Light Olympic Torch

Wednesday morning, while driving north, as my furniture-moving colleague began to read aloud Dick Dorworth’s Tibet –the conscience of the world column, I couldn’t help but to glance over at the paper, when he started reading about the elaborate plan for the Olympic Torch relay up Mount Everest, as he and I had just been talking about this.

Then when he got to the part, where Mr. Dorworth mentioned the 1936 Olympic torch flame, I had to pull the big rig over to the side of the road to finish reading the article and became immediately overwhelmed by a compulsion bring this brief story to light:

Brad Nottingham, who used to work at the Express from 2000-2003, now works as museum courier, transporting valuable pieces between auction houses and collections throughout the country. A few months ago, Brad and his moving partner, were called to package up the Olympic Torch used by Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. This torch had been discovered in an old shed on the property of a recently deceased eccentric collector. In fact, there was a great likelihood that the great torch would have been become crushed, had it not been for the synchronicity of a backhoe hose breaking, right before it was to smash the shanty, which gave the demolition workers a few more minutes to poke about the place to make the big discovery.

After hearing about this unearthing, a Maryland holocaust museum won the bid to buy the torch to display, so this was when they paged Brad to package the torch. Before Brad got to where the torch was held, his supervisor speculated that it would be heavy, thus recommended some specific packaging materials and crating techniques. However, when they arrived, they found it was lightweight and quite easy to pick up and handle.

Above are photos of the 1936 Olympic Torch, right before they soft-wrapped and crated it for transport from Florida to Maryland