GLORY & GOLD

By Chris Rosenblum

One elbow, then another, nudged Jane Brown. They came from her 400 meter freestyle relay teammates on the award stand in Munich, gold medals around their necks.

CDT/Nabil K. Mark

Jane Brown, shows off her U.S. Olympian uniform and gold medal she won in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich for the 400 meter freestyle relay. BrownÕs efforts earned her two gold medals and one bronze medal. CDT/Nabil K. Mark

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They had just set a world record at the 1972 Olympics. Now they wanted her to whistle. That had been their dare — gold, a record, and Brown, a habitual whistler, would purse her lips for the U.S. national anthem.

“I could only get the first bar out, then I broke into tears of joy,” Brown said.

German journalists thought she was being disrespectful, but nothing could have been farther from the truth. The 21-year-old swimmer, then Jane Barkman and now a longtime State College resident, proudly wore the American uniform at two Olympics while winning a pair of gold medals and a bronze.

“I’m lucky to be here,” Brown told a reporter who wondered if she felt disappointed about finishing third in the 200-meter freestyle at Mexico City in 1968. “I’m lucky to represent the United States.”

Long before Olympic fever hit Beijing, Brown carried that pride to China.

In 1973, she and other U.S. swimmers taught their Chinese counterparts during an historic tour organized by the State Department. Chinese and American swimmers had not competed because China was not yet an International Olympic Committee member.

Coming just a year after the countries resumed relations, the visit sparked controversy. Swimmers faced the threat of being banned from competition if they went, but Brown said it was worth the risk.

“It was a great experience,” she said. “We met Madame Mao Zedong.”

Brown had made a long journey from the 1964 U.S. Olympic trials.

Back then, she was a wunderkind from Wayne, outside Philadelphia, swimming with Olympic legend Donna de Varona. Under the tutelage of Mary Kelly, an eventual American Swim Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee, Brown reached the trials at age 12 in the 100-meter freestyle but did not make the cut.

Undeterred, she won three straight 100-meter freestyle national championships before the 1968 trials in Los Angeles. But nerves struck the American record holder and she took fourth place, one away from qualifying for the Olympics. Once again, she fell short in her best event.

It could have crushed her. This time, though, she didn’t miss out.

“I think my parents and coaches gave me a gift of thinking, ‘Well, what do I do now? What’s the next step?’ ” Brown said. “And it’s followed me my whole life.”

Next for her was finishing third in the 200-meter freestyle. Then, as the meet ended, she learned her 100- meter time had secured the final spot on the 400-meter relay team.

She had fulfilled her childhood aspiration, twice over.

“It was a wish upon a star and a hope someday I would go to the Olympics,” she said.

She arrived in Mexico City, awestruck. There was the great Jesse Owens walking in the Olympic Village. And here she was preparing for an Olympic race, battling butterflies.

“I think I just kept telling myself that I had nothing to lose,” she said. “I was there, and if I got a medal, it would be icing on the cake, in an event I wasn’t expected to be in.”

She claimed the bronze, helped her relay team win the gold and watched two fellow medalists in astonishment. Riveted to a TV in the Village, she saw American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their black gloved-fists on the medal stand in a famous protest against racism.

“It was sad for me because I was young enough to think, ‘Why wouldn’t everyone treat everyone the same?’ ” she said.

She returned to Wayne a hero. Residents gathered in her high school auditorium to hear President Nixon’s congratulatory telegram read out loud. Brown rode through a parade on the back of convertible.

Then she walked away. For her senior year, she tried other activities — lacrosse, student council, choices her sport had ruled out.

“I think I wanted so badly then for people to know me for me and nothing to do with my swimming success,” she said.

But in May 1971, while at Salem College in North Carolina, the pool called her back.

She heard her national 100- meter freestyle record still stood. And her curiosity grew: Maybe, just maybe, she had another Olympics in her.

Plunging into workouts, she gradually regained her form — and her inner fire.

“I was back in the throes of loving it, the competition and the training and the stroke-work, the whole thing,” she said. “I knew I wasn’t turning back. No matter what happened, I would keep dreaming.”

At the time, she was considered old for an Olympic hopeful. Swimmers teasingly called her “grandmother.” But she had the last laugh in Chicago at the 1972 trials. Like four years before, she finished fourth in the 100- meter race but made the 400- meter relay.

No longer the wide-eyed teenager, she went as a tri-captain of the women’s team.

“That was a huge honor,” she said. “I was that much older, so even though I was still known as being pretty quiet and shy, I was much more outgoing the second time around.”

Munich brought highs and lows. As her relay team finished triumphantly, she saw the scoreboard’s red light flash, indicating a world record. And from her dormitory room, she stared as tanks rolled toward the building where Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes.

All of it still resonates with Brown, now 57 and an elementary school teacher and swimming instructor. At team reunions, the old camaraderie rekindles, and she’s back in the Villages with her friends, back in the lanes, swimming for her country.

“Winning a medal, of course, is what your goal is,” she said. “But just being an Olympian is huge.”

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.

FIRST OF A SERIES, "Olympians among us," DURING THE SUMMER OLYMPICS