Berry Still Looking for Happy Ending : Track and field: After battles with cancer and coming to terms with childhood abuse, javelin thrower sets her sights on a return to the Olympic Games.

Paula Berry picks over a turkey sandwich as she tells a fascinating tale. It is her life story, replete with peaks and valleys, tragedy and triumph.

Berry knows the feeling of seclusion. She knows what it’s like to hold the attention of 70,000 Olympic fans. She’s a small-town girl who has seen the world.

She competes in one of sport’s most anonymous events -- the javelin throw -- yet by throwing “the stick,” has become a familiar name in the world of track and field.

She is a strong person whose physical traits are both powerful and pretty. She is bright and confident. Yet she has suffered weakness, both physical and emotional. She’s brutally honest, but has also hidden crucial information about her life from the people closest to her.

And as she relates the dizzying details of her life, Berry seems, of all things, bored.

“People overcome obstacles all the time, in all walks of life,” she says in a voice that is somber but sincere. “In any profession there are challenges to face. But in athletics, at the highest level, everything you do is open to the public.

“My hope is people can learn things from me just as an example, and maybe be compelled by it. But I’m just one example of many.”

Saturday, Berry turns 26. But it seems she’s already lived several lifetimes.

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Athletically, Berry has almost always prospered. The first time she threw the javelin, in eighth grade, the stick flew more than 124 feet, better than most top high school distances at that time. In ninth grade her personal-best mark of 157 feet, 6 inches broke the Oregon record by more than a foot. Though she attended high school in tiny Dayville (population 125) and was part of a graduating class of only 10 students, she was well known throughout the state.

“Throwing the javelin came very natural to me,” she says. “It’s a unique talent and luckily I happen to have it.”

Consequently, she became the first javelin thrower to earn a full-ride scholarship to the University of Oregon. After a sluggish first two years (she didn’t surpass her high school best until her junior season), Berry’s career took off. She won two Pac-10 championships, in 1990 and 1991, and won the 1991 NCAA title. She finished second at the 1990 NCAA meet.

“She went through a very hot period in 1991 when she hit 190 (feet) in four straight meets,” says Oregon sports information director Dave Williford. “She was really on a roll at that point and everyone knew she was one of the best in the country.”

During that season she threw a personal best 202 feet, 1 inch, becoming only the sixth woman in history to surpass 200 feet. The next year she finished a disappointing sixth at the U.S. Olympic Trials in New Orleans, but the 202-1 mark from her college season was good enough to put her on the ’92 Olympic squad.

Her Olympic memories are powerful.

“I can remember walking into the stadium and looking around at all of the pageantry, and 70,000 people chanting something in a language you can’t hope to interpret,” she recalls. “I remember walking in for my event and having world-class athletes warming up right next to me.

“The whole experience was incredible. It was almost like going to war for your country. That’s the only thing I can compare it to.”

Berry’s performance, however, was far below her high standards. She doesn’t even recall her final Olympic mark.

“I honestly can’t remember,” she says. “I have it at home, I think. I was 23rd out of 56. If I had thrown to my capabilities, I would have been in the top three. But I didn’t.”

Behind the scenes, there was a reason for the poor showing. It was cancer.

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By the 1992 Games, Berry had endured three years of on-and-off cancer treatments after cancerous cells were found in the lining of her uterus during a routine examination in 1989.

Berry, 20 years old at the time, was told she had a form of cancer that had afflicted her mother and led to the death of her grandmother.

Berry immediately began radiation treatments. She showed signs of the treatments, including some hair loss she concealed by wearing a baseball cap, but told no one the truth of her condition.

“I was in denial, basically,” she said. “The only person who knew was my doctor.”

Instead, Berry told teammates and coaches she was suffering an “intestinal impingement,” and kept her secret for the duration of her treatments, which concluded successfully in 1990. Still, no one knew.

Her treatments completed, Berry flourished in 1991, winning the NCAA title, placing second in the USA Mobil Championships and 16th at the World Championships in Sweden. But in the fall of that year she began suffering from chronic exhaustion.

“I had all of this success, but I knew I wasn’t healthy,” Berry says. “I went from very high to very low.”

Another uterine exam showed pre-cancerous cells. Berry went into another secretive period of treatment. Her performances lagged and the relationship between her and the Oregon throwing coach, Sally Harmon, became strained. Qualifying for the Olympics was a high despite her health problems, but returning to Eugene and facing the prospect of a hysterectomy threw Berry into a funk.

“My doctors didn’t want me to go to Barcelona,” she says. “I had just finished a cycle of treatment. I wasn’t ready to perform. It was a very tough period after the Games.”

She finally began to let the secret out, gradually. Friends were first to find out. She finally told the Eugene Register-Guard newspaper in spring 1993.

Berry never had the hysterectomy. Rather, she underwent minor surgery to remove cancerous cells and didn’t train for a year between 1993 and 1994. She began throwing again in March and has slowly gained strength. She’s ranked third nationally by Track and Field News.

The cancer threat has subsided, though her regret for keeping her illness secret so long has not.

“I didn’t want people feeling sorry for me,” she says, explaining her self-imposed isolation. “It wasn’t rational thinking on my part. I was used to not telling people things.”

There is a reason for that, too. Cancer wasn’t the only secret of Berry’s life.

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When she was a child in Dayville, Berry was sexually abused by her grandfather, who has since died. The abuse occurred over a two-year period and Berry told no one.

“He lived on our property, about 60 feet from our house, actually,” she says. “Up to that point I was very outgoing. ... But then I became really withdrawn and introverted. I felt awful and tried to divert attention away from myself.”

But by the time she had divulged her cancer treatment, Berry decided to reveal her past abuse.

“I was known as a star track athlete, and also (in high school) a star basketball player, but it wasn’t the whole truth,” she says. “It was a shock to everyone.”

Berry says she wants to release the bad memories of the past.

“I’m very much looking forward to the future,” she says. “I’ve got a great support group now and I’m feeling great. That time has been put behind me.”

Berry moved to Redding in August 1993 and works as a receptionist and bookkeeper at Essaysons-Hardrock gravel plant in Redding. She keeps quite busy, lifting weights every other day and throwing the javelin at Shasta College after work, which ends at 5 p.m.

Berry’s spring schedule includes stops in Argentina for the Pan Am Games, which begin March 12. On April 15 she’ll take part in the Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut, Calif., and a week later she’ll compete at the Penn Relays. On June 14 she’ll compete at the USA Mobil Championships in Sacramento.

Berry, aided by a Nike sponsorship, has one goal: Return to the Olympics next year in Atlanta.

“Competitively I feel I can be one of the top throwers,” she says. “My training is going well. I don’t feel like I need to work as hard as I did (in college). My body is conditioned to the point where I can work mostly on technique instead of repetitions.”

Berry hopes to become an English teacher one day. She also hopes to conduct clinics for young athletes.

“I’d like to get out there and see if there is anyone with potential,” she says. “I know that in this state, the javelin isn’t even offered as a sport in high school. But track has so much to offer in individual events. You can get a college scholarship if you just know someone with the right contacts, and if you are willing to dedicate yourself.

“Who knows? There might be another person like me around here.”

That would be a long shot indeed.