FOUNTAIN VALLEY : It’s All in the Games for ‘Nut’

At 81, Neel Buell is a self-described “Olympics nut.”

After he attended his first Olympics Games in Los Angeles in 1932, Buell was hooked. In the next six decades, he would travel the world to attend almost every Olympics.

Buell plans to go to Atlanta next year and is organizing a tour group for the Olympics in Sydney, Australia, in the year 2000.

“There’s something contagious about it,” said Buell, executive director of the Emeritus Institute at Coastline Community College, which recommends curriculum for seniors. “It’s just being there that counts.”

In 1936, Buell, a discus thrower, was an alternate on the American team at the games held in Berlin. At the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Buell served as an official for the discus event, measuring throws and observing fouls.

Considering all of which, Coastline College officials didn’t have to look far for someone to carry the 1996 Olympic torch when the relay comes through Orange County en route to Atlanta. The college nominated him for the honor.

Torchbearers are expected to be selected in February.

Buell, who lives in Costa Mesa, said that if he is chosen, “It would kind of be a last hurrah, you might say.”

Coastline College President Leslie Purdy said Buell was nominated not only because of his history with the Olympics but because of his contribution to the college and community.

“When you look at his record and what he’s done for the college, it’s pretty obvious.”

Buell has been a longtime participant in the discus and shotput in the Senior Olympics and has won a number of medals, 14 of them gold.

Because of his athletic achievements, Buell was chosen in 1984 to participate in the Olympic torch relay to Los Angeles, pairing with a young man who had been a gold medal winner in the Special Olympics.

“He carried the torch, I pushed him in his wheelchair,” Buell said.

Over the years, Buell has collected more than 1,000 Olympic Games souvenirs, from programs and flags to a tin can of “fresh ozone” from the Los Angeles games.

He has been offered $1,500 for the 1932 Olympics program he bought for 10 cents.

A retired Navy commander and avid traveler who has visited more than 100 countries, Buell said the Olympics represent a historic time of worldwide peace.

“What impresses me about the Olympics is [that] in the early history of the Games, warriors from Rome and Athens would lay down their arms and compete on a friendly basis. There’s something about that atmosphere that’s still there. . . . There’s just something in the air. It actually gives you goose bumps at the closing ceremony.”