Silva Eulogized as Much More Than Swimmer

A few weeks ago, Arthur Ashe received a call from another black athlete.

“You may not know who I am, but my name is Chris Silva and I went to UCLA,” the caller said.

“He genuinely thought I may not know who he was,” Ashe recalled in a telephone interview from New York.

“I knew exactly who he was. We followed him in Black America just the way we followed (figure skater) Debi Thomas, as a barrier breaker.”

Silva was starting on new barriers when he died Sunday in an auto accident in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He was 28.

He had worked a month as director of a minorities program with the International Swimming Hall of Fame. He envisioned the program as bringing swimming to the masses.

“He honestly wanted to broaden the sport,” said Richard Quick, a U.S. national team coach who guides the Stanford women’s team.

In one of his last interviews, Silva told Sharon Robb of the Ft. Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel: “There’s no one else that can fill my shoes or be a role model or do this job in any aspect. It’s a way to get back to what I have gone through and give somebody else an opportunity.”

Silva’s achievements in erasing racial stereotypes extended beyond swimming, friends said Friday at his funeral in San Mateo.

He was recognized as the first black to try out for a U.S. Olympic swimming team, in 1984, and the first to hold a U.S. record, in the 400-meter freestyle relay.

But what will be missed most is the way he lived and treated others, said the Rev. Ronald Martin of Los Angeles.

“If you had a racial problem, you wouldn’t want to walk into Chris’ apartment,” Martin said. “He had all kinds of friends because he had the ability to make everyone around him comfortable. On a small scale he was like Dr. (Martin Luther) King.”

Although Silva never became an Olympian, he wanted to use his success in swimming--he was a UCLA All-American sprinter from 1982 to 1984--to encourage minorities to enter white-dominated sports.

Martin said part of the Silva legacy also was human imperfection.

His death illustrated that. He borrowed a friend’s Ferrari after attending a party on a yacht and, according to Jill Brickman, a homicide investigator with the Ft. Lauderdale Police Dept., was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic when he lost control and smashed into a concrete bus bench and two palm trees.

A passenger, Charles Lojacono of Boca Raton, Fla., is in stable but guarded condition at Broward General Hospital, Brickman said.

Toxicology reports from the Broward County medical examiner are expected in about 10 days.

“The passenger said they had been drinking,” Brickman said.

Martin said the circumstances surrounding Silva’s death do not negate what he wanted to do for humanity.

“We need more Chris Silvas out there now,” Martin said.

Scott Freeman, a San Diego teen-ager, figures his community is looking to him.

Freeman, who attends Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Ga., said Silva persuaded him to try sports other than basketball and baseball. He now plays football, tennis and swims for his school.

“He told me, ‘Even if you don’t know you’re good at it, why not try it,’ ” said Freeman, whose mother Renetta dated Silva. “ ‘How many blacks do you see in swimming, tennis and golf? Go out and do the best in something not many blacks are in.’ ”

Freeman already has experienced some of the frustrations Silva went through as a minority.

The Silvas moved to an all-white section of Menlo Park, Calif., when Chris was 3 so he would be exposed to better programs. Silva became a swim star at Menlo-Atherton High School.

Jeff Solinger, a childhood friend who swam thousands of yards with Silva, said none of the children noticed his race.

“It simply wasn’t an issue,” he said.

But it was for Silva, who wanted to overcome the myths of blacks and swimming.

Ron Ballatore, UCLA’s swimming coach, said Silva was concerned with proving himself as a freshmen and ultimately had a mediocre season.

“I think the black thing bothered him,” Ballatore said. “I think he put more pressure on himself. We talked about it a lot. I told him to let it happen, and it did.”

Then came the pressure of being an ambassador.

“That kind of notoriety was fine,” he told the News and Sun-Sentinel. “(But) it’s too bad that I was the first because why wasn’t it done years ago? That’s the sad part of it. the joy part is that finally it’s been done. There are no more firsts. Now it’s for other people to fill in and be the mass.”