Bonnie St. John and Allen Haines

00:02 My name is Bonnie St. John. I am 55 years old and today is February 7th 2020. We are in New York City right outside the courthouse and I am being interviewed with my husband Alan Haynes and he is my husband.

00:23 And I'm Alan Haynes. I am 60 years old. Today is February 7th 2020. We are in downtown Manhattan New York City the name of my interview partner is Bonnie st. John and I have the great honor to be her husband.

00:46 So I am part of the project with Olympians and paralympians. I am a an Alpine paralympic athlete I competed in 1984 in Innsbruck Austria, and I competed in slalom giant slalom and downhill and was won the bronze and slalom the bronze and giant slalom and a silver medal for overall performance in all three events.

01:16 And became the first African American to win Olympic medals in ski racing Olympic or paralympic medals first African American in Winter Olympics

01:34 Okay, so we're going to have a conversation about what it means to be the first African American to win Winter Olympic medals and

01:47 How it all came about and it's a great story. I was 15 a friend of mine and high school invited me to go skiing with her family over Christmas Vacation Barbara warmuth was her name and she actually took some notebook paper and made a certificate to give me on my birthday and you know, she cut it out and it said one week of skiing with her family over Christmas vacation, and I was so excited, but I was also nervous because I've never been skiing before and I didn't want to be a burden on her family. I think that happens a lot when I had a disability off and I was worried about being a burden on others. So I wanted to be prepared and I started looking for savall for the equipment. I knew that I needed special equipment and I asked my mom.

02:47 When she gave me the Yellow Pages and said here look at sporting good stores at night. I looked up sporting good stores and call them and said, you know, if you have this equipment they had never heard of it and there was no internet back then I couldn't just look it up on the internet and I I spy with hunting and hunting and I could find it and finally somebody told me about a club of amputees that did Sports was called amputees in Motion in San Diego and I got in touch with them and the president of the club. Let me Outriggers to ski with and talk about what your disability is cuz I think you should so thank you. I was missing one of my legs say the growth was stunted in my right leg. And so it look normal when I was born but as I got older one leg didn't grow and at 5, I was admitted to the Shriner's Hospital where they amputated my leg Shriner's Hospital Los Angeles so that they amputated really my foot.

03:47 Are at a later went back and short in my leg again. I had a number of surgeries overtime. But but basically I grew up with one leg at a prosthesis wearing a wooden Frosty sits above the knee. Well, it looks like it's about the neither the yeah, it's it's like was actually just short but it it it works like an above-the-knee amputation. So sorry to go skiing. I want to do a skit with my friend. I tried to get special coming and Outriggers are just poles with ski tips at the end and that's why I finally got the Outriggers. And the other thing I wanted to do before I went skiing with Barbara was to get some pointers. You know, what how does an amputee ski, cuz even though Barbara do how to ski shooting on my way MP3 witzke and nobody would give lessons to every case. I've got in touch with the ski area and they they said we don't know how to give lessons so I sent away to National handicap sports and recreation Association and they sent me.

04:48 A pilot it was even a book. It was a pile of paper that was stapled together that had instructions for how to ski with one leg. You know, how do you fall down how to get up and you can't snow plow. So you do spend a lot of time falling down and getting up when you first get started. And so then I found a group of amputees in La that was willing to take me out and show me how to do it to get started and think about this is a Southern California in the 1970s, you know, it's not like it's amazing and you talk about the sometimes that Barbara warm at looked across the room at her one legged black friend from the wrong side of the tracks from La Jolla and said there's a skeeter. Let's take her ski a I was from national city with the wrong side of the tracks for her to say

05:45 Right, let's go skiing and and that climate that you talked about the the environment where people didn't really understand disabilities, especially in the ski industry, you know, I started skiing in the 1960s and I remember what the ski industry was like and you know today there are adaptive programs. We have an Adaptive program the beautiful to have their own Lodge. They have their own ski lift the heavy equipment. They have sponsors. They have all kinds of things going on near this area where we live you go in there and you have any disability go in there. And if they don't have any equipment for you, they will build it. They have your holes in almost every ski school across the country at every legitimate ski area has some kind of program for people with disabilities and you know, it just wasn't like that bad so so back then it was a we went up to Mammoth together and no one would give me a lesson. So it was just fall down get out of here are reduced you go out there and try it cuz we're not going to touch you.

06:45 The temp for poultry and so Barbara and her brothers took turns staying with me on the Bunny Hill and just helping me get up and fall down and get up for fall that I couldn't snow plow. I just ran into women and children and slow down.

07:02 Well you made it and that's so good. So you had that experience you got started. How do you get into racing know that that was that's always interesting to me. So I went out with the group of of amputees before I went with barbs. I was trying to get ready to go with Barb and that's a whole nother story 2 because we ended up night skiing. They they ran out of tickets, but once I I connected with these other groups of amputees, that's keyed. I started scheme of them after I went with Barbers. I called him. I can go with these other amputees and a lot of them raced and so it was just sort of natural and they have the the national championships for ski racing for disabled ski racing and it wasn't all about the race. It was kind of a big reunions or a big celebration. It's a really wanted to go to that and when you back in those days when you went to National Championships, they were tryouts on the first day and you you got

08:02 To those races and if you didn't do very well they put you in a clinic to know if you did. Okay, you were in the bee level but if you did really well you were in the a class racing. So everybody could come you could you could learn to raise you could be part of the festivities. Now, it's separate. Now the national championships has more serious and you have to qualify before you get there. It's a different story but back then I just wanted to go because that's what everybody didn't you just got caught up in it and you were a natural mean you were doing. Well, you relatively quickly did well to try to go off every weekend in and get ready for it. I thought if you're going to go you might as well try to be ready for it. And so so when I went I actually did qualify for the top class of race think I like, you know a tenth of a second or so. I just barely made it into the top class of racing and so that was exciting and then I actually picked up a couple of medals and so it made me think

09:02 If I could really trade if I could really get a coach if I could trade, you know, not just weekends but more seriously I could make the US team so that's what that's what gave me the vision that I could be a great racer. But that's your spirit. I need you. If you do something you do it to the nth degree as well. Try, you know, you went to college you went to Harvard. Do you went to graduate school? You went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar to get started right? My brother used to joke that I started behind the finished behind the starting line. Like everybody else was at the starting line and I was 10 yards back and so with one leg and being black in our family was poor, but I had to do a lot just to get to the starting line and he said by the time, you know, everybody else started you already had momentum.

10:02 Search up makes you stronger.

10:06 So

10:08 Sorry stupid

10:11 Being black was was different there weren't a lot of black people in skiing back then know there weren't. I remember we've we've talked about this. I was at Steamboat Colorado and then 80s in the early 80s and I was there for a week and about the second day in I started to look around and almost everybody on the ski area was black and I thought this is unusual at first I didn't really notice but then I started thinking finally after the Third Day writing up the chairlift. I I I I had to say to somebody I was sitting next to us it is there a preponderance of black skiers here today, and he said yes, as a matter of fact, this is a Convention of black skiers. It was the the Brotherhood of skiers the national Brotherhood of skiers and

11:01 Wiedas, we realized we were in the same scary at the same time time for 25 years before we met each other invited to go out to meet the national Brotherhood of skiers and they ultimately ended up sponsoring me and helping me raise the money to get to the Paralympics, but that was my first time meeting everybody and meeting the national Brotherhood of skiers. And it was so I opening kind of crazy when you think about this because skiing is such a white sport, you know, what an able-bodied for to specially back in those days. And so getting to go to the National Convention of disabled skiers was so good for my identity and sense of self and to say wow, you know, I can be a disabled scared people used to go to The Lift Chair and drop their legs and their arms and their crutches and it will just be his pile by the by the ski lift.

12:01 It was like Lords, like everyone was healed and went off skiing but then going to the black convention was it was a whole different identity piece to that too? Because you know here were black people get maligned in the newspaper and we get you know, there's an identity we get told we're stupid and we're criminals that you know, all these things and a business carry a full of well-dressed educated affluent black people who are not afraid of stereotypes. Obviously, you know, they ski and they go to this convention but most of the time they're skiing they're not surrounded by black people ghetto ass over there people who are courageous both groups opposed the disabled skiers and the black skiers are craziest groups of people just everybody should love going to them because it just people who are brave and interesting and funny and a fun crafts exactly know how to party.

13:01 We packed crutches and wheelchair girl groups and Olympic Olympic Winter medal and you know, that's a story about being the only one on the hill a lot of the time and it was very different back. Then when you won your medals right that the Paralympics is only the third winter Paralympics, right only the third winter Paralympics. The name Paralympics actually hadn't even been coined when I competed on my medals. There's a there's Olympic rings and it says under the auspices of the ioc. So it's the first year that the disabled games were under the auspices of the ioc and they also had created this logo that was like Olympic rings, but broken like they were sliced or something get out at Emagine.

14:01 Wow, who thought that was a good idea, but that was it. That's what they did. But but the environment was different right, you know you

14:10 You got to Innsbruck with a jacket and a plane ticket. Basically, they gave you a sweater and shoulders cuz you're hitting the gates. And so you need a special kind of padded sweater for that. And then we had red team ones with the the logo on it everything and we had a jacket and I think that's all we got for our clothing and stuff. I did I was sponsored by laying so I got boots from laying and I was sponsored by Rosen. Also, I got my skis Rossignol but through the team all I got was a jacket and a sweater unit up with mismatched gloves. You told me one time that I got out of the lost and found somewhere cuz I had no money. I was just barely, you know managing to get myself there. Now, they gets three big bags of clothes. If you're in the Paralympics just like Olympians. Yeah, they get all the sponsored clothing pants t-shirts bags purses and Ed's.

15:10 Village, you know, you didn't have an Olympic Village you didn't have trainers you didn't have all different kinds of healthy food depending on your nationality and running you want to eat what works for you? We were staying in a like a B&B and I was sharing a double bed with another athlete and in the morning. It's continental breakfast. We were in Europe. We were in Austria and so they gave us like a roll and coffee and Sydney Argos key for the day. We were like we need more food. So they gave us cold cuts and it was awful. It wasn't the healthy food. I needed to compete on I think that was when we went to Vancouver you were on the the the the presidential delegation to the Vancouver Winter Olympics. So just to be clear what that is is that the president sends a group of people to represent the White House for any Olympics and Paralympics game and forgot to do that a couple of times, but you and I went together to Vancouver.

16:10 As part of the presidential representation which by the way is the way to go to the Olympics motorcade and you get really good seats and security and all that stuff. But what was amazing to me? I'd never been to a paralympic games before and I've been asked you are my whole life. And so I love winter sports. I love to be in the snow. I love all of that but to see what it's like to be around paralympians and to see the the stadium filled with people cheering for people with disabilities Wheelchairs and end in amputees and people with no arms and and we've saw that guy who was by athlete who would ski he had no arms. He's ski and then he'd slap himself down on the ground stick his chin up in a cup and shoot a gun with his teeth.

17:10 To be in the in ended in the town in the city of Vancouver where little kids would run up to people in wheelchairs and say we what's your sport and I have your autograph and I have your autograph not can I help you with the door? You know, it was just a completely different kind of way you wish the world was all the time and it was it was it was it was mind-blowing for anybody who's listening to this if you ever get a chance to go to the Paralympics go because it's it's amazing or town is an amazing feeling to print rating and broke and all of it. And the idea that the Paralympics is about Excellence when you don't have perfect conditions, you know it is you talk about this a lot as a as a metaphor right for for life or work for business.

18:08 But yeah that Paralympics is such a great metaphor because it's about Excellence when things aren't perfect end in today's world. We are also pushed to the Limit that we don't have enough time. We don't have enough, you know in your job. You probably don't have enough resources to buy the perfect software and things are changing so fast, so even in in highly competitive companies, you know, things are moving so fast and so Paralympics is a great metaphor for that is like you said the guy who's in biathlon, you know, he's world class even though he has to shoot in the teeth. You have no excuses that you just you just make it work and that's more that lives that we live in the world today.

18:49 I will try to in the work we do in the corporate world. We try to to inspire people and educate people about what

19:02 What the other opportunities are and I know how to go farther go faster. What's the what's the motto is faster further higher than the paralympic motto is Spirit In Motion and I do think that that's that is is a good metaphor for today, you know, we said to to be able to transcend your limitations and do more than people think you can do you and you've worked with me over the last 15 years spreading the Olympic Spirit and the Olympic values, you know ice I we have a business where I'm speaking. We're right books together. We do interviews like this one, you know, we do all kinds of things to really get the the messages and the inspiration out there that people can transcend their limits and we can do more than what we have and it's been so interested because your background is Hollywood you had a business where you

20:02 Were marketing movies. So you did the trailers in the marketing campaigns for Star Wars one and the Little Mermaid Beauty and the Beast and the other end of the spectrum The Silence of the Lambs. So you're used to Brandy and you did Brandin for people to for big Executives and communicating a message is what you've done. And so teaming up with me and really doing that in this space where it's about inspiring people. It's it's been an interesting Journey for the last 15 years and there a lot of parallels between what you doing. What what I did in Hollywood in and it's about the essence of the message right and attend one of the things that that that

20:54 You've been able to do really really well is to keep current to keep yourself irrelevant. You know, you're not just walking out on stage wearing your medals and saying look what I did, you know, there's so much more to it than that and I think that's that's the important part of any shaping any kind of career that you continue to understand that the world changes as you go along and if you don't stay relevant, if you don't up your game for lack of a better word phrase you you'll you'll be left behind and that's that. I think something that the people I think that's part of your message to that you you get that across that that it's it's important to raising the bar for raising the bar that we wrote together micro resilience for a really tapped into a lot of research on Howard.

21:54 Do that on how to use small changes to have a big impact and that's been translated into Chinese and Japanese and it's in India in England. They translated into English the word around the world spreading that message and I do think it's it's it's it grows out of every all of this that that that that we've done together is taking but the lessons of the Olympics and helping people to

22:35 Have go higher further faster or spirited motion, you know, whichever role model is more than I'm just having done it, you know, lots of people have done it and then they go off and they do, you know who live their life and certain ever mention it again, and we've really leverage these experiences to to give to other people and so so being a role model isn't just about o accomplish something is how do you put it at the service of others? So it'll taking the time to do this interview now is an example of that is how do we take the lessons and make them available to other people and for me that's been really important role models have been important to me to inspire me at 2 to give me the idea of where I could go.

23:30 Tell me the episode they so many great role models. My mother was a great role model for me to talk about your mother at the Olympics. It's a funny story.

23:40 My mom was a school teacher and later became a principal but she she didn't really get it about sports and she was the kind of person that would see a jogger going down the street and say, you know Kathy do something constructive with their energy. And so when I started skiing, I actually took time off from Harvard University and you know became a ski Bob and I was waiting tables and ski areas in my mother's going to scratch your head. Like is she going to go back to school and she's going to drop out what's going on. So when I finally went and made the team and went to Innsbruck Austria to compete my mother came with me and she didn't make it up to the mountain I could do it at all. So yeah, so she was going to see me race for the first time and you know, she's looking around and there's all the flags up a hundred countries and the

24:40 Flight return to get excited like okay, I can see I can see why this is a good idea and then I finished the first run of the slalom race and I was in first place in the world. My mother went berserk my brother had to Roller in the snow to cool her off. She was so excited. She was like, you know jogging I don't get it but wedding I like this this is this makes sense to me. So it was just such an amazing experience, but you have to do to run to actually take home a medal. So I was in first place after the first run was a big upset right woman on the US the one Third Reich one legged woman on the US team and nobody expect me to be my teammates nevermind anybody else or so, but I had trained over summer on a glacier with two legged skiers and had just worked harder and you know, we wasn't upset so so going into the second and first

25:40 But it's a different course for those of you who might be listening that don't ski the course is never the same. It's not like track or you just running the same course II run totally different course and it was a dangerous. I see spot near the bottom so few women went down ahead of me and they radioed back up saying they were crashing on my men even went off into the stand. You know, it was it was a little scary. So I'm at the top thinking I I don't need to go all out. I need to just stay standing and I can win the gold the national Brotherhood of skiers 34 black people from National Brotherhood of skiers screaming my name for black people in the snow in Austria in 1984. That was unusual. My teammates said Bonnie you have a really big family. Yes. I do, you know to get me there at the Olympics. They had passed the hat at parties all over the country.

26:40 They had given me close keep close to train in have winter clothes. So they really were like family that one of the members of the national Brotherhood of skiers is who he had helped me and chaperoned me with a bridesmaid at my wedding for the slalom race. I'm in first place and I can't even hear all the black people screaming. My name is I hit the break the time he wanted, you know, start going down the hill and the red blue black holes and Maya get to where I can see the finish line and I think I've made it I'm going to win and that's when I hit the really dangerous but and I I tried to hold on. I tried to stand up but I couldn't do it. I fell on my rear end size is number one in the world and all the sudden. I am sitting on my rear end in the snow. I just wanted to disappear just to crawl away not to have to face my teammates my sponsors.

27:40 Mother and I by in a Flash I grab my equipment. I got over the Finish Line because that's what your training is. That's what my training was to do. So even my mind wanted to give up but my body just got over the man that got over the Finish Line when the dust cleared I was still in third place. I won the bronze medal I got to stand on the Winner's Podium flag US flag behind me and my mother sobbing in the snow, but it was just a thought about it later and the woman who won the gold in that race. I had beat her in the first run right through with nothing wrong. I was the best Slalom ski in the second run it wasn't that she didn't fall. She also fell

28:22 So, how did she beat me? She must have gotten up faster. She couldn't understand ski faster than me, but she must have gotten up faster than me. So she was the quicker getting rougher. She won the gold medal for being the quicker get her at 4. And that was on a Starbucks cup you were quoted on a Starbucks cup did with that story million Starbucks cups all over the country that had people fall down waiters. Get a Twitter. Just get up faster.

28:58 So yeah, it's been such an interesting Journey getting from the little girl in National City. My my dad left before I was born we we didn't have a lot of money in. My mom was a school teacher. Nobody in my family's keyed and going from there to skiing with Barbara warmuth and then disabled skiers and black skiers and getting all the way to the Paralympics crazy story. And then after that you ended up you were you graduated from Harvard you went on to be a Rhodes scholar and work in the White House during the Clinton Administration that was exciting.

29:43 So lots lots of breaking through barriers and lots of of changing and it didn't come easy. You know, I thought I think I saw it coming as a poor black child that once I got through college, I went to Harvard and I got a degree than everything will be easy after that or if I won medals everything could be and never ever nothing ever gets going to the White House and I had a a tough time early on I had a run-in with the Secretary of Labor. Somebody had sent him something I wrote it. He said you could you write this and I was terrified and I thought I really messed up but it's like falling down and getting back up and when you have to keep bouncing back at so that's what I learn to get good at and changing from one place to another so, you know, I had been in the Olympics end.

30:43 Going back to college. I struggled when I went back to college. I wasn't doing very well and I had to get tutoring and cuz I was out of practice at that was all skiing and then going from college to Oxford. I struggled because what Oxford thought was was good writing in a paper with different than what Harvard thought and then working in Corporate America, you know, I saw every time there were struggles I had to overcome it never is never not been like that writing books. I got rejected when I first sent out a proposal to agents and Publishers. I got tons of projections and most people don't even answer and it can I had to persevere and so the strength that I got from ski racing and falling down and getting up is what's allowed me to succeed and all those other areas to run and it was hard to two.

31:37 You've told me that a number of times about how hard it was to make that transition from being an athlete and changing your identity going forward when you were when you were at Harvard. When I I the actor that Paralympics in Innsbruck Austria a week later the term started at Harvard so assertive like oh my gosh, you know after all the who played excitement and training for years all of a sudden boom. I'm going to see it going to classes at Harvard and I had been off I had been out of school for over a year and it so that was a bit of a shock but I ice I tried to ski with the Harvard ski team when I got back and I arranged my classes so that I had Tuesday Wednesday Thursday classes in 4 days off a week and I would go in ski and train and I was trying to do both and the upshot was that I was pretty bad at both.

32:31 And so I did go to National Championships that here but then I said to myself I have to stop skiing. I have to get serious about school and graduate from from college and get a job. And so I said I'm going to quit skiing and I just I remember I sat by the Charles River on a bench and she just cried and cried and cried because it was giving up so much of my identity and I had been a ski racer. I had gotten up every morning and put on skis for sober summer and winter cuz I was skiing on a glacier every summer.

33:06 It was really hard to give that up. But then I know I've gone through that a bunch of times if of changing. Most people don't.

33:15 Get to compete at the highest level in different areas to be in the White House to be in the Olympics to be on Wall Street to write books and it's very different Arenas. And so it's required. Sometimes grieving a loss to give something up to move on to something else.

33:33 And face is very important to you to us and that that ends up being something that that we lean on as we go forward through these transitions. You want to talk a little bit about that. I wrote a book called How strong women pray to to talk about that because prayer had been such an important part for me a feeling. I was abused as a child by my stepfather and the scars that that gave me.

34:06 We're very difficult even having my daughter Darcy when she was the same age that I was when I was abused. I thought I was going to lose my mind. And so prayer had really helped me to get through that. I mean the prayer and therapy I'm not going to say that just for her alone prayer gave me the strength to do the things I had to do with some of that was therapy. Some of that is exercise. Some of that is is eating healthy, you're taking care of yourself. And Sophie has been so bored to be in the book How strong women pray. I went and I interviewed other women to to ask them about how has prayer fueled you how has it? How is it kept you going in? So that's about something has been important in our in our marriage is is leaning on faith.

34:53 So I didn't want to talk to you about where the paralympic movement is now because that's been such a change is where it started we were talking about how I had mismatched gloves. No Olympic Village and when we were in Vancouver, I just I cried and how amazing it was that they had the full Olympic Village. They had the full opening ceremonies with all the impressive acts and everything. And now the US Olympic Committee has even change their name to the US Olympic and paralympic committee. I never I never could have imagined that kind of recognition and the coverage to you know, the the the media coverage of sterile effects keeps increasing and we have no footage of you skiing in 1984 because there was no us media coverage really you were in the New York Times, but that was what you did. We don't have television footage. And actually I was in the New York Times later.

35:53 That's right. There was no coverage when I went to the Paralympics. But then three years later when I wed the Rhodes scholarship the New York Times put me on the cover and everything People magazine and all these other things happened and it what are the lessons I learned from that was that there's a certain Randomness to publicity. So cuz that you don't have to know what he deserves the publicity they get it just happened. And so again the lessons of what does it mean to be a role model part of it is helping the media to publicize what it is, you know, you want them to publicize and so being available to do interviews and all those things sitting right? There's a certain random is to it and so making sure that you're leveraging that to to be a role model and to get the lessons out there. So

36:47 Thank you for doing this with me honey. This is when really nice. I'm often as we say on the dark side of the Footlights and that's where I'm comfortable and happy but occasionally we get to do things like this together and it's nice. It is nice and it's meant a lot to me that for the last 15 years. You've been a real partner with me mostly behind the scenes but spreading the message of the Olympic values and the paralympic values and the lessons that we can all be our spirit in motion. We can all break through barriers and exceed the limitations that that other people seeing us or that we see in ourselves and that's been really rewarding the letters. We get the people we the people Rush the stage when you finish a speech. It's just it's so it's encouraging. It's it's it's just nice. It brings a smile to the people's face I often.

37:47 So like when we ski together and how often hang back and let you fly by on one leg and listen to people that did you see that and so just by moving through the world you inspire people hunt and I'm as I said earlier. I'm honored to be your husband that I'm honored to be here with you on this journey, and it's an important journey and it put us all so fun. We have a lot of fun together have a lot of time say, thank you, honey. Thank you.