FloJo Forever: Park Honors Track Star

More than 600 people gathered in Mission Viejo on Saturday to commemorate the opening of a park named for Florence Griffith Joyner amid a sea of balloons and decorations as colorful as the late Olympic track star’s famously flamboyant fingernails.

The audience seized the moment to cheer for Griffith Joyner one more time as her husband, Al Joyner, joined city officials in unveiling a slightly-larger-than-life bronze statue of the runner.

The statue is based on a photograph of Griffith Joyner in full stride and with her arms flung in the air as she crossed the finish line to win the 100-meter race during the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise so many people came out to see this,” said Margot Ferron, 42, of Rancho Santa Margarita. “I was a runner in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and I feel like I have a tie to her. Everybody here feels like they have a tie to her.”

Griffith Joyner lived in Mission Viejo, where she became something of a civic icon because of her work in the community.

She died while sleeping in 1998 after suffering an epileptic seizure. She was 38. Al Joyner and their daughter still live in Mission Viejo.

The City Council voted to name the park Florence Joyner Olympiad Park in early 1999.

The statue was donated to Mission Viejo by Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, which has a similar bronze statue of Griffith Joyner on its property.

At Saturday’s dedication ceremony, six children were awarded college scholarships in honor of Griffith Joyner. People with strollers and video cameras congregated from all directions and children played in the park, which is on Olympiad Road at Alicia Parkway. The 17-acre park, which not long ago was a parcel of dirt, features acres of manicured grass as well as playground equipment painted in Olympic colors.

On Saturday morning, runners glided past the park’s plaza as Susan Withrow, a Mission Viejo councilwoman, said: “We . . . could not imagine a more fitting tribute.”

Griffith Joyner burst upon the world scene in the late 1980s as an athlete who was both powerful and glamorous, turning as many heads with her provocative bodysuits and colorful 6-inch nails as her record-shattering times. Her 100-meter victory was one of her three gold-medal triumphs at the Seoul Olympics.

She also won the 200-meter race and was a member of the teams that won the 400-meter relay and came in second in the 1,600-meter relay. She was one of only two women to win four medals in track at one Olympics.

Al Joyner read a poem about his wife to the spectators at Saturday’s event. His voice broke as he read over applause: “Her hair waved like a flag on a pole.”

“Thank you for naming this beautiful park after such a beautiful and caring woman,” he added.

Kim Hoxie, 30, of Mission Viejo brought her two children to the event. She read one of the statue’s inscriptions to her children: “Hold on to your dreams and never, ever give up.”

“I never met her, but I know she was always doing something in the community,” Hoxie said.

“She was an individual. You’ve got to remember people like that.”