finally did. As he walked away, Stu thought to himself, “Did I just say that to Carl Lewis?”

---

     His Shreveport roots -- and plaudits -- return to two names.

Jerry Byrd Jr., Byrd assistant
principal, and Stewart Blue
show off the 2017 Class 5A
girls state championship
trophy, the first in track and 
field for Byrd since Blue's 
senior year (1965).

     One that those of us in sportswriting can appreciate: “Jerry Byrd was a great man whose [Shreveport Journal] articles were a factor in me getting the attention I did. I am eternally grateful to him and his memory will always be with me.”

     The second was Scotty Robertson. The bearer of bad news one day in the fall of 1962 gave him a moment to remember in 1974.

    On one of Stewart’s working trips to Ruston, in Robertson's last year as basketball coach at Louisiana Tech, they had lunch and when he had to leave to get back home to help officiate a track meet, Scotty offered advice.

     "He told me to get back to Lafayette and leave the sport better than I found (as an official)," Stu recalled.  "He reminded me that I had competed at meets that didn't have many officials and that everything in my life -- jobs, people, relationships -- would be connected to and made possible by the free education I received because of track ... and I should give back to what has turned out to be a great life, as he predicted.

    "And he was right.

    “It's 50 years later, and I'm still trying,” he added. “I've been all over the country with the sport and have developed some great friendships with talented people. And it's been a labor of love for those friends and the sport.”

      But the finish line is ahead. "The years to do that stuff are getting shorter," he says. "I'll go as long as my wife lets me, which might be 1-2-3 more years at most.

    “I've been extremely blessed and remember my roots, and those who "brung" me.”

     So he thanks the sport, and he's done his best to make it  better.

Two photos and missing pieces from Belgium

    A trip back in time, and another visit with Dad.

    The name of the camp is Les Mazures. Remember that. It is the key to this story.

    Look at these two photos. That's Dad -- Louis Van Thyn -- at ages 16 (almost 17) and 26 1/2. 

    This is the first time you have seen them. Because when we received them last week, it was the first time we had seen them.

     It is, as you might imagine, a great find for us, a bit emotional. 

     With the photos came two dossiers, forms he had to fill to establish -- and re-establish -- residency in Belgium. 

     The name on those forms is Levi Van Thijn -- his original first name (Louis, or Louie, was a nickname he always was called); he had it legally changed once we were in the United

States. The last name is the Dutch spelling (the y was written ij).

      The first photo: May 1936 when he first arrived in Antwerp, Belgium, having left home in Amsterdam with his parents' permission, and his intention is learning the diamond cutting trade. 

      You can see how young -- innocent? -- he looks, wearing the glasses he wore as a kid (and never again until he was in his mid-50s) ... and, for some reason, glancing sideways.      

     The second photo: November 1945, a sharp-looking, much more seasoned and mature young man, a Holocaust survivor,  a prisoner of the Germans/Nazis for nearly 2 1/2 years, much of that in concentration camps. Also a widower; his first wife, Estella, one of the six million Jews who died. He was unsure if she like him had been sent to Auschwitz.

      He's back in Antwerp, at last, looking for a new life.

---

     In his Holocaust interview, the one we used for much of the Survivors: 62511, 70726 book, Dad talked about where he went after the Nazis "arrested" him (and so many others) in the fall of 1942.

      Page 45 ... First stop: a work camp in Northern France.

      "We spent around three months there. ... It was by the town of Charleville, in the French Ardennes (the dense forest region) by the Belgium border," he told the interviewer.

      Asked for the camp's name, he replied, "I don't think it had a name. ... I want to get there one day and see, but there is nothing there that you can see it was a camp." (He never made that visit.)

---

       Of course the camp had a name. It is my fault that I did not research more, or ask more questions, to fill in the details.

       But we found out the name last week: Les Mazures.   

       The names, Dad's photos and the dossiers were sent to us by Reinier Heinsman, who introduced himself to us last week as a volunteer for the Kazerne Dossin Museum in Belgium, a place I wrote about in 2014, located in Mechelen, a city halfway between Antwerp and Brussels.

      It is on the site of the transition camp where Dad was sent after his stay at Les Mazures and from where he was sent by train to Auschwitz.

      Reinier asked my Kazerne Dossin contact, Dorien Styven, for my e-mail, and so Reinier asked for information on my Dad's lifelong great friend, Joseph "Joopie" Scholte, and his family -- particularly photos of Joopie's older brother, Jonas, and Joopie's 2-year-old daughter Helene. 

      He also told me -- important connection -- that the Scholte boys and Dad had been at the "concentration camp of Les Mazures in northern France."

     To be honest, that was news to me ... until I checked my blog and book (and found that Dad had not recalled the name).

     So I confirmed with Reinier that his facts were correct.

     Yael Reicher, who lives in Belgium and is a good friend of Reinier's, is president of the Memorial of the Concentration Camp of Les Mazures.               

     "She knows a lot about the camp and about all the prisoners," Reinier wrote. "She is very dedicated to preserving the memory of the camp and of all the people who were interned there, including her father." (And mine.)

      Yael, too, confirmed this: "Both Louis and Jonas were indeed interned at the Judenlager [Jewish camp] of Les Mazures."

      Much of the information that Yael sent and is in the dossiers is included in chapter 29 (pages 106-109) of the Survivors book.

https://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-fate-of-family-in-belgium.html 

      That describes the Les Mazures work camp and its purpose, and we also received from Kazerne Dossin several years ago what information they had on Dad, Joopie and Jonas Scholte, and on Estella.

      Can tell you that Dad, although he did not recall the camp name, is spot-on about the location and the work done there.

       And typically for him, because he for the most part always kept his good nature and positive outlook despite all that happened to him, recalled that the Les Mazures experience wasn't that harsh, not like what was ahead.

---

     Didn't think we had a photo of Jonas until my sister Elsa pointed out that he was in the wedding photo of Joopie and his first wife that we've had for years (and is in the book).

      Indeed, Jonas is up front on the left, and Dad is in the back left. So we sent that photo to the people in Belgium, along with Dad's wedding photo with Estella.

     We told Reinier and Yael -- who were not sure of the connection -- that the Scholtes' mother Leentje was a sister of Dad's mother, our grandmother Sara.

     The dossier also shows a wedding date for Dad and Estella -- September 16, 1941. We knew the month and year, but not the date.

     About the group known as the Association in Memory of the Judenlager of Les Mazures: A Belgian historian, Jean-Emile Andreux, did the research on the camp, published his work and created a memorial with the names of the 288 men deported from Antwerp to Les Mazures.

     A monument was dedicated in 2005 on the site where the camp used to be. There is nothing left, except the foundations of the barracks and debris in the surrounding woods.

      Every year there are two commemorations: (1) in July, the national French ceremony for victims of the Shoah (Holocaust); (2) on October 23, the date of the deportation to Auschwitz.

      At the site, there are portraits of all but a dozen of the men deported, Dad included. And now Jonas' photo will be there, too.

     The site itself is a soccer field today. I assure you: Dad would have loved that.

     When and if I redo, or update, the Survivors book -- there are now nine Van Thyn great grandchildren -- it will be good to have information that corrects what was missing before.

     We are always grateful to learn more. Thanks.

   

Always time for nostalgia

 

     Let's start with this: People love nostalgia.

     I am one of those people, although I'd like to think that I very much am a "today" person. The great majority of my blogs have been nostalgic pieces.

      There are a couple of reasons why I send out (by e-mail or posts on Facebook) many photos and/or clippings from the past: 

      (1) People like them, and will react to them;

      (2) I either "share" many that are posted on my Facebook feed or that I find in researching newspaper files.

      Speaking of research, this blog has been dormant for three months, and here's why: Much of my time since mid-June has been spent working on my latest "project," which -- I hope -- will turn into a book or booklet.

      The subject matter -- Louisiana high school outdoor track and field records/results/history -- is going to interest only a certain segment. Picking up from 2004, when Jerry Byrd Sr. (Shreveport) did a book on it, and updating those records (2005-2020) plus going back in time to fill in many missing names has taken hours and hours.

      So not much time for blogging. In fact, I am interrupting the designing of pages, working (struggling) with Word and Publisher programs, to write this blog and another one that is a continuation/addition to my Dad's story (and related to the Holocaust).

      To be honest, I also have not felt much like writing about today's sports world (baseball, NFL, college football, NBA, NHL, college football, college basketball, golf). Figure there are enough opinions out there to satisfy readers' needs; you don't need or want my opinion. (And, surprise, I do have a lot of opinions.)

      You sure as heck don't want or need my opinions on politics and social issues; more than enough of that out there ... every day, every hour, every minute.

      Sorry, fed up with all of it. From all sides, incidentally.

      Tried that once a couple of months ago, with an out-of-character political opinion that, through e-mail and Facebook, was met with more than several critical "please don't do that again" messages.

      So there. Keep your opinions to yourself. Just go vote.

      OK, back to nostalgia. I can post stuff -- stories/columns, photos, etc. -- from today's world, mostly sports but also on a variety of things, such recent posts on eating fried catfish and doing a Trinity River trash pickup. Reaction to most of those is good but not resounding. 

      Well, there is one element that is gratifying. Get the most response if I post old or new Van Thyn family photos or photos of the four spectacular grandchildren.

       But what I find gets the most reaction is photos from the Shreveport high school sports heroes of the 1950s and 1960s and some into the 1970s. My Facebook and e-mail friends really do love those.

       Most of them are aimed at Louisiana readers, and many are -- of course -- Woodlawn related. But we try to mix in some Byrd, Fair Park, Bossier, Jesuit and others.

       One popular recent post: photos of four of Louisiana's best 1950s high school athletes: Billy Cannon, Bo Campbell, Charles "Cotton" Nash and Jerry Dyes.       

     This week we posted another Bo Campbell photo, taking the baton from Byrd High teammate Pat Studstill for the last leg of a 1957 mile relay. Both went from there to football stardom in college and, for Studstill, a 12-year NFL stay as a punter and wide receiver. For Campbell, a very successful business career, primarily in banking in Shreveport.

       People liked seeing this photo.

       I'm frequently asked where I find these clippings. Easy answer: newspapers.com. Having access to many Louisiana paper files (other cities/states, too) is a big plus for research, and what's helped even more recently is having temporary access to the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate and New Orleans Times-Picayne files (thanks to the East Baton Rouge Parish library).

       So while I'm researching track and field, I happen to come across some clippings and photos I think people might enjoy seeing again.

       (For much of two years, as I researched Shreveport and Northwest Louisiana pro baseball, I would post stories and photos tying into those teams and players. That material went into a book form -- That's The Old Ballgame Shreveport -- that is available online.) 

       But it is the Woodlawn posts, because so many of my old friends are from 1960s school days, that prove most popular.

        Two examples:

     -- On August 30 (again found while looking for track stuff), I came across the clippings of Terry Bradshaw and Tommy Spinks -- our great QB/receiver team signing their scholarships to Louisiana Tech, with Coach Lee Hedges (one of our all-time favorites) in both photos.

      -- On July 1, we posted a photo of Bradshaw with Coach A.L. Williams (another all-time favorite) in a posed shot on the Woodlawn track during the national-record javelin throw spring of 1966 for Terry. That photo keeps repeating on my Facebook news feed because it is so popular.

      Who knows what I'll find next. But if the Facebook and e-mail friends keep liking them, I'll keep trying ... if you don't mind.