College and Country Each Makes a Claim on Titans’ Athlete - Gymnastics: After rehabilitation at Cal State Fullerton from a serious leg injury, Israeli citizen Amir Kadury frequently answers his country’s call

The fax machine whirs away in the Cal State Fullerton sports information office, every so often pushing out a transmission that no one can read.

The page might be indecipherable to the people in the office, but they know immediately what it is and who it is for. More travel plans, in Hebrew, for Amir Kadury.

Kadury is a gymnast, one of Fullerton’s best. He also is one of Israel’s best, and when his country calls, Kadury goes.

This weekend, he is in Stuttgart, West Germany, competing in the World Championships as a member of the Israeli national team.

There have been other trips such as this in the time that Kadury, now a junior, has been at Fullerton. Each time he goes away for an international competition, he might miss as much as two weeks of school. Even so, and despite the fact that he spoke very little English when he first enrolled at Fullerton, Kadury has a 3.62 grade-point average.

Given the opportunity to represent Israel, Kadury almost always says yes.

“You feel you’re on a mission when you represent your country,” he said. “You are there to bring honor on yourself and your country.”

Kadury would like nothing better than to represent Israel in the Olympics, and he is working toward 1992. But he knows that even if he is good enough, the uncertainties of war and politics could intervene. Kadury made Israel’s Olympic team in 1988, but Israel did not send a team to the Seoul Olympics. And there have been times when he was set to leave for an international competition only to receive a fax telling him not to go. Kadury shrugs off such things.

“They have their own priorities,” he said.

The son of dual citizens, Kadury is an Israeli citizen. He grew up in a suburb of Tel Aviv, and served three years in the army before coming to the U.S. for college.

Because he was a gymnast, Kadury was given the job of military sports instructor, which kept him away from the turmoil of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

But he has seen enough to know what war is, and to have deeply conflicting feelings about the political situation in his country.

“I want to have peace just like everyone else,” Kadury said. “But sometimes it is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

At Fullerton, he sometimes feels completely at home. And sometimes, completely removed from home.

“People here, they don’t understand,” he said. “I look at people my age right here and it’s kind of weird. They don’t understand what war is. They don’t know what it is to live under bad conditions.

“They don’t know what war is. They don’t know what army is. They think the discipline of school is bad.”

Kadury decided to come to the U.S. to seek a gymnastics scholarship after serving his required time in the army.

With a coach and an interpreter, he came to California, arranging to work out for gymnastics coaches all along the coast. Some didn’t pay much attention to him at first. Once they saw him work out, that changed, but Kadury remembered the initial snub, and kept heading down the coast.

When he got to Fullerton and met Coach Dick Wolfe, he said he decided quickly. Wolfe was interested from the beginning, and so was Kadury.

But before Kadury began competing for Fullerton, he was seriously injured. While training for the 1987 World Championships, he fell while attempting a difficult dismount from the high bar. The compound fracture in his lower leg required six screws, which are in his leg today. A doctor told him he would probably walk with a limp forever, and Kadury thought his gymnastics career might have ended.

He called Wolfe.

“Are you still alive?” Wolfe asked him. “Then get your . . . over here.”

Kadury remembers his first months in California as miserable. He was living with relatives in Los Angeles, and commuting to Fullerton.

“I didn’t know anything but how to get to the gym,” Kadury said. “Not only I can’t speak the language, I don’t know nothing. It was the worst time in my life. I wanted to go home and quit gymnastics.”

But he persisted, and the rehabilitation went remarkably well. By the end of the 1988 season, he had made All-American with a performance on the high bar at the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. championships.

Last season, a knee injury slowed him considerably. This season, Kadury says, he will be better than before.

That is good news for Israel, and for Fullerton.

“By representing Israel, I represent my own country,” Kadury said. “Indirectly, I represent Cal State Fullerton and Coach Wolfe and (assistant coach) Mike Kelly. They did most of the work (to help me recover). But Israel will get the credit.”