Sports of The Times; Remembering Flo Hyman By GEORGE VECSEY
Published: February 5, 1988
THERE is only one thing wrong about the Flo Hyman Award: it came to be named for the Old Lady of volleyball much too soon.
She was one of the most charismatic athletes this country ever produced, rail thin and tall, with a smile that energized an arena.
But she died from Marfan syndrome during a match at the age of 31, two years ago, and her name was memorialized on an award - and her memory has helped extend the lives of other people, including her brother.
The Flo Hyman Award, given by Major League Volleyball to the female athlete who ''embodies the spirit and dignity'' of the late volleyball star, was presented to Jackie Joyner-Kersee yesterday in Washington during National Women in Sports Day, organized by the Women's Sports Foundation. Last year the first Flo Hyman award went to Martina Navratilova.
Yesterday, famous athletes like Billie Jean King, Pam Shriver, Zina Garrison, Carol Mann and Joyner-Kersee visited the capital to lobby for women's sports, while women held awareness programs in many states. Senator Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon, announced the award to Joyner-Kersee in the morning and President Reagan presented it to her during a ceremony at the White House.
''Flo was a leader on and off the court, trying to help the future generations,'' Joyner-Kersee said in an interview. ''I only met her once, when my high school team went to watch the national team. She asked me if I wanted to play volleyball.''
Joyner-Kersee stuck with basketball and track and field, and is doing fine. Her world-record performances in the long jump and the heptathlon are the best lobby women's sports could ever have, just as Flo Hyman's exuberance and maturity gave women's volleyball a big-time appearance.
HYMAN was 6 feet 5 inches tall and originally self-conscious about her height. But her family and friends convinced her that her height was a blessing.
Nobody knew that her angular frame contained signs of Marfan syndrome, a condition just beginning to be recognized in thousands of Americans - often taller people with long arms, long fingers, oddly shaped chest bones.
Marfan is an inherited disorder of connective tissue that affects bones and ligaments, eyes, the heart and blood system, and the lungs. Flo Hyman became America's best-known volleyball player with a faulty aorta, but she did not know it.
''We never heard of it,'' said Suzanne Jett, her sister and the oldest of eight children - ''seven, now,'' Jett added softly.
The family lived in Inglewood, not far from the California beach towns of Redondo, Manhattan and Hermosa, where mostly sun-baked blond people frolicked on sandy volleyball courts in the 60's. Basketball was for blacks. Volleyball, even with Wilt Chamberlain as its champion, was mostly for whites.
''Florie was six feet tall in elementary school,'' Jett recalled, using the nickname that only family members could use. ''She was such a big, young, powerful girl. I took her to the beach with me, and we used to play in the two-man tournaments. She joined a youth team that went to Russia. After that, volleyball was her sport, not basketball.''
Attracted to volleyball, with its teamwork and its finesse, its power and its grace, Hyman was an all-American at the University of Houston, and then joined a national team that was eventually sequestered in southern California. Arie Selinger, the hard-driving Polish-Israeli-American coach, had to persuade her she really did want to bash her bony frame into the hard floor, over and over again, to retrieve a wayward volleyball.
''I've had a lot of fights with the floor,'' she said with a whooping laugh.
The Americans were primed to make a run for the gold medal in 1980, but the Carter Administration's boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow postponed or wrecked dreams for hundreds of athletes. Most of the women stayed together for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, but in the gold-medal match, it was Ping Lang and her Chinese teammates who won the gold, not Flo Hyman and her teammates, who had waited so long.
''The family was up in the stands, crying,'' Suzanne Jett recalled. ''But Florie came by and waved. You could see her smile. She was happy. She had reached her goal. She had played for a gold medal. I thought to myself, 'If she is happy, why am I crying?' ''
Selinger was forced out after the Summer Games and Hyman went to play in Japan, looking to coach over there.
''Florie had a lot of doors opening for her,'' her oldest sister said. ''Broadcasting. Acting. Coaching. But she would come home and lobby for more money for women's sports. She felt this country doesn't give women's sports as much as other countries do. She tried to make things better. But she also nursed her relationship with the Japanese.
''She got friendly with American baseball players and their wives, she got to know the owner of an American nightclub, she loved the Japanese,'' said Suzanne Jett, who edits television commercials in Los Angeles. ''I visited her and we went out dancing. I was supposed to go over again.''
ON Jan. 24, 1986, during a normal rest on the bench, Flo Hyman fell over dead. Her sister came over to claim her body. The family eventually learned from a pathologist in California that Hyman had died of something called Marfan syndrome. The family has learned more about the ailment from the National Marfan Foundation, run by Priscilla Ciccariello in Port Washington, L.I.
''My brother and I went to a Marfan symposium run by Johns Hopkins in Baltimore,'' Jett said. ''People kept saying, 'Are you sure you don't have it?' because I'm tall and thin, like Florie, and have unusually long arms. I took the test and did not have the internal manifestations, but my brother, Michael, had open-heart surgery two weeks later. He's all right now. He just had his first child. It's something to watch in the baby.''
Giving an annual award to star athletes like Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one way of remembering Flo Hyman. The awareness of a menacing condition is another legacy of an American champion who could reassure her own family after the loss of a gold medal.
Published: February 5, 1988
THERE is only one thing wrong about the Flo Hyman Award: it came to be named for the Old Lady of volleyball much too soon.
She was one of the most charismatic athletes this country ever produced, rail thin and tall, with a smile that energized an arena.
But she died from Marfan syndrome during a match at the age of 31, two years ago, and her name was memorialized on an award - and her memory has helped extend the lives of other people, including her brother.
The Flo Hyman Award, given by Major League Volleyball to the female athlete who ''embodies the spirit and dignity'' of the late volleyball star, was presented to Jackie Joyner-Kersee yesterday in Washington during National Women in Sports Day, organized by the Women's Sports Foundation. Last year the first Flo Hyman award went to Martina Navratilova.
Yesterday, famous athletes like Billie Jean King, Pam Shriver, Zina Garrison, Carol Mann and Joyner-Kersee visited the capital to lobby for women's sports, while women held awareness programs in many states. Senator Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon, announced the award to Joyner-Kersee in the morning and President Reagan presented it to her during a ceremony at the White House.
''Flo was a leader on and off the court, trying to help the future generations,'' Joyner-Kersee said in an interview. ''I only met her once, when my high school team went to watch the national team. She asked me if I wanted to play volleyball.''
Joyner-Kersee stuck with basketball and track and field, and is doing fine. Her world-record performances in the long jump and the heptathlon are the best lobby women's sports could ever have, just as Flo Hyman's exuberance and maturity gave women's volleyball a big-time appearance.
HYMAN was 6 feet 5 inches tall and originally self-conscious about her height. But her family and friends convinced her that her height was a blessing.
Nobody knew that her angular frame contained signs of Marfan syndrome, a condition just beginning to be recognized in thousands of Americans - often taller people with long arms, long fingers, oddly shaped chest bones.
Marfan is an inherited disorder of connective tissue that affects bones and ligaments, eyes, the heart and blood system, and the lungs. Flo Hyman became America's best-known volleyball player with a faulty aorta, but she did not know it.
''We never heard of it,'' said Suzanne Jett, her sister and the oldest of eight children - ''seven, now,'' Jett added softly.
The family lived in Inglewood, not far from the California beach towns of Redondo, Manhattan and Hermosa, where mostly sun-baked blond people frolicked on sandy volleyball courts in the 60's. Basketball was for blacks. Volleyball, even with Wilt Chamberlain as its champion, was mostly for whites.
''Florie was six feet tall in elementary school,'' Jett recalled, using the nickname that only family members could use. ''She was such a big, young, powerful girl. I took her to the beach with me, and we used to play in the two-man tournaments. She joined a youth team that went to Russia. After that, volleyball was her sport, not basketball.''
Attracted to volleyball, with its teamwork and its finesse, its power and its grace, Hyman was an all-American at the University of Houston, and then joined a national team that was eventually sequestered in southern California. Arie Selinger, the hard-driving Polish-Israeli-American coach, had to persuade her she really did want to bash her bony frame into the hard floor, over and over again, to retrieve a wayward volleyball.
''I've had a lot of fights with the floor,'' she said with a whooping laugh.
The Americans were primed to make a run for the gold medal in 1980, but the Carter Administration's boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow postponed or wrecked dreams for hundreds of athletes. Most of the women stayed together for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, but in the gold-medal match, it was Ping Lang and her Chinese teammates who won the gold, not Flo Hyman and her teammates, who had waited so long.
''The family was up in the stands, crying,'' Suzanne Jett recalled. ''But Florie came by and waved. You could see her smile. She was happy. She had reached her goal. She had played for a gold medal. I thought to myself, 'If she is happy, why am I crying?' ''
Selinger was forced out after the Summer Games and Hyman went to play in Japan, looking to coach over there.
''Florie had a lot of doors opening for her,'' her oldest sister said. ''Broadcasting. Acting. Coaching. But she would come home and lobby for more money for women's sports. She felt this country doesn't give women's sports as much as other countries do. She tried to make things better. But she also nursed her relationship with the Japanese.
''She got friendly with American baseball players and their wives, she got to know the owner of an American nightclub, she loved the Japanese,'' said Suzanne Jett, who edits television commercials in Los Angeles. ''I visited her and we went out dancing. I was supposed to go over again.''
ON Jan. 24, 1986, during a normal rest on the bench, Flo Hyman fell over dead. Her sister came over to claim her body. The family eventually learned from a pathologist in California that Hyman had died of something called Marfan syndrome. The family has learned more about the ailment from the National Marfan Foundation, run by Priscilla Ciccariello in Port Washington, L.I.
''My brother and I went to a Marfan symposium run by Johns Hopkins in Baltimore,'' Jett said. ''People kept saying, 'Are you sure you don't have it?' because I'm tall and thin, like Florie, and have unusually long arms. I took the test and did not have the internal manifestations, but my brother, Michael, had open-heart surgery two weeks later. He's all right now. He just had his first child. It's something to watch in the baby.''
Giving an annual award to star athletes like Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one way of remembering Flo Hyman. The awareness of a menacing condition is another legacy of an American champion who could reassure her own family after the loss of a gold medal.
