I was sad to hear Mike Elliott left us As a kid growing up in Durango in the 1960s and ’70s, sports were a focus of home life and I’d often hear my mom talk about Mike Elliott in reverential terms: Mike Elliot had gone to the Olympics! Mike Elliott was going to the Olympics again! Mike Elliot was Durango’s Olympian! Mike Elliot was a person, at least in my mom’s view, who had reached the pinnacle of human achievement. And I thought, if he could do it, why couldn’t I? I couldn’t, since Olympic-level athletic talent is required to be an Olympian but just the idea that a Mike Elliott came from our small town was enough to make big dreams worth chasing.
While Mike was only a legend to me for decades, I was lucky enough to get to know him, in the flesh, as a neighbor, when I moved back to Durango. If Mike saw me in the driveway, he’d wave me over, and we’d talk. He told me how he’d been drafted to serve in Vietnam in the middle of his athletic career and worked as a military adviser to the South Vietnamese Army. I had no idea. He told me about the magical summers he spent backpacking in the San Juans with Dolph Kuss. He told me how proud he was of his kids. There is so much more I wanted to know, but now he’s gone.
Herb Bowman
Durango
