BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Every home has a junk drawer, the one filled with pens, pencils, paid bills, screwdrivers, a few nuts and bolts, and the errant car key.
Rowdy and Judy Gaines of the Hoover Ward, Bessemer Alabama Stake, have one other item in their drawer — an Olympic gold medal.
Ambrose "Rowdy" Gaines IV won three gold medals in swimming during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. He later gave one to his coach, one to his dad and another to his mother. When Brother Gaines has speaking engagements, he "borrows" one of his medals to show the audience; thus, his mother's, for the 400-meter freestyle relay, happened to be at the house recently.
It's not that the Olympian does not treasure his medals — the other two being from the 100-meter freestyle and 400-meter medley relay. In fact, he's still so well-known in the elite swimming world that he's in Sydney, Australia, this month as a commentator for the 2000 Summer Olympics. He did the same in 1992 in Barcelona, Spain, and in 1996 in Atlanta, Ga. (He also works for the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.)
Most likely, the medal was in the drawer to keep it from being used as a hop-scotch stone by one of their four young daughters. Considering the 20,000 miles he logged in the pool preparing for 1984, he highly values his medals. But compared to his wife and children, Emily, 15; Madison, 10; Savanna, 5; and Isabelle, 15 months, he said an Olympic gold medal is "worthless."
"There's no comparison," Brother Gaines said while sitting in his living room in Hoover, Ala., just outside Birmingham. "It doesn't even measure on a Richter Scale, as far as that goes. A gold medal is worthless compared to the love I feel for my family. It may sound corny, but it's true."
Brother Gaines joined the Church in 1998, and on June 3, 2000, the Gaines family was sealed in the Atlanta Georgia Temple. When asked to speak of that day, their response is not quick. Sister Gaines begins to cry, and all Brother Gaines can do is utter a sigh of relief and awe.
Sister Gaines likens making it to the temple as a family to setting a goal for an Olympic medal — it takes commitment, dedication and training (attending Church, praying, studying the scriptures, serving). "We set a goal to go to the temple all those years ago. We made a commitment, and we dedicated our lives to the Lord," she said, smiling at her husband.
Brother and Sister Gaines chuckle when they speak of the long road to the temple together — a journey began long before they met. Sister Gaines, then Judy Zachea, joined the Church in 1981 when she was 18 and living in Las Vegas, Nev., but was not active for a time. Brother Gaines graduated from Winter Haven High School in Florida in 1977 and headed to Auburn University in Birmingham on a swimming scholarship. After his freshman year, he competed in the world championships and placed second in the 200-meter freestyle. Then he got serious. "I knew that my goal had to become a lot bigger," he recalled.
The tall, blond athlete set his sights on Moscow, Russia, in 1980, but his hopes were dashed when the United States boycotted those Games. "A lot of times athletes' lives can come and go in a span of four years, so it was very hard to deal with," he related. But as seems to be his attitude, he just "dove" into more training and competing and looked to 1984 in Los Angeles, Calif. When the Olympics trials were through, he had made the U.S. team. He won gold three times. "It was an amazing time," he recalled. "I swam in front of 17,000 people. The biggest audience before was something like 100, so to swim in front of that many people and have that kind of surge and emotion was incredible."
But Brother Gaines was to know many emotions in the coming years. In 1989, he met and married his wife, and they moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1991, an LDS friend invited them back to Church. About the same time, Brother Gaines noticed something terribly wrong physically. He was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an auto-immune disorder. After a slow, difficult recovery, they began attending Church together. In 1996, they moved to Alabama.
Then, in 1998, while speaking at his daughter Madison's baptism, he was overcome with emotion. Sister Gaines recalled: "He gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. He said, 'Madison, one thing I cannot buy for you is the gift of the Holy Ghost.' Then he got choked up and couldn't speak. The Spirit was so incredibly strong."
Brother Gaines was baptized two weeks later.
Speaking of his illness and also of being sealed as a family, Brother Gaines added, "I learned not to take my health for granted. And now after being sealed, I learned never to take my family for granted."
E-mail: julied@desnews.com