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"Hi, I'm Jackie."
The soft-spoken woman who greets me at the door of her modest red-brick home near St. Louis, Missouri, is somehow more slender, more feminine than I'd imagined. I'd expected five-foot-ten-inch Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the world's greatest female athlete, to be all bulging muscles. But Jackie—a six-time Olympic medalist and dedicated Christian—is a woman of many surprises. Although she attended UCLA on a basketball scholarship, her B.A. is in history. And she's passionate about collecting Barbie dolls. "That's my vice," she jokes, grinning as she points toward a wall in her bedroom that houses her collection. "When I travel and don't feel like sightseeing, I check out the latest Barbies in the stores."
Despite all Jackie's athletic success, you won't find any Olympic medals displayed in the home she shares with her coach and husband of twelve years, Bobby Kersee. "Oh, they're in a box somewhere," she replies simply when I ask her where they are. "I only keep out the things most important to me." Glancing around, I spot humanitarian awards from schools she's helped with scholarships, photos of her as a child with her mom, and gifts from friends, such as an autographed pair of Michael Jordan's shoes.
It seems as though anyone able to leap hurdles like Jackie could leap over any problem in a single bound. After all, among her many awards in her fifteen-year career, she's won three Olympic golds, one silver, two bronze, and four World Championship golds. And she holds the world and Olympic records in the heptathlon, the American long jump, and 50- and 60-meter hurdles. Recently she competed in the Goodwill Games in New York and won the gold in the women's heptathlon. But don't let the seeming ease with which she accomplishes her athletic goals throw you. Her success—on the track and in life—has been hard won.
Jackie was born on March 3, 1962 to poverty-stricken parents Alfred Joyner, Sr. and Mary Joyner in the inner city of East St. Louis. At eleven, she saw someone murdered in front of her home; at twelve, her paternal grandmother was shot and killed; at nineteen, she lost her mom to a sudden attack of meningitis; later that year she was diagnosed with asthma. As the victim of such devastating experiences, Jackie easily could have taken a totally different direction in life. But because of strong role models and a childhood commitment to Christ, she beat the ghetto odds to become not only a hometown hero at her own alma mater, Lincoln High, but a role model for the entire world.
"I want to give people the courage and determination to realize they can change their life. But I also tell them, 'Don't follow in my footsteps. Make your own,'" Jackie says. And her money's where her mouth is: Jackie's given a scholarship to a National Merit Scholar from her old high school; she's sent teams of children from her old neighborhood to the AAU Junior Olympic Championships; and she's taken a hundred children from her hometown to New York City's Thanksgiving Day Parade—not to mention the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center she's currently building in East St. Louis. For her commitment to youth, Washington University in St. Louis has granted her an honorary doctor-of-law degree.
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