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© St. Petersburg Times, published February 9, 2002
SALT LAKE CITY -- He carried no flag. Held aloft no flame.
All Jim Shea Jr. brought with him to the Opening Ceremony on Friday night was an ideal. A concept with no value except that which others might assign to it.
Officially, Shea was accorded the honor of reciting the Athletes' Oath, an Olympic tradition of long standing. Emotionally, his role meant much more.
Shea is a third-generation Olympian, the first America has known. His father, Jim Sr., was a cross country and Nordic skier in 1964. His grandfather Jack won two gold medals in speed skating in 1932.
A picture, taken just before Christmas, captures the three generations of Shea men laughing in front of a snow-covered backdrop in their hometown of Lake Placid, N.Y. Jim Jr. had just finished second in a skeleton World Cup event in Lake Placid to earn his first Olympic invitation.
Their smiles were identical, their bond inescapable. Jack, 91, talked of his plans of being in Rice-Eccles Stadium for Friday's Opening Ceremony.
"I hope so," he said at the time. "When you get to be my age, life is rather indefinite. Each day of good health is a treasure."
Within a month, Jack Shea was dead. He died from injuries suffered in a traffic accident that police say involved a drunken driver. Jack Shea was buried two weeks before the Games began.
His legacy as an Olympian is assured, but his vision of Olympic ideals is not. This is a mission, Jim Jr. says, that falls to him.
"The Olympics is not about the medals, folks," Jim Jr., 33, said. "It's about competing and taking part in something greater. My grandfather taught me this at a young age. The Olympics are about bringing the world together.
"It broke his heart when he read about two skiers who said they didn't care about the (Games), just the endorsements. It meant so much to him being a part of the Games. It was taking part of something special and bringing the world together. It was important to him and it's important to me."
In 1932 the Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid, where Jack Shea was a local hero. The honor of reciting the Athlete's Oath was his. Seventy years later Jim Jr. walked into Rice-Eccles Stadium and offered the same oath.
The world has since grown, even if human nature has lagged behind. The days before the 2002 Games were filled with athletes filing lawsuits, failing drug tests and griping about their place in the Opening Ceremony. Before the first competition was held these Games were assigned history's role as the Olympics won by shameless bribes and conducted under tight security.
Still, Jim Jr. says his grandfather was a believer in the Olympic spirit. Jack lived through Olympics tainted by world affairs.
In the 1930s the Shea family owned a general store in Lake Placid, and many of their customers were Jewish. When the time came for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin -- in the heart of Nazi Germany -- Jack Shea declined to defend his speed-skating titles in deference to his Jewish neighbors.
The gold medals from the '32 Games were imprinted with an angel, an image Jack Shea would refer to as the Angel of Peace.
"He said the Olympics were about celebrating humanity," Jim Jr. said.
Jim Jr. came to embrace these ideals later in life. He was not a top speed skater, like his grandfather. He did not excel in skiing, like his father. Jim Jr. initially was a hockey player and later fiddled around with the bobsled.
When he took up the skeleton in the mid-1990s, Shea would work as a waiter in the offseason and compete in Europe with the money he'd save.
Deciding he needed to take the sport more seriously if he wanted to succeed, Shea remained in Europe in '97 when the rest of the U.S. sledders headed back. "My coach was saying, "Come on Jimmy, we've got to get rolling,' and I told him, "No, I'm staying,' " Shea said. "He said, "You've got no money, no place to stay, you don't speak the language. Come on.' But I stayed behind and it was the best thing I could have done.
"I would hitchhike everywhere and stay wherever I could. I don't think I spent too many nights where I wasn't sleeping around some animal. I'd sleep in bobsleds some nights. The guys from other countries used to laugh at me, but they started taking care of me. The British called me their pet Yank."
Two years later Shea was America's first world champion in the skeleton. He enters these Games as a medal contender but insists he already has gotten his reward. When he left for Europe, he told his grandfather he would return with a trophy. Jack told him he would return with something more important.
This, Jim Jr. says, is the lesson he learned. That the journey was more important than the destination. That the experiences and the friendships were what he coveted the most. That the competition was merely a means to the end.
When he begins competition in the skeleton later in the week, the funeral card from the Catholic Mass held for Jack Shea will be taped to Jim Jr.'s helmet.
"A lot of athletes, even athletes from other countries, have asked me for a funeral card and they're going to stick them in their helmets, too," Shea said. "We all knew him and we all loved him, and we're bringing him with us. He's going to slide with us."