This Is Your Life - Billy Mills (1984)

This video upload is a copy of the January 21, 1984 episode YLS114 of Ralph Edwards' "This Is Your Life," in honor of the legendary Olympic champion Billy Mills. The original VHS tape was given to Ernie Shelby as a gift by the producers of the show.

Ernie is a very close friend of mine whom I've known for years as a composer in the music industry. It wasn't until he asked me to make a digital version of this video that I became aware he had formerly been a world-class athlete.

Ernie had been invited to appear as a guest on the show because of his past team membership with Billy Mills. As it turned out, when track coach Bill Easton of Kansas University went to the Haskell Indian Institute to recruit Billy Mills out of high school, his goal was to assure the Native-American distance runner that coming to Kansas would not be a negative racial experience. Since Ernie was an African American, the #1 ranked Long Jumper in the world AND the KU track team captain, he was the obvious choice to accompany Coach Easton on that mission.

Billy did enter KU and eventually became close friends with Ernie Shelby, and remain friends to this day.

This particular This Is Your Life show also features a 1964 videotape of the original TV broadcast of the amazingly dramatic finish of Billy winning Olympic Gold in the 10,00 Meters. (If you search on YouTube you can probably find some other versions of that broadcast.) Many of Billy's close family members, Coach Easton and movie star Robbie Benson (who portrays Billy in the movie "Running Brave") were also guests on the show. This video records the first reunion between the Ernie, Billy and their former coach in almost 20 years. Enjoy!