NAMES IN THE NEWS : Chinese Memorial for Olympian

A trust run by an admirer of Scottish Olympic athlete Eric Liddell--whose life was featured in the Oscar-winning film “Chariots of Fire”--plans to send a memorial stone to northeast China in his memory.

The Eric Liddell Memorial Trust has signed a provisional accord with provincial authorities in Weifang in the province of Shandong for a memorial stone to be erected at the site where Liddell died in a Japanese internment camp, trust founder Charles Walker said today.

“I’ve pursued this project since the summer of 1989. I felt it was sad that so little was known about Liddell after the Olympics and so little was known about his death,” Walker said.

Liddell, a deeply committed Christian, won the gold medal in the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Olympic games. But he won even more fame as the man who refused to run in the 100 meters, his preferred distance, because it was held on a Sunday.

After the Olympics, Liddell spent most of the rest of his life as a schoolteacher and missionary in China, where he was born in 1902.

He was interned by Japanese forces after the outbreak of World War II at a camp built on what was originally a U.S. Presbyterian mission in Weifang.

Liddell died in the camp of a brain tumor Feb. 21, 1945, and was buried in a grave marked by a wooden cross that his fellow internees could only inscribe with shoe polish, said Matthew Henderson, who is associated with the project.

Walker said the trust had agreed with the provincial authorities to set up a sports scholarship to train three athletes--one each from China, Hong Kong and Britain--a year. He said the first three will be trained in Hong Kong in late 1991.