Chris Evert was 17, Nixon had just been reelected, and the World Trade Center had just taken over the New York City skyline. The year was 1972; the year I started working at WTTF Radio, Inc., had a polyester leisure suit and had not yet met my wife.
I stumbled across a collection of LIFE magazines from 1972 the other day. You will be please to know that Raquel Welch hasn’t changed. Liz has. So has Henry Kissinger.
In the last couple of pages of each issue, you often could find a section called “Parting Shots.” These generally were a couple of half-page articles with a photo of the subject. Sometimes they were about sports.
The article about Chris Evert spoke of how her father, a tennis pro in Fort Lauderdale, had started her in the game at the age of six. The inspiration for the story was Chrissie’s 6-1, 6-0 defeat of Billie Jean King for the championship of the Fort Lauderdale Women’s International Tournament.
The year before she had reached the semifinals at Forest Hills.
But the family’s reaction to her sudden fame had been to fight it. They still expected her to get A’s in high school, even if she had to skip some tournaments to do so. Chris reportedly was saying that she was thinking about postponing college to turn pro as soon as she became eligible.
Another “Parting Shots” story speaks of a professional boxing match between Joe Frazier and Terry Daniels.
Daniels was a senior in pre-law at Southern Methodist University. A native of Cleveland, he had taken up boxing as a past time and eventually became a part-time pro.
Promoters needed someone to match with Frazier as a pre-Super Bowl attraction. Daniels took the challenge.
Frazier scored five knockdowns before a TKO was declared in the fourth round. Daniels took home $40 thousand dollars.
The LIFE story spoke of a sign in the SMU locker room Daniels had used as his inspiration.
“A man can only be beaten two ways … if he dies or if he gives up.”
A third “Parting Shots” story involves Frank Shorter, an American who won the 1972 Olympic Marathon.
The article describes how three cities where Shorter had connections held celebrations to honor him. But one, Taos, NM, where he was actually living and trained for the Olympics ignored his accomplishment.
According to the article, there was a socio-political undercurrent and plain hard feelings between Taos and the Shorters.
Back then, there was ill will between the local Hispanic community and the long haired, arty types arriving to take part in the commune culture growing around Taos.
Shorter was a local. His father was a doctor who provided care to the poor in and around Taos. But his hair was long.
One day in 1970, while out on one of his usual 20-mile runs, Shorter came across a carload of Hispanic boys trying to pickup two girls. The girls were resistant but outnumbered.
Shorter intervened and the girls left, but he had to use his running ability to escape.
After that, he was a marked man. According to the Shorter family, Frank was continually harassed and drivers even tried to run him down with their cars as he trod the highways.
It got so bad that his father took to following him in a pickup truck, with a loaded shotgun.
Shorter finally had to move his workouts to the ski slope areas in the mountains.
Then, during an interview with a local newspaper about his son’s gold medal achievement, the elder Shorter brought up the subject of the troubles of two years earlier. Local movers and shakers in Taos felt that his remarks painted the entire
community with a broad brush and they resented it.
Therefore no party in Taos for Frank Shorter.
The three-page pictorial about the World Trade Center, in the March 31 issue, presents an optimistic view of the project, still unfinished but topped out in 1972.
But it also notes that critics were worried about the strain it would put on the city’s electrical, communications and transportation systems.
If they only knew.