KING EPITOMIZED CAN-DO ATTITUDE
Son of 1988 Calgary Olympics architect says his dad went out the way he lived
According to his son, Dave, it’s a story Frank King told every Tuesday while working out at the Glencoe Club.
That said, it was a tale well worth re-telling at King ’s celebration of life Thursday when the man who brought Calgary the 1988 Olympics was saluted for forever reaching for the stars.
While in the early stages of voluntarily building an Olympic bid, King was also in the midst of trying to buy a packaging plant out east for his company, Turbo Resources.
The two sides couldn’t agree on a price until his counterpart, Joe Womersly, shared an idea.
“Joe suggested an eight-mile foot race would bridge the gap between $4-and-$5 million,” said Dave, smiling over the obvious excitement his father had as a lifelong runner.
Throwing himself into the $1 million challenge (keep in mind it was 1979), King went from 185 pounds to 158, training madly as he proposed they up the ante to a marathon.
A Boston Marathon. There was a snag. King hadn’t run a marathon before and Womersly’s two marathon times hadn’t qualified them for Boston. No problem, as one of them (we’ll protect both parties) got a friend from the Toronto Police Marathon to fabricate qualifying times for both.
Womersly tried to cheat by starting seven minutes further up the pack than he should have, prompting King to hunt him down on course, smack his butt on the way by and jokingly say, “God will punish you for this!”
As it turns out, Womersly’s decision to wear new shoes prompted him to drop out of a race finished by King in 3 hours and 22 minutes.
For most people, winning a $1 million race would be the pinnacle of their sporting endeavours.
Not King. His sporting crown came nine years later when he brought the world to Calgary.
No matter what the stakes, King refused to believe he couldn’t win.
It was no different in 1978 when he put up his hand at a Booster Club meeting to look into the possibility of bringing the globe’s largest sporting spectacle to a city that didn’t have a single Olympic winter sport venue.
No challenge was too daunting. It was with that same determination he was training vigorously for a masters event last Wednesday when his 81-year-old heart gave out at the Glencoe Club, prompting those first on the scene to ask if he knew his name.
“My name is Frank King. I think I ran one lap too many,” recalled Dave of his father’s last words.
“No suffering. He went out with his runners on.”
As son Steve added, “not only did Dad know how to live his life properly, he knew how to die properly.”
While reaching for the top. Dave said it wasn’t uncommon for people to applaud the octogenarian as he raced around the Glencoe track with reckless abandon.
Steve likened his father’s attitude to Buddy the Elf, played by Will Ferrell in the Christmas classic, Elf.
“He had some bad things happen in his life — his dad died when he was 13, his daughter died when she was 43, he had a grandson die at 19, he lost his house and all of his possessions in the flood of 2013 and had companies go bankrupt — but he just had this wide-eyes enthusiasm and naive positivity that nothing could go wrong and everything was the best-ever,” said Steve.
“He was one part Bill Gates and two parts Buddy the Elf. That’s what made him so unique from anybody I’ve ever met.”
Fact is, no man or woman has had a bigger impact on this city than King, who volunteered for nine of his 10 years as the man behind the Games.
He put Calgary on the map. A who’s who of the Calgary sporting scene numbering close to 1,000 jammed the Red & White Club for the uplifting celebration of King ’s life with McMahon Stadium in the background — a perfect backdrop given the same venue in which Calgary bid adieu to the ’88 Games allowed friends and family to say goodbye to King.
Calgary-born musical genius Dave Pierce and internationally acclaimed singer Adam James performed several of King ’s favourite songs. Pierce brought the Emmy he won for musical direction at the 2010 Olympic opening and closing ceremonies and dedicated it to King ’s memory, thanking a man he’d never met for the gift of inspiration.
Others spoke of King ’s brilliance as a family man above all else — something the grandfather of nine took great pride in. As his daughter, Linda, said, “he taught us to never give up.”
“He was so proud of that sense of community the Olympics brought about,” said Linda.
“I remember his secretary saying, ‘He taught me I could be better than I ever thought I could be.’ ”
He taught Calgary the same thing.
He was one part Bill Gates and two parts Buddy the Elf. That’s what made him so unique from anybody I’ve ever met.