My Budapest , a love story

Budapest, Hungary

Good afternoon, Budapest (and Europe). Good Morning USA! It’s August 25, 2023, day 7 of these wonderful World Outdoor Championships! The crowds and athletes are magnificent, and the volunteers and officials are wonderful. Meeting fans from all over! Restores my faith in
humanity.

The world needs this right now.

For a time, after I caught COVID twice and required two heart surgeries, I wondered If I would make it to my 14th World Champs.

In one of my heart surgeries, I told my surgeon, Dr. Gemeli, about Marcell Jacobs, the Olympic sprinter. He found it enjoyable, and it calmed me down. I am a lifelong storyteller, as was my father, as was my mother, as was my grandfather. It is a family condition.

From Goteborg to Budapest, a wonderfully diverse journey. I have visited 72 countries now, including Hungary, my family’s homeland.

Walking around Budapest, walking around the stadium, people make me smile. I find myself tearing up sometimes, not in sorrow, but in the joy of living. After heart surgeries, one has a sense of a higher purpose, the gift of life, and the responsibility to share that love of life.

I learned at De Smet High School and Bellarmine Prep that while I was on a work scholarship, I had a gift of education and that I needed to share that knowledge, which has provided me with a higher purpose for all of my last 50 years.

While I lost my mother, Marilu, in 2016 and my father, Stan, in 2020, I hear them each day. My mother’s gentle words and my father’s colorful use of profanity echo in my head each and every day. Watching them for my 64 years (they were married 57 years), showed my what lifelong love was all about.

Seeing long-time friends, making new friends, and enjoying the excitement in the eyes of the teenagers seeing this world for the first time reminds me that athletics can bring us all together.

In the final analysis, I see this world as one big village; more brings us together than separates us.

As I walk around the stadium and soak in the atmosphere, I can hear my grandfather, Adam Eder, who was born in Austria-Hungary in 1892, speaking to me and my brother, Brian, about his country, moving to the USA at 7, and living in a house with no heat.  Eighty years after his little brother froze, I could feel the pain and loss in his voice as we walked; it is something that I have never forgotten. Hearing Hungarian reminds me of Grandpa Adam’s gentle conversations with me at 13 about his…