STORIES

Once described as “the world’s most eclectic person,” Dr. Tom Waddell was a great man, most notable for his participation in the 1968 Olympics and the founding of The Gay Games.

It was while working on the Gay Games that Dr. Tom Waddell met Sara Lewinstein, a prominent and local Bay Area gay and women’s rights activist who came from a strong family of WWII survivors. After becoming best friends, they decided to do what much of society considered unheard of at the time and welcome a child into an openly LGBTQ family.

Hello, I am Jessica Waddell-Lewinstein Kopp, and I am the daughter of Dr. Tom Waddell and Sara Lewinstein.

My dad attended college on a football scholarship. After graduating, he pursued his medical degree and joined the Army as a preventative-medical officer and paratrooper, before going on to work as a doctor who specialized in infectious disease. In 1968, he joined Team USA for the Olympics in Mexico City where he secured 6^th place in the Decathlon, followed by goodwill track and field tours across South America and Africa with his fellow teammates. He sadly injured himself before he could participate in the 1972 event but went on to work as a physician for the Saudi Royal Family in in Riyadh as well as the Saudi Arabian Olympic team at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.

In the late 1970s, he decided to become one of the first professional athletes to publicly come out as a gay man with his partner, Charles Deaton, a former CIA operative. It was also around this time that he finally started to settle down in San Francisco, California – a place where he had always found he was fully able to embrace the beautiful, diverse and flourishing open-minded culture of the Bay Area.

After spending many years travelling the globe, he had a vision. Inspired by the founding principles of the Olympics, he wanted to build an international sporting event that sought to triumph over the discrimination and marginalization he had witnessed all over the world and provide a space for open expression, celebration of identity, and athletic competition. He envisioned the Gay Olympics.

Aware that sports didn’t always offer a welcoming environment for many gay people, the Gay Olympics would be an event that would allow all people, regardless of sexuality or other forms of identity, to come together at all skill levels, have fun, and compete. But when the Gay Olympics were ready to launch in 1982, the U.S. Olympic Committee, having been awarded exclusive use of the word “Olympic,” sued for trademark infringement and won. To say my dad was disgusted was an understatement. This was a move blatantly motivated by discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Overcoming his anger, he rebranded the event as the Gay Games, revised the promotional and marketing materials, and launched the event that summer with over 1,300 athletes from 170 worldwide cities and 12 countries.

In January 1985, when I was about a year-and-a-half, my dad noticed some white patches on his tongue while brushing his teeth, quickly recognizing it as a possible sign of the HIV/AIDS virus that was emerging as a threat in the community. Testing confirmed that he was right.  Still, he continued to focus on planning the next quadrennial event, which was to be held again in San Francisco in the summer of 1986.

As the date for Gay Games II approached, my dad’s health was in decline. I remember visiting him in the hospital at one point.  And even though he was bed-ridden, he still managed to pick me up two little figurines from the gift shop (that I still have) to show me he was thinking of me.

But that was not the end!  He was so committed to the Gay Games that in a last feat of strength, he checked himself out of the hospital to march into the Opening Ceremonies, deliver an opening address, and take home a gold medal in the javelin event.  The second event drew 3,500 athletes from 251 cities and 17 countries.

Within a year of the event, my dad was gone. After the Games, his health had continued to decline, and in July 1987, he uttered his last words of “Well, this should be interesting” at our home in San Francisco with my mom.

He was 49, and I was three.  My own understanding of what was happening was limited, and I firmly believed that like Sleeping Beauty, if I could just find my dad and give him a kiss, he would wake up and be with me again. And although I would soon realize I wouldn’t be getting him back, I did later learn that he left an incredible legacy that would stay with me throughout my life.

The Gay Games lives on today and are held every four years in new locations.  For over 40 years, the Federation of the Games has continued to propel acceptance of diversity and advocate for a world where dignity and inclusion are the cornerstones of society.

When people talk about great people and who their heroes are, he is mine. I could not be prouder of the man my father was, and what he accomplished in his lifetime, alongside the positive impact he had on this world.