Word: johnson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Wondering if they are attracting the best U.S. athletes, tennis people are given to imagining basketball players like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan across the net from West Germany's Boris Becker. But this comfortable fantasy may have lost something since Brazil trimmed David Robinson, Danny Manning and the rest of America's college elite in the Pan Am Games. Some cry, "Whence cometh the next John McEnroe?" But others are pleased to remember that, if only by the accident of his father's army station, he cometh from Germany. McEnroe broke his old record for ugly behavior...
...Washington Post has detected a feeling in Canada that Sprinter Ben Johnson's recent world-record triumph over Carl Lewis in the 100-meter dash ran deeper than a foot race. Some Canadians see national reflections in the downtrodden stammerer Johnson and the American peacock he dusted at the World Games in Rome. "Lewis was pretty and polished in his U.S. national colors," reported the Toronto Globe and Mail. "Johnson was plainly attired in his baggy suit." Anyway, the World's Fastest Human is now a Jamaican Canadian...
This is the attitude of Bill Toomey, the Olympic decathlon champion of 1968, a former World's Greatest Athlete in that long American line from Jim Thorpe to Bruce Jenner, through Bob Mathias and Rafer Johnson. But "now the decathlon is virtually made in Europe," he says. "I keep hoping there is somebody out there who could at least compete with Daley Thompson." Toomey is not inconsolable though. He knows that track, in particular, has been a missionary sport, and that many foreign stars have American universities in their backgrounds...
...shape for many more months. When the time comes, sound taps for a 150-year veteran. But be not despairing. Its twin is still healthy and firmly rooted by the south entrance to the White House, and its branches reach up to the windows of the Reagan bedroom. Lyndon Johnson's Quercus phellos has leaped from 15 ft. to 50 ft. in 13 years. Just like the man who planted it, the willow oak seems determined to be bigger and better than anything else within sight. Dwight Eisenhower's Quercus palustris is already 75 ft. tall and shows no sign...
Harry Truman's Buxus sempervirens "Suffruticosa" is up to 10 ft. Because the White House police can no longer see over this boxwood hedge at the front entrance, it will soon be trimmed down for better security. And the Fagus sylvatica "Asplenifolia" trees, so lovingly planted by Lady Bird Johnson and Pat Nixon, are gorgeously full of life, even though these fern-leaf beeches are close by the press area, where the air on most days is believed to be considerably hotter than normal...