Recently my dad and I went to hear Billy Mills speak. Billy grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He was even homeless for a while when he moved off to find better work. He won the 10,000 meters race in the Olympics in 1964. Something that really surprised me was what he went through once he started getting on the all U.S. teams. Whenever there was a team photo, he was asked to leave because of his color. I thought it was really cool and inspiring that he worked through so many hard times, including being homeless. I hope I will be able to work as hard as he did to get what he wanted.
We bought Billy’s book, Lessons Of A Lakota: A Young Man’s Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding. Billy autographed it for us and wrote, “Follow Your Dream.”
Billy showed a commercial that aired during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The commercial starts at 4:33 in the following video.
You can watch Billy tell his story and watch him win the Olympic Gold in this video.