Written by John Mark Adkison
t was 15 years ago when Harding junior Cindy Cheatham was selected from 600 runners to take part in the 1996 Summer Olympics as a torch bearer. In this story, staff writer Heather Henson reports on how Cheatham received the honor and what it meant to her. Because of spacial limitations, some sections were cut from the original story.
“I just busted out laughing, it was funny!” Cindy Cheatham, a junior nursing major from Montgomery, Ala., said. During a routinephone call home, Cheatham learned that her mother was in the process of writing an essay that would allow her to be considered as a torchbearer for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Her mother had seen the advertisement in a local newspaper and decided to have Cheatham’s name put into the running. A few weeks into February, Cheatham was surprised to learn that she had, in fact, been chosen to participate in this summer’s Olympic Torch Relay.
On a Saturday morning in February, Cheatham’s parents found an information packet on their front porch explaining that she had been selected as one of 43 Montgomery area torchbearers from a pool of more than 600 applicants. That afternoon, her parents faxed information to the OlympicCommittee saying that Cheatham would definitely run in the relay.The announcement was to be kept confidential until an official press conference could be held in Alabama.Her parents called to tell her the surprising news, and Cheatham immediately shared her excitement with a few close friends.
On February 15, a special ceremony was held in the Montgomery Civic Center, and the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games in- troduced the 43 “community heroes.”Although Cheatham was not able to attend the ceremony, she received her T-shirt, more information and news clippings in the mail over the next few weeks.
“It was just such a shock. It didn’t really hit me until I saw the stuff my parents taped off the T.V. and clipped from the newspaper,and I heard whatthe people at church were saying to them,” Cheatham said, after making a trip home for the weekend recently. She said that, everywhere she went, people congratulated her and wished her luck.That’s when it began to sink in that this was quite an honor.
The search for the Olympic torchbearers was handled nationwide by ACOG and helped locally by the Montgomery Area United Way. Across the country, 147 judging panels selected the 5,500 torchbearers. Local leaders from the Montgomery community met in January to judge the applications they had received. The panel based their decisions on citizens who had shown outstanding volunteer service and worked in the community as role models and leaders.
“I read the essay my mom wrote. It was mostly just alist of things I’d done in high school,” Cheatham said. In high school,she was nominated for the Jimmy Hitchcock Award, an honor which recognizes athletes participating in Christian and community service. Cheatham feels that receiving this honor in high school was part of the reason her community chose her to represent them by carrying the Olympic torch.
“It’s so awesome,but when people ask how I got it,it’s hard to explain,” Cheatham said.
Last spring, while Cheatham was at HUF, a group went to the Olympic museum in Switzerland. There, they saw all the torches from past Olympics. She said it was interesting to see the designs on each of the torches from previous years, as they seemed to represent the city that sponsored the Olympics that year.Throughout the semester, as the group traveled in Europe, she was able to visit the sites of some past Olympics, including Barcelona and Munich.
Because of this experience, it will be especially interesting for Cheatham to have a torch of her own this summer. “After we run in the relay, we are allowed to buy our torches. Only torchbearers can have them; they won’t be sold anywhere else,” Cheatham said.
The torch relay will begin April 27 in Los Angeles and will conclude 84 days later in Atlanta, on July 19, during the Opening Ceremony of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. The relay will stretch across 15,000 miles and cover 42 states,and Cindy Cheatham will play a part in this summer’s Olympic Torch Relay.
“It’s a great honor, and I’m excited about it,” Cheatham said.
