You never know where Olympic fame might take you. The 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics are over, but Sausalito based lawyer Steve Healey’s link to the games remains more than a passing connection.
Healy’s niece, Lynn Williams of Fresno, was an integral part of the United States women’s soccer team and it’s bronze-winning performance. This past week also marked the anniversary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Jesse Owens’ four gold medals shattered Adolf Hitler’s myth of Aryan superiority.
Archie Williams, whose name recently replaced Sir Francis Drake at the San Anselmo high school and will be formally recognized at a commemoration ceremony on Aug. 25, also medaled in Berlin. Williams went on to become a pilot who instructed the Tuskegee Airman, the famed World War II regiment. He later served in the Air Force over the skies of Korea during that early 1950s struggle with the communists. Earning his engineering degree from University of California, Berkeley, Williams spent his final 20 professional years as an educator at Drake High, which now bears his name.
The claim that Drake had clean hands regarding slavery is a myth. It fails to stand up to a nifty bit of research unearthed through the curiosity of Tamalpais Union High School District Trustee Kevin Saavedra. In a written exchange between Saavedra and Robert J. Blyth, curator of the World Maritime History Museum, the curator writes: “Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake. I am glad you took the time to point out the inconsistencies and, as it happens, inaccuracies on the museum website. Sir John Hawkins undertook three slaving voyages to West Africa in 1563/3, 1564/5, and 1567/9 — Drake accompanied him on all three voyages.”
Hawkins was the scion of a wealthy shipbuilding family and mentored Drake on his numerous slave-transporting voyages between 1562 and 1569. It is estimated the privateers enslaved close to 1,200 Africans, which would have “involved killing three times that number of people.”
Karma caught up with the two. On Nov. 12, 1595 Hawkins met his fate off the coast of Puerto Rico, leading an armada of 27 ships in a failed attempt to rescue his captive son, Richard, held by the Spanish.
Drake escaped and sailed toward Panama, but was felled by dysentery 14 days later off the coast of Portobello. Both Hawkins and Drake were interred at sea.
As high school students, we had neither the knowledge nor the nerve to challenge the existing Drake orthodoxy. At best, we were fascinated by what turned out to be a faked brass plate placed near Point Reyes, supposedly by the explorer in 1579.
We now know that color and gender equity are finally coming to Marin. Witness: A Black hero and beloved educator who had something to do with saving the world from Nazi and Axis domination has a school named after him, rather than someone remembered for planting the flag of colonialism and slavery in the Americas.
The arc of the universe further bends toward justice by elevating longtime Redwood High African American counselor LaSandra White to the position of Archie Williams High principal. Just five years ago, graffiti on a sculpture at Redwood included a slur directed at White. We’ve come a long way since then.
Who knows, maybe one day Healy’s niece, the racially blended bronze-medal winner Lynn Williams, will have a school named for her.
