Katella High’s Terry Johnson Still Jumping Over Life’s Hurdles

To all superficial appearances, April 11, 1985 might have been a routine day in the life of Terry Johnson of the Katella High School track team.

In terms of track results, that was the case.

The school hero had recorded another victory in his favorite event, the 110 high hurdles, during a dual meet at Los Alamitos that Wednesday afternoon.

Nothing so revelatory about that.

Since his first attempt at the hurdles--when he placed second--Johnson has never entered a dual meet without winning his event, and usually a few others for good measure.

But in emotional terms, April 11 was hardly a regular day.

By the time Johnson arrived for the meet, he had been awake 48 straight hours and he had been through the most profound experience of his life--helping in the delivery of his baby daughter.

He could be forgiven if the track meet that afternoon seemed a bit less important than usual, and a little unreal.

“It makes a person feel different when you have a baby,” he said. “It’s so different, it’s like you’re in another world.”

Of course, when a track meet happened to fall on the day of his daughter’s birth, Johnson won his event anyway.

Terry Johnson has never been the type to make excuses--even when the truth of his situation could make shambles of most kids’ favorite alibi: “I thought I was coming down with a sore throat.”

Johnson’s official introduction to high hurdles came when he was a sophomore on the Katella track team.

Assistant coach Dick Fischl persuaded him that from the point of view of college recruiters, “sprinters are a dime a dozen, but a good hurdler is hard to find.”

But in another sense, Johnson was already well-acquainted with life’s hurdles. In fact, as a schoolboy sprinter, the track had been one of the few places where he had avoided them.

Johnson grew up in a variety of places after his parents’ divorce when he was in elementary school. His childhood sounds like a travelogue of the Southwestern United States.

He, his mother and three sisters moved from Kilgore, Tex., to East Los Angeles to Anaheim and Garden Grove, then back to Texas before returning to Anaheim.

At least, as best he can recall. They moved so often, he finds it confusing to try to recreate their route.

His freshman year may have been the most difficult. He attended high schools in two states and no school at all for a couple of months in between.

Under such circumstances, few students develop into valedictorian material. Between all the uprootings and transplantings, Johnson’s schoolwork seriously suffered.

“I was a comedian,” Johnson said. “I made lots of people laugh. That’s what held me back.

“But it wasn’t only that, it was moving. We would go back and forth. I wanted to stay in one place. I felt like, ‘Can I finish (the school year)?’ ”

When Johnson enrolled at Katella as a sophomore, he had finally found some circumstances that would allow him to bloom into an athletic star, a campus leader and a very decent student.

“I don’t think it was Katella specifically,” track Coach Michael Cochrane said. “I think it was just the opportunity to stay at one school for three years.”

Johnson’s grades have risen dramatically, from a D-plus average as a sophomore to a B this semester as a senior.

“I never knew I could do this well,” he says, his amazement and pride showing clearly.

Falling in love with Rosalind Jones was one of the first ingredients in his sense of belonging at Katella.

“She is the nicest person,” he says. “She is really sweet.”

As high school romances go, their relationship had all the usual elements, as sweet and timeless as a rose pressed in the pages of a yearbook.

Johnson met her shortly after going to Katella and liked her so much that he launched a crusade to get her phone number. As a player on the Knight football team, he chose a game as the proper time to make his feelings known.

From the sidelines, he saw her in the stands and mouthed, “I LIKE YOU.”

She was puzzled.

The cheerleaders, who were a lot closer to the source, were galvanized into action. They joined together for an impromptu cheer for the benefit of their friend--as well as every other fan in her general vicinity: “HE SAYS HE LIKES YOU!”

That got the message across.

“I started laughing,” Jones said. “It just touched my heart.”

They had been going together a year and a half when, midway through her senior year, Jones learned she was pregnant.

She had been the girls’ track team’s top returning sprinter, and she stood to miss her last season and graduation. But against a great deal of advice, she and Johnson decided to keep the baby.

Explained Jones: “Terry was like, ‘We’re having this baby, we’re keeping it. Don’t let anybody take it away from us. We’re going to raise it together and share it.’

“Since he was so young (18), you might think he’d have the attitude, ‘I don’t want to get tied down and have anything to do with this.’

“He was completely the opposite. He said, ‘You’re the one I love. I want to make you my wife. I’ll have to go to work to support it and do whatever it takes. I’ll just have to grow up from here on.’ ”

Jones and the baby live with her mother in a ranch-style house a few blocks from the school.

Johnson, who stayed with Cochrane for a time and then lived with another family, is back at his mother’s again.

He works about 25 hours a week at Al’s Party Pantry, an Anaheim liquor store. Much of his earnings go toward supporting the baby.

When asked her name, he replies, “Tajwanna Lorene Johnson.” The emphasis on the last name is unmistakable. It is a symbol of his commitment to his fiancee and daughter, one of the few concrete things he could offer at the time of her birth.

“I’m trying my best,” he said. “I’m not going to let something like this go by. I care. I just wanted something to call mine.”

He doesn’t volunteer any complaints about his full schedule. But the weight of adult responsibilities are a definite contrast to the old days.

“I don’t do the things I used to do anymore,” he said. “I used to go over to my cousin’s a lot and make music--scratchin’ and rappin’. I used to see a lot of movies and get together with my buddies.

“Now I don’t do that anymore. It really doesn’t interest me.”

Now he carries a wallet full of photos of Rosalind and Tajwanna, named after his sister, and a head full of baby stories--how Tajwanna pulled down the Christmas tree, how she fell in love with a little

stuffed bear, how she’s starting to talk.

He positively lights up on the subject.

“She can stand in one place,” he said enthusiastically. “And she’s already got two teeth! She’s darling, man. She’s so smart, too.

“I love her so much. When she goes ‘daddy!’ it makes me so happy.”

If adults were less thrilled at first than the future teen-aged parents, everyone at Katella is pulling for the little family’s chances for success and happiness.

His counselor at Katella, Norm Fried, said: “You know what I admire most about Terry? His attitude. He’s got the greatest attitude.

“He doesn’t have any chips on his shoulder. He just says, ‘I’ll work for everything I get and people will respect me for it.’ Even if it takes extra effort, he won’t quit.

“He is really a super kid. He has such a genteel quality. If you ask me what one word describes Terry the best, I would say, ‘Gentleman.’ He’s respected by the faculty and respected by his peers.

“With all the problems he has, you would never know it talking to him. He always has that cheerful smile. He knows how to deal with his problems.”

Said Cochrane: “With his background, it’s really something that he has gotten this far and has such an interest in getting an education. It would be easy for a lot of kids in his situation to say, ‘I’m not going to make it. I’m giving up.’ ”

As a running back on the football team last season, Johnson rushed for 833 yards and averaged 4.9 yards a carry. Without a great line to help him--the Knights won just one Empire League game and finished seventh in the standings--Johnson was the league’s second-leading rusher.

“It’s a shame our football team is so poor because if he had been on a decent team, he would have broken every record around,” Fried said.

On the track, Cochrane has watched Johnson develop from a kid who “jumped” over the hurdles as a sophomore to a polished competitor, rated as one of the top 10 in the nation last season by Track and Field News. He was the only junior in that group.

“A kid like this only comes along very rarely in a coach’s career,” Cochrane said. “. . . If he decided he wanted to, we are talking about a potential world-class runner.”

Cochrane remembers his first inkling that Johnson had a will to match his athletic gifts. It was during Johnson’s first big race as a sophomore, the Empire League meet, when he suffered a severe cramp in his lead leg after just two hurdles.

“He went over probably six more hurdles, hitting them, knocking them down, fighting all the way,” Cochrane recalled. “He finished the race on one leg, and he came in third and went on to CIF.

“It could have all ended in that race. To me, that showed what kind of heart he had. That gives a really good picture of the kind of kid he is: ‘They’re not going to stop me.’ ”

Johnson has won his event in 27 of 31 career starts. He was third at the state meet last season, losing to a pair of seniors. At the state preliminaries, he ran a 13.95 to break the school record of 14.0 set by Mark Hale in 1981.

Tonight, he will face a select field of some of the state’s high school hurdlers at the Sunkist Invitational at the Sports Arena. Last year, he placed second in the meet’s 60-yard event, although his time was identical to the winner’s.

Fischl, who is a former state junior college hurdle record-holder at Long Beach City College in 1957 and two-time conference champion at Arizona State, believes Johnson has an excellent chance of being the best high hurdler in California this season and among the top five in the country.

“Terry has a strong determination to succeed in spite of a lot of personal setbacks,” Cochrane said. “The little minor things, a bad day in practice or something, don’t seem to bother him as much as other kids.

“He has moods like any teen-ager, but when it comes to competition, he has the ability to cast all that aside and get down to what’s really important.”

Beyond tonight’s meet and the upcoming track season, what’s really important to Johnson is getting a college scholarship and marrying Jones in June.

“We had it all planned for June ‘85, but we had to switch it all around,” Johnson explained. “We talked about it and we decided on ’86 when I graduate and we can probably go on a scholarship. That’s what my hopes are, having something to call mine.”

Pessimists would say the deck is heavily stacked against a teen-aged father with big dreams. But everyone who knows Terry Johnson is optimistic.

“He’s trying to beat the odds and he will beat the odds,” Fried said.

“Most kids can’t even handle a job and going to school. He’s working, he’s still maintaining his grades and he’s still playing athletics. I’d give anything for that kid to have a chance to further his education.

“He may be a ‘B-minus’ student, but I’d give him an ‘A’ in life. He can handle life situations and that is the sign of a mature adult.”