Morgan Harrison (nee Montoya) and I meet at Black Rifle Coffee Company on an impromptu Thursday afternoon. I‘m there a little bit early, so I grab a coffee and sit opposite the big screen TV perched in the southeast corner of the roastery.
On the TV, Olympic ice skaters twirl and jump across the screen in outfits with their various national colors.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Morgan enter the shop with a large, narrow cardboard box. In reflective red, the box has clouds in the Chinese circular style grafted onto it.
The box is almost 20 years old, which must be an eternity for cardboard. Despite plenty of military moves across the nation from Hawai’i, Alaska, Los Angeles, and finally here to the Emerald Coast, the box is in fantastic shape. It’s like viewing an 80-year old marathoner – a once-in-a-lifetime view itself.
Morgan has a big smile on her face as she says hi and lets me know she’s going to grab some coffee.
She sits down, and we begin to talk about the time she ran and carried the Olympic Torch through the only American City to host the flame for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China.
RELATED: Local nonprogit secures adaptive bike for special needs child.
In 2008, Morgan lived in San Francisco. The then 16-year-old’s older brother, who has special needs, was about to undergo major, life-threatening surgery to install metal bars in his back to correct a spinal deformation.
As the scenario would for most 16-year-olds whose brothers are about to undergo major surgery, it occupied a lot of her mental bandwidth.
So, when she heard about a contest to write an essay on “What inspires you?” for the chance to carry the Olympic torch through her hometown, she decided to write about her brother.
“I wrote about my older brother just being the younger sibling and watching him having to grow up and kind of fight through,” Harrison remembers, “He’s on the spectrum. He had those major medical things, and just how he constantly goes through it all and just has a smile on his face. And he is the biggest sports fanatic.”
The committee that decides these things picked her, and she was named one of 50 or so runners to make the cut. She was the youngest of the group, at 16.
As chance does, the day of the run was also the day of her brother’s surgery. Kind of a blessing, really, for more than one reason. Her running partner for the event was the doctor who’d trained the doctor operating on her brother while they ran.
“It’s meant to be kind of thing,” Harrison remembered.
Her uncles offered to take her to the race and make sure she didn’t get lost or put in any danger. A large group of protesters advocating for a Free Tibet promptly separated Harrison from her uncles due to a last-minute change in the route.
But all’s well that ends well. After, the self-described ‘sassy teenager’ went to visit her brother with a torch in hand. Like many people afterward, she let him hold the torch. But, she remembers with a laugh, “You can keep it for a little bit, dude, you know, but like, I ran it, I’m gonna have it back.”
Out of the box comes the torch – a long piece of colored metal with red lacquer inlay and the logo of the 2008 Olympics. I keep thinking, like Indiana Jones, “This belongs in a museum!” And many of the torches are in museums, behind thick glass panes. Today is one of those rare moments when one can hold history in one’s hands. It feels surreal, like I’ve jumped behind the glass and a linebacker-sized docent will lay me out with a crushing tackle at any moment.
The torch is heavy, I would imagine, to run with – especially unbalanced. At the top, you can see where the gas cartridge was placed. The organizers took out the cartridge and gave a stern warning to the then-teenager not to try and use it to light anything with it in the future. Not an issue – as her mom took custody of it until she turned 18.
The Olympics Creed has taken on a special meaning for Harrison, who now has children of her own, one with special needs too. “The most important thing in the Olympic Games,” Pierre de Coubertin’s saying goes, “is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well”.
Since her daughter’s birth, she and her husband have begun to volunteer for the Special Olympics wherever they’ve lived as a way to live out that creed – to participate in the struggle and success of others. That involves volunteering their time – as well as the torch – on a regular basis.
“So it’s just kind of cool for me to look back at that and what this symbolizes for our family,” she added.
“The inspiration for my personal journey to excellence is my autistic brother, Max. I would like to carry the Torch for him, and on behalf of all special-needs kids in San Francisco, the Bay Area, and the world. I’ve lived my entire life with my brother, who is a patient at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. He’s an outstanding role model for bringing people with special needs and those without together. He pushes the envelope on diversity, acceptance, and inclusion with young people and is an inspiration on his high school campus, where he is a member of the award-winning Benicia Panther High School Marching Band!
On April 9, my brother will face the greatest challenge of his life. He will be in 11 hours of surgery at Children’s Hospital, Oakland to correct spinal deformities that are life-threatening. I would really like to carry the torch for him, as a symbol of absolute love of sports excellence. He would want me to be there for him, inspiring people to push past obstacles and dare to go for the GOLD – in whatever their passion and definitely in the game of life.”
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
Register or login with Mid Bay News and never get another pop up on our site!
