By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
“The Dream Discovered.” That’s the title of chapter one of a book describing how a young boy in small-town Kansas began to dream of becoming an Olympic runner. The book was written by his daughter to chronicle his journey from far western Kansas to the heights of the Olympics.
Thane Baker is the man from rural Kansas who made this remarkable journey. His daughter, Catherine Baker Nicholson, authored the book Running in Borrowed Shoes, which is the primary source for this profile.
The book begins with seven-year-old Thane and his family attending Glenn Cunningham Day in their hometown of Elkhart, in the southwest corner of Kansas. The town was celebrating Glenn Cunningham, the hometown hero who ran the mile faster than anyone in the world at that time.
Young Thane asked his parents what the excitement was all about. They explained that Cunningham had won a medal at the Olympics. The little boy told his parents that he wanted to run in the Olympics too. Many kids have childhood dreams of being heroes or sports stars, but his parents gave him serious advice.
“If that’s what you really want, you will have to work harder than you ever thought you could. You will give up things you want to keep moving toward your goal,” his father said.
His mother told him to run home from school for lunch each day when the noon whistle sounded and she would time him. That began a lifetime of running.
Chapter two of the book is titled “The Dream Destroyed.” Young Thane got a job at the auto repair garage where his father worked. One day he was using a hammer when part of the hammer claw broke, flew off and pierced his knee. The doctor in Elkhart saw the complexity of the injury and sent Thane to the hospital at far-off Hays.
The surgeon in Hays evaluated the situation and chose not to cut the muscles and ligaments to remove the metal. He told Thane that he would fully recover but he was not to participate in athletics any more. Thane was devastated.
Over time, Baker did recover – so much so that his doctor gave him permission to return to sports. After graduating from Elkhart, he went on to Kansas State College in Manhattan.
At the end of fall semester, he saw a campus newspaper article which said that Ward Haylett, the K-State track and field coach, was having an informational meeting for anyone interested in participating on his team.
Baker attended that meeting in Nichols Gym. Haylett encouraged him to walk on. Eventually Haylett granted Baker a scholarship of $67.50 per semester and got him a job mopping a laundromat.
Baker had a phenomenal career, winning 10 Big Eight titles and three consecutive golds in the 100- and 220-yard dashes, plus an NCAA title. At the Olympic tryouts in Los Angeles in 1952, he qualified in the 200-meter dash.
The team was to fly from Los Angeles to New York on a newer propellor TWA plane. While en route, one of the engines caught fire. The pilot put the plane in a dive from 20,000 feet to 2,000 feet which successfully snuffed out the fire. Eventually the terrified passengers flew on to New York and then to Helsinki for the OIympics.
Coach Haylett lent Baker a pair of track shoes. In those shoes, he won a silver medal in the 200-meter dash. Four years later, at the 1956 Olympics, he won three more medals: Bronze in the 200, silver in the 100, and a gold medal on America’s world record-setting 400-meter relay team.
It’s an amazing record for someone from the rural community of Elkhart, population 1,726 people. Now, that’s rural.
Thane Baker later joined the Air Force and then worked in the oil business. He and Kathy were married for 66 years until her passing. His commitment to athletics and K-State have made a difference. At this writing, he is 94 years old.
As stated in the title of one of the last chapters of this book, “The Dream Comes True.”
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at https://www.huckboydinstitute.org/kansas-profiles. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.huckboydinstitute.org.
