kaorder1999
06-22-2008, 03:40 PM
Former phenom Roy Martin couldn't outrun hard times
01:02 AM CDT on Sunday, June 22, 2008
By BRAD TOWNSEND / The Dallas Morning News
btownsend@dallasnews.com
CEDAR HILL – Twenty summers after competing in the Seoul Olympics, Roy "Robot" Martin bursts into lung-exerting, face-contorting ...
Laughter.
For a moment, the best high school sprinter in Dallas and perhaps American history forgets that his paychecks stopped coming three weeks ago. And that his second divorce will be final any day now.
"About 288," he guffaws, reacting to a delicately phrased question about his current weight. "Yeah, toting 288 pounds around is not healthy, for sure."
He weighed 172 when he blazed onto the world stage as a 17-year-old Roosevelt High phenom, finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the 1984 U.S. trials to earn an alternate spot on the Olympic team.
At the following year's UIL state meet in Austin, he electrified 30,000 Memorial Stadium fans by winning the 200 in 20.13 seconds, a national high school record that still stands.
He helped SMU win the 1986 NCAA outdoor title, flunked out the following year, yet earned a berth in the '88 Olympics.
But two decades later, with another U.S. trials commencing this week, Robot largely has been forgotten, even in his hometown.
"Sometimes we soon forget after the dance is over," says retired Roosevelt track coach Earnest James, who won three straight Class 5A team titles with Martin. "There has never been one like him in high school. Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, nobody."
Martin, now 41, earned enough trophies to fill a room and money for a Corvette, designer clothes and a lavish wedding. But the only vestiges in his 1,655-square-foot Cedar Hill home are scuffed NCAA plaques, some medals and a 1986 Track & Field News cover.
He says most of his trophies and mementos were stolen 10 years ago after his mother, Ola Mae, got evicted from her apartment.
But that only begins to encapsulate what has happened since a devastated Martin left Seoul's Jamsil Olympic Stadium on Sept. 28, 1988, and vanished from the limelight.
Tried one comeback. Drove 18-wheelers for nine years. Worked as a hall monitor at the middle school he attended, O.W. Holmes. Drove school buses. Was assistant track coach at Paul Quinn College in 2006-07.
Yet concerned friends note that through his tribulations, Martin has maintained the resolve and optimism that propelled him from hardscrabble South Dallas to Seoul.
"In my mind, I'm just going to go over this obstacle here, then the next one and eventually I'll get up that hill," he says. "I've made a lot of friends in a lot of places, so I guess I can't complain.
"Well, a little bit. But who would listen if I complained about my life?"
Running into trouble
Last October, the man known as Robot ever since a middle-school girlfriend remarked about his running style returned to the news.
Regretfully.
Two months into an opportunity to coach track and work as a hall monitor at Florence Middle School, Martin got arrested.
According to the Dallas Independent School District police report, Martin attempted to conduct "an unauthorized drug sting" at the school by purchasing a Xanax from a student for $1, then turning it in to the principal.
Martin says he had told school officials there was a drug problem but was told little could be done. He says that after a female student offered to sell him the anxiety disorder drug, he bought it because it was the only way he could get evidence.
"They turned around and arrested me for controlled substance," he says. "I probably went about it the wrong way, but I thought I was doing the right thing."
A Dallas grand jury no-billed the indictments. Though he no longer faces criminal charges, Martin remains suspended from the middle school and the bus-driving position he held for two years.
A DISD spokesman says the district cannot comment on personnel matters. Martin, who stopped receiving pay when the school year ended, appealed the suspension but says the school is pursuing termination.
No matter the outcome, he says "the DISD stuff turned my life upside down." He says it is a factor in why he and his wife of 13 years, Paula, are divorcing. They have a 9-year-old daughter, Courtney.
James, who coached 43 years at Roosevelt, wonders how someone who once brought glory to DISD could be punished so harshly.
"It tears me up," James says. "Some people, I think, threw him under a bus. You cannot ask for a more humble, honest person. What they're accusing him of is purely asinine."
Martin remains determined to coach. Two years ago, he enrolled at Paul Quinn College to get a physical education degree. He says he lacks about 30 hours.
He immerses himself in The Robots of Cedar Hill Track Club, a nonprofit USA Track & Field organization he started four years ago.
"If I want to be a coach, I've got to lead by example," he says. "I can't tell kids, 'Hey, you need to be in school,' when I didn't finish my degree. Especially when [at SMU] it was free.
"The only thing keeping me focused and sane is giving back to these kids."
Lost opportunity
In track, the margin between success and failure often is hundredths of seconds.
How different would Martin's life be had he not been outleaned by Thomas Jefferson in the 1984 trials at Los Angeles' Coliseum?
"I wasn't used to leaning," he winces, showing a reporter a replay of that 200-meter final on a Robot highlights DVD made by a friend. "That was my Olympic medal right there."
Lewis, Kirk Baptiste and Jefferson finished 1-2-3 in those trials, as well as the Olympics. At a meet in Philadelphia a week after the trials, Martin beat Jefferson in both the 100 and 200.
"At the trials, he wasn't at the designated check-in 15 minutes before race time," recalls James. "So I started walking around the Coliseum and found him with Harvey, who was yelling, 'This is all about money! You've got to go out and do it!' "
Harvey was Roy's cousin, former Cowboys defensive end Harvey Martin.
Roy says his father, Roy Chester Martin Sr., wanted him to focus on football, like Harvey.
Roy Sr. and Ola Mae divorced when Roy Jr. was about 6. Roy and younger brother Roderick briefly lived with their father in an apartment off Colorado Boulevard. Oldest brother Reginald stayed with Ola Mae in the duplex on Fernwood Avenue.
Martin says his father cooked, cleaned and encouraged, often marveling at how fast little Roy could fetch cigarettes from the 7-Eleven. But Roy Jr. and Roderick soon returned to the duplex.
"After that, we never saw my father until I got on the scene and became Robot," Martin says. "Then he wanted to come around and play Dad, always tipsy or drunk."
So in August 1984, instead of joining Dwayne Evans (200 meters, 1976), Jim Ryun (1500, 1964) and Arthur Newton (marathon, 1900) as the only 17-year-old American males to compete in Olympic running events, Martin returned to Roosevelt for football two-a-days.
Track practices were blocks away, on a dirt path encircling city-owned, whiskey bottle-littered Moore Park.
At least at Roosevelt Martin was ensured breakfast, lunch and a father figure in James. To fans flocking to his high school meets, he was the sometimes brash, seemingly invincible Robot. "The machine," he says.
The moment he chose SMU over Texas was momentous for Mustangs coach Ted McLaughlin.
"But maybe it wasn't the best place for him because he was too close to home," McLaughlin says. "Maybe, in hindsight, had he left he might have been able to put more time into the academics. He wasn't academically disciplined enough at that stage."
Change of scenery
Through McLaughlin, Martin met and briefly trained with UCLA track coach Bob Kersee in 1986.
Two years later, out of school, engaged to high school sweetheart Paulette and the Seoul Olympics looming, Martin moved to Long Beach, Calif., to live and train with Kersee and his wife, Jackie.
"I don't think Roy realized how gifted and talented he was," recalls Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who won three Olympic gold medals as a heptathlete and long jumper. "He had his goals, but there's a fine line between being on the verge of a breakthrough and also wanting to get married."
While Bob administered tough-love training, Jackie mentored 21-year-old Martin through homesickness. He had bulked to a muscular 200 pounds but still craved McDonald's.
Though Bob monitored their diets, Jackie and Roy sometimes slipped away to Polly's restaurant and treated themselves to banberry pie – banana cream, strawberries and whipped cream.
At the U.S. trials in Indianapolis, Martin breezed through the 200-meter preliminary rounds, though after the second race Bob Kersee admonished, "I want you coming off that curve first, not third!"
In the final, Joe DeLoach and Carl Lewis finished 1-2, but Martin got the last Olympics berth, this time lunging at the finish.
Jackie says that as Seoul approached, she cautioned Martin that taking his mother and fiancée to South Korea might hinder his focus. "But I just think Roy was a giving person," she says.
Martin says he regrets not taking James instead. He says he blew "stupid money" on hotel rooms and a "shopping frenzy."
Still, once inside the packed 100,000-seat stadium, he charged into the semifinals. With Lewis and Martin in one semi and DeLoach in the other, many anticipated an American medal sweep.
"And I'll never forget to this day my mom saying, 'Roy, do you realize you're in the same heat with Carl Lewis?'
"I said, 'Mom, yeah, I don't care. I'm fixing to beat Carl Lewis today.' "
Twenty years later, Martin's eyes well, recalling her next words: "You can't beat him. You think you can beat him?"
"I think," he says, "that shattered me more than anything in my entire life did."
Starting in Lane 5, with Lewis in 4, Martin was toast by the middle of the turn. He finished sixth, failing to qualify for the final. A Morning News reporter attempted to get the hometown legend's reaction.
Robot shrugged and walked away.
Out of favor
Roy and Paulette married that November. Thirteen months later, Roy Chester Martin III was born. Brother Paul arrived three years later.
Now Robot says 18-year-old Roy III won't return his calls. Paul briefly competed for The Robots track club.
"Hell, he works around the corner here at the Hobby Lobby," Martin says. "I go see him, he doesn't speak to me. Looks at me like I'm a stranger."
He traces the fallouts to a bitter period three years ago, when remarried Paulette pressured him to give up parental rights. Amid that, Martin says he was going through bankruptcy and recovering from Bell's palsy (facial paralysis) when a friend pulled up to his house.
Roy Sr. had died. Roy Jr. fell to his knees.
At the wake, he stared into the casket. His father's voice played in his mind. For the first time, the long-ago words had clarity.
"Son, when you have kids some day, you'll understand. What I went through, you're going to go through."
Eye on the future
Two blasts of Coach Robot's whistle, message received.
Without a word, The Robots of Cedar Hill cease stretching and take two laps around the Permenter Middle School track.
The nearly two dozen athletes, ages 4-21, include Martin's daughter Courtney, but Coach Robot is all business from the moment he arrives in his Ford Taurus, its shock absorbers sagging from a trunk crammed with track gear.
"She's going to be the next Flo-Jo," Martin blurts, pointing across the field at 8-year-old Shelby Sisk.
Upon completing her warm-up laps, Shelby confirms that she indeed plans to break Florence Griffith-Joyner's 100- and 200-meter world records. What else does she know about Flo-Jo?
"Died in her sleep," she answers.
It is after 6 p.m., but 90-degree temperatures beat down on the track that the Robots share with two other clubs. Martin estimates that the track is 10 to 20 meters short of the regulation 400.
But, hey, it's free and actually an upgrade from Moore Park, where 18-year-old Robot oversaw a particularly memorable Roosevelt practice while Coach James took the teachers aptitude test.
"Next day, more than one player asked, 'Coach, did you give Roy that practice schedule? He nearly killed us,' " James chuckles.
On meet days, James recalls, "when he got out of the van, he knew he couldn't be beat."
Everyone knew, including a Skyline sprinter named Michael Johnson, who was a year younger than Martin.
"He was phenomenal," Johnson recalls. "We were probably in one of the most difficult districts in the country. Even still, he was just so far ahead of everyone. It was incredible to watch, but at the same time I had to compete against him every week.
"You knew first place was gone. You tried to beat out the other guys for second."
Today, their lots could not be more different. Johnson, the world record-holder at 200 and 400 meters, trains world-class athletes at the state-of-the-art Michael Johnson Performance Center in McKinney.
Johnson says he has heard "bits and pieces" of what has become of Martin. Martin says he pulled for Johnson while watching the 1992, '96 and 2000 Olympics on TV.
But Robot can't help but wonder if his hometown ever fully appreciated what he overcame and accomplished. He says Dallas officials talked about presenting him a key to the city in both '84 and '88.
"Didn't happen," he says. "And then in '92, I got a phone call that they wanted me to present a key to Michael Johnson. So of course, you know I told them where they could go with that key."
He says that for several years after that call, "I went into seclusion. Didn't want to discuss track. Didn't want to wear anything track. Didn't want to go to any track meets."
But he says his bout with Bell's palsy, which doctors said may have been caused by a minor stroke, "opened my eyes to a lot of realities. I can't keep holding grudges because people are going to do what they want to."
That is when he started attending the state high school meet and Texas Relays, and when he decided to form The Robots of Cedar Hill and pursue a coaching career.
"I tell them about life lessons," he says. "It's my job to make sure they run through the right door. And I'm not looking for nothing in return. As long as they're happy, I'm happy."
01:02 AM CDT on Sunday, June 22, 2008
By BRAD TOWNSEND / The Dallas Morning News
btownsend@dallasnews.com
CEDAR HILL – Twenty summers after competing in the Seoul Olympics, Roy "Robot" Martin bursts into lung-exerting, face-contorting ...
Laughter.
For a moment, the best high school sprinter in Dallas and perhaps American history forgets that his paychecks stopped coming three weeks ago. And that his second divorce will be final any day now.
"About 288," he guffaws, reacting to a delicately phrased question about his current weight. "Yeah, toting 288 pounds around is not healthy, for sure."
He weighed 172 when he blazed onto the world stage as a 17-year-old Roosevelt High phenom, finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the 1984 U.S. trials to earn an alternate spot on the Olympic team.
At the following year's UIL state meet in Austin, he electrified 30,000 Memorial Stadium fans by winning the 200 in 20.13 seconds, a national high school record that still stands.
He helped SMU win the 1986 NCAA outdoor title, flunked out the following year, yet earned a berth in the '88 Olympics.
But two decades later, with another U.S. trials commencing this week, Robot largely has been forgotten, even in his hometown.
"Sometimes we soon forget after the dance is over," says retired Roosevelt track coach Earnest James, who won three straight Class 5A team titles with Martin. "There has never been one like him in high school. Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, nobody."
Martin, now 41, earned enough trophies to fill a room and money for a Corvette, designer clothes and a lavish wedding. But the only vestiges in his 1,655-square-foot Cedar Hill home are scuffed NCAA plaques, some medals and a 1986 Track & Field News cover.
He says most of his trophies and mementos were stolen 10 years ago after his mother, Ola Mae, got evicted from her apartment.
But that only begins to encapsulate what has happened since a devastated Martin left Seoul's Jamsil Olympic Stadium on Sept. 28, 1988, and vanished from the limelight.
Tried one comeback. Drove 18-wheelers for nine years. Worked as a hall monitor at the middle school he attended, O.W. Holmes. Drove school buses. Was assistant track coach at Paul Quinn College in 2006-07.
Yet concerned friends note that through his tribulations, Martin has maintained the resolve and optimism that propelled him from hardscrabble South Dallas to Seoul.
"In my mind, I'm just going to go over this obstacle here, then the next one and eventually I'll get up that hill," he says. "I've made a lot of friends in a lot of places, so I guess I can't complain.
"Well, a little bit. But who would listen if I complained about my life?"
Running into trouble
Last October, the man known as Robot ever since a middle-school girlfriend remarked about his running style returned to the news.
Regretfully.
Two months into an opportunity to coach track and work as a hall monitor at Florence Middle School, Martin got arrested.
According to the Dallas Independent School District police report, Martin attempted to conduct "an unauthorized drug sting" at the school by purchasing a Xanax from a student for $1, then turning it in to the principal.
Martin says he had told school officials there was a drug problem but was told little could be done. He says that after a female student offered to sell him the anxiety disorder drug, he bought it because it was the only way he could get evidence.
"They turned around and arrested me for controlled substance," he says. "I probably went about it the wrong way, but I thought I was doing the right thing."
A Dallas grand jury no-billed the indictments. Though he no longer faces criminal charges, Martin remains suspended from the middle school and the bus-driving position he held for two years.
A DISD spokesman says the district cannot comment on personnel matters. Martin, who stopped receiving pay when the school year ended, appealed the suspension but says the school is pursuing termination.
No matter the outcome, he says "the DISD stuff turned my life upside down." He says it is a factor in why he and his wife of 13 years, Paula, are divorcing. They have a 9-year-old daughter, Courtney.
James, who coached 43 years at Roosevelt, wonders how someone who once brought glory to DISD could be punished so harshly.
"It tears me up," James says. "Some people, I think, threw him under a bus. You cannot ask for a more humble, honest person. What they're accusing him of is purely asinine."
Martin remains determined to coach. Two years ago, he enrolled at Paul Quinn College to get a physical education degree. He says he lacks about 30 hours.
He immerses himself in The Robots of Cedar Hill Track Club, a nonprofit USA Track & Field organization he started four years ago.
"If I want to be a coach, I've got to lead by example," he says. "I can't tell kids, 'Hey, you need to be in school,' when I didn't finish my degree. Especially when [at SMU] it was free.
"The only thing keeping me focused and sane is giving back to these kids."
Lost opportunity
In track, the margin between success and failure often is hundredths of seconds.
How different would Martin's life be had he not been outleaned by Thomas Jefferson in the 1984 trials at Los Angeles' Coliseum?
"I wasn't used to leaning," he winces, showing a reporter a replay of that 200-meter final on a Robot highlights DVD made by a friend. "That was my Olympic medal right there."
Lewis, Kirk Baptiste and Jefferson finished 1-2-3 in those trials, as well as the Olympics. At a meet in Philadelphia a week after the trials, Martin beat Jefferson in both the 100 and 200.
"At the trials, he wasn't at the designated check-in 15 minutes before race time," recalls James. "So I started walking around the Coliseum and found him with Harvey, who was yelling, 'This is all about money! You've got to go out and do it!' "
Harvey was Roy's cousin, former Cowboys defensive end Harvey Martin.
Roy says his father, Roy Chester Martin Sr., wanted him to focus on football, like Harvey.
Roy Sr. and Ola Mae divorced when Roy Jr. was about 6. Roy and younger brother Roderick briefly lived with their father in an apartment off Colorado Boulevard. Oldest brother Reginald stayed with Ola Mae in the duplex on Fernwood Avenue.
Martin says his father cooked, cleaned and encouraged, often marveling at how fast little Roy could fetch cigarettes from the 7-Eleven. But Roy Jr. and Roderick soon returned to the duplex.
"After that, we never saw my father until I got on the scene and became Robot," Martin says. "Then he wanted to come around and play Dad, always tipsy or drunk."
So in August 1984, instead of joining Dwayne Evans (200 meters, 1976), Jim Ryun (1500, 1964) and Arthur Newton (marathon, 1900) as the only 17-year-old American males to compete in Olympic running events, Martin returned to Roosevelt for football two-a-days.
Track practices were blocks away, on a dirt path encircling city-owned, whiskey bottle-littered Moore Park.
At least at Roosevelt Martin was ensured breakfast, lunch and a father figure in James. To fans flocking to his high school meets, he was the sometimes brash, seemingly invincible Robot. "The machine," he says.
The moment he chose SMU over Texas was momentous for Mustangs coach Ted McLaughlin.
"But maybe it wasn't the best place for him because he was too close to home," McLaughlin says. "Maybe, in hindsight, had he left he might have been able to put more time into the academics. He wasn't academically disciplined enough at that stage."
Change of scenery
Through McLaughlin, Martin met and briefly trained with UCLA track coach Bob Kersee in 1986.
Two years later, out of school, engaged to high school sweetheart Paulette and the Seoul Olympics looming, Martin moved to Long Beach, Calif., to live and train with Kersee and his wife, Jackie.
"I don't think Roy realized how gifted and talented he was," recalls Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who won three Olympic gold medals as a heptathlete and long jumper. "He had his goals, but there's a fine line between being on the verge of a breakthrough and also wanting to get married."
While Bob administered tough-love training, Jackie mentored 21-year-old Martin through homesickness. He had bulked to a muscular 200 pounds but still craved McDonald's.
Though Bob monitored their diets, Jackie and Roy sometimes slipped away to Polly's restaurant and treated themselves to banberry pie – banana cream, strawberries and whipped cream.
At the U.S. trials in Indianapolis, Martin breezed through the 200-meter preliminary rounds, though after the second race Bob Kersee admonished, "I want you coming off that curve first, not third!"
In the final, Joe DeLoach and Carl Lewis finished 1-2, but Martin got the last Olympics berth, this time lunging at the finish.
Jackie says that as Seoul approached, she cautioned Martin that taking his mother and fiancée to South Korea might hinder his focus. "But I just think Roy was a giving person," she says.
Martin says he regrets not taking James instead. He says he blew "stupid money" on hotel rooms and a "shopping frenzy."
Still, once inside the packed 100,000-seat stadium, he charged into the semifinals. With Lewis and Martin in one semi and DeLoach in the other, many anticipated an American medal sweep.
"And I'll never forget to this day my mom saying, 'Roy, do you realize you're in the same heat with Carl Lewis?'
"I said, 'Mom, yeah, I don't care. I'm fixing to beat Carl Lewis today.' "
Twenty years later, Martin's eyes well, recalling her next words: "You can't beat him. You think you can beat him?"
"I think," he says, "that shattered me more than anything in my entire life did."
Starting in Lane 5, with Lewis in 4, Martin was toast by the middle of the turn. He finished sixth, failing to qualify for the final. A Morning News reporter attempted to get the hometown legend's reaction.
Robot shrugged and walked away.
Out of favor
Roy and Paulette married that November. Thirteen months later, Roy Chester Martin III was born. Brother Paul arrived three years later.
Now Robot says 18-year-old Roy III won't return his calls. Paul briefly competed for The Robots track club.
"Hell, he works around the corner here at the Hobby Lobby," Martin says. "I go see him, he doesn't speak to me. Looks at me like I'm a stranger."
He traces the fallouts to a bitter period three years ago, when remarried Paulette pressured him to give up parental rights. Amid that, Martin says he was going through bankruptcy and recovering from Bell's palsy (facial paralysis) when a friend pulled up to his house.
Roy Sr. had died. Roy Jr. fell to his knees.
At the wake, he stared into the casket. His father's voice played in his mind. For the first time, the long-ago words had clarity.
"Son, when you have kids some day, you'll understand. What I went through, you're going to go through."
Eye on the future
Two blasts of Coach Robot's whistle, message received.
Without a word, The Robots of Cedar Hill cease stretching and take two laps around the Permenter Middle School track.
The nearly two dozen athletes, ages 4-21, include Martin's daughter Courtney, but Coach Robot is all business from the moment he arrives in his Ford Taurus, its shock absorbers sagging from a trunk crammed with track gear.
"She's going to be the next Flo-Jo," Martin blurts, pointing across the field at 8-year-old Shelby Sisk.
Upon completing her warm-up laps, Shelby confirms that she indeed plans to break Florence Griffith-Joyner's 100- and 200-meter world records. What else does she know about Flo-Jo?
"Died in her sleep," she answers.
It is after 6 p.m., but 90-degree temperatures beat down on the track that the Robots share with two other clubs. Martin estimates that the track is 10 to 20 meters short of the regulation 400.
But, hey, it's free and actually an upgrade from Moore Park, where 18-year-old Robot oversaw a particularly memorable Roosevelt practice while Coach James took the teachers aptitude test.
"Next day, more than one player asked, 'Coach, did you give Roy that practice schedule? He nearly killed us,' " James chuckles.
On meet days, James recalls, "when he got out of the van, he knew he couldn't be beat."
Everyone knew, including a Skyline sprinter named Michael Johnson, who was a year younger than Martin.
"He was phenomenal," Johnson recalls. "We were probably in one of the most difficult districts in the country. Even still, he was just so far ahead of everyone. It was incredible to watch, but at the same time I had to compete against him every week.
"You knew first place was gone. You tried to beat out the other guys for second."
Today, their lots could not be more different. Johnson, the world record-holder at 200 and 400 meters, trains world-class athletes at the state-of-the-art Michael Johnson Performance Center in McKinney.
Johnson says he has heard "bits and pieces" of what has become of Martin. Martin says he pulled for Johnson while watching the 1992, '96 and 2000 Olympics on TV.
But Robot can't help but wonder if his hometown ever fully appreciated what he overcame and accomplished. He says Dallas officials talked about presenting him a key to the city in both '84 and '88.
"Didn't happen," he says. "And then in '92, I got a phone call that they wanted me to present a key to Michael Johnson. So of course, you know I told them where they could go with that key."
He says that for several years after that call, "I went into seclusion. Didn't want to discuss track. Didn't want to wear anything track. Didn't want to go to any track meets."
But he says his bout with Bell's palsy, which doctors said may have been caused by a minor stroke, "opened my eyes to a lot of realities. I can't keep holding grudges because people are going to do what they want to."
That is when he started attending the state high school meet and Texas Relays, and when he decided to form The Robots of Cedar Hill and pursue a coaching career.
"I tell them about life lessons," he says. "It's my job to make sure they run through the right door. And I'm not looking for nothing in return. As long as they're happy, I'm happy."