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Running in Borrowed Shoes
Thane Baker and the 1952 Summer Games
Published by: TCU Press
328 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in
For Professors: Exam Copies
Thane Baker grew up in the Kansas Dust Bowl. An Olympic medal winner from his small town gave seven-year-old Thane hopes for his own Olympic glory. Yet a work injury at age fourteen shoved steel behind his kneecap and ended his dreams. When new on his college campus, a coach allowed Thane to walk onto the track team. Three years later, Thane earned an unexpected berth on the 1952 United States Olympic Track and Field Team and traveled to New York City, Helsinki, Finland, and other European cities for competitions. Friendships grew between the American athletes in their six weeks together. Together, they faced hurdles of financial insecurity, racial inequality, chilly winds, and inadequate diets as they confronted the Soviet Union for the first time. Despite the obstacles, Thane, wearing borrowed socks and borrowed shoes, returned to his small town with an Olympic medal, forever changed by his experiences.
Catherine Baker Nicholson had her own athletic career and won a collegiate national championship in the 800-meter run. She gave up the practice of law to raise and homeschool her four children, one of whom later died of brain cancer. Today, she lives in the Omaha, Nebraska, area with her husband and near her father, Thane Baker. Beginning each day with prayer, she studies, writes, volunteers, and adores her children and grandchildren.
Running in Borrowed Shoes gives an interesting account of the experiences of American Olympic athletes while representing their country abroad in the 1950's. I found the text vividly written as well as thoroughly researched and richly documented. This is perhaps the most comprehensive account we have seen about the Helsinki Olympic Games seen through the eyes of a foreign athlete.
Vesa Tikander, Special Researcher, Sports Museum of Finland, Helsinki
Running in Borrowed Shoes is finely textured with the sense of what it was like to grow up during those trying years of Depression and war, and how friendships and community nevertheless provided hope and inspiration. Lovingly recreated by Catherine Baker Nicholson and carefully vetted by Thane Baker himself, this book provides rich detail from an archive of memorabilia, contemporaneous news accounts, interviews with surviving Olympians from the 1952 team and with descendants of Olympians now deceased.
Beautifully written and carefully documented . . . I found much here to admire and to enjoy.
Teresa Sullivan, President Emerita and Professor, University of Virginia
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