Yes It Is, It’s True: Elmer Peters’ brief extraordinary story

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following column is reprinted from five years ago during Townbroadcast’s first year of existence:

“I coulda been a contender,” Marlon Brando’s famous line from the movie “On the Waterfront,“ perhaps best describes the brief life of Elmer Peters.

Born in Bradley to Elmer and Grace Peters on March 30, 1945, he died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on June 10, 1984, at age 39.

During one special spring in 1962, as a freshman at Wayland High School, he astonished the local sports world with his distance running abilities. Unfortunately, a promising athletic career was cut short by poverty, family circumstances and by just being a Native American.

Peters was one of the key members of what was then called the greatest Wayland High School track team in history. The Wildcats that year went 9-3 in dual meets, won the BarKenAll Conference championship and finished third in the Class C regional meet.

The squad was loaded with exceptional and school record-breaking talent. There was John Zuidersma in the 880-yard run. There was Jim Johnson in the sprints, particularly the 220. There was Roger Nagel in the hurdles. There were Nagel, Jack Arbuthnot, Johnson and Dennis Noble in the 880-yard relay (it was yards back then instead of meters).

But Peters was the only one among a solid group who distinguished himself in state-wide competition. Only a freshman, he shocked just about everybody at the state meet in Mt. Pleasant by taking third place in the mile run and setting the school record with a time of 4:39.6.

There was plenty of lore about Peters’ performance, even an unverified story that he was so taken aback by the crowd size at the state meet and the high stakes of the race that he froze at the sound of the gun and then had to pass a bunch of other runners to pick up his lofty third-place medal.

Elmer also was a member of Wayland’s mile relay team that set the school record.

Jon Gambee, a 1965 Wayland High School graduate, a teammate of Peters and fellow Bradley resident, said, “I remember seeing him run past our house nearly every day. He ran home from school on a regular basis.”

This was no mean feat, even for a high school student. The school was more than five miles from his home.

Gambee back then was known as a physical fitness freak.

“I could do 100 pushups easily,” he recalled. “I did 25 standing on my hands with my feet up against a wall. I did 50 between two chairs so I could go further down.

“I once did 136 consecutive pushups in phys ed class and I think Elmer matched me. I think he could have done 150, but he stopped because I did.”

Gambee said he and Peters were friends, but not close.

“He was always friendly and easy to talk to, although shy with many others. Maybe (it was) because we were both country boys from the sticks. I thought he was a pretty good guy.”

Gambee said Peters also a pretty decent basketball player, “but in our freshman year both of us were regulated to the third string and he quit the sport. He could play well and could outjump anyone on the team, but the coach didn’t like either one of us. I was too short and I guess Elmer didn’t have the right connections.”

He said Peters perhaps had the mental and physical makeup to be a particularly good cross country runner, but the sport was not offered yet in Wayland, nor most other schools, back in the early 1960s.

“He never thought of himself as that different,” Gambee said. “He just liked to run. If you talked to him about it, he never thought it was that big a deal.”

Because Peters was 17 in the summer of 1962, he was permitted legally to drop out of school, which he did because of family and poverty considerations. It was as difficult back then as it is now for a Native American young man to find steady work.

“He went into the military service,” said his sister, Marian Jarman. “We were raised on welfare and our dad was an alcoholic. He’d send Mom money, his wages, from where he was stationed in Germany.”

Peters served for three years and was lucky enough to have another Native American from Bradley, D.K. Sprague, serve with him. They became friends.

Though his sister said she didn’t think he served in Vietnam, the headstone of his grave at the Bradley Indian Mission says he did.

When Peters returned to the United States, he was able to take advantage of his service experience to obtain jobs, first at Hastings Manufacturing and later at Bradford White in Middleville.

He was married three times but had no biological children.

Peters was a member of the Salem Indian Mission, the Loyal Order of the Moose, The Dorr American Legion Post No. 17, AMVETS No. 23 and United Auto Workers Local 1002.

At the time of his death, he was survived by his wife, Ivy; a stepson, Nathan Buckmaster; his parents; a brother, Dale William; two sisters, Irma Shriner and Marian Jarman; and nieces, nephews and cousins.

The obituary notice mentioned nothing about his military service, nor about his astonishing athletic accomplishments.