Prouty remembers carrying torch

Next week, 28 men and women from Boise and Mountain Home will carry the Olympic Flame of peace through Mountain Home on its way to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

One man in Mountain Home, Fred Prouty, already knows how they'll feel. In 1996, Prouty represented the city as a torch-bearer on the run through Boise as the flame headed toward the summer games in Atlanta.

"It still gives me chills when I think about doing that," Prouty said, wearing the red-white-and-blue nylon jacket he earned as a torch runner. "It was a hell of an experience."

Prouty said at the time he was selected, he had remembered when the torch came through Mountain Home on its way to the summer games in Los Angeles, two decades earlier. "They had actual (long-distance) runners then, so I had a sense of the mystic, that here was a flame that had come all the way from Greece.

"But it really didn't hit me until I was waiting there (for his leg in Boise) and then they handed me the torch. Suddenly, you realize you're the only one holding it in the world. You have this huge responsibility to take care of it." Prouty said he'd actually worried about that. "I woke up nights before, worrying about losing the flame.

"When you hold it up, it's hot. You have to be sure you don't burn yourself." When it was over, he was give the right to purchase the torch he carried. Then, it cost $300. Today, runners are charged $335 by Olympic organizers if they want to keep the torch they use. For Fred, his is packed securely away so nothing will happen to it.

His advice to next week's runners? "Enjoy. It's a once-in-a- lifetime thing. They'll find that the people around them will be as excited as they are. It has nothing to do with you personally, it has to do with what you're carrying. It's not 'there's Fred with the torch,' it's 'there's the flame.' People applauded. But it wasn't for me, it was for the flame."

Prouty said the symbol of peace has special meaning today. "There's such a grey cloud hanging over the world. We just had some of our people come back from a war, and the world is going to stop a minute and play games.

"I think the Olympics are one of the best peace-keeping things in the world. It's grown above politics. Those athletes just go there to win, to exchange with each other, to talk, to bond. This year's motto (of the torch run) is to 'Light the Flame Within.' That's what it's all about." Prouty said it changed his life, and outside of his family and the birth of his children, "it was the highlight of my life."

At the time he was selected, Prouty was something less than an athlete. He had asthma, a bad heart, was overweight and out of shape. But he started running to get ready for the event, even practicing by carrying aloft a 3.5-lb barbell. "That thing is heavy after you hold it up for a while." Eventually, he got into shape, and stayed that way. Running became a pleasure and three years later, in his 60s, he took part in an iron-man triathalon.

But it was the day he carried the flame -- for Mountain Home, the USA, and the world -- that is burned into his mind. "I can remember that day from the moment I got up until I went to bed that night.

"People wanted to touch you, to touch the torch." But the highlight of the day was about 200 yards from the end of his run, when he looked up "and there was grandson number one. He was smiling. I think the most fun was sharing it with my family.

"This is not about business," he said, brushing aside the commercialization that has accompanied the event. "It's about the Olympic flame coming to town and paving the way for the competition."

This year, Prouty will help the runners get ready when they gather at Performance Chevrolet in the morning for their final briefing. Then he'll head up to the visitor's center and "just be someone in the crowd," watching the ceremonies there.

But that won't be true. Like the 28 runners who will pass through Mountain Home on Saturday, Jan. 26, he will be someone special. He's carried the Olympic flame.