But his father, a man of few words who had come north with the greatest reluctance and worry, was overcome with the enormity of the moment and how it had come to be. His son had had the chance to go to good schools, run on real tracks, and be coached at Ohio State University, rather than spend his life picking cotton. “My son’s victories in Germany,” Henry Owens said, “force me to realize that I made the best move of my life by moving out of the South.”
