A Letter From The Publisher: Oct. 17, 1983

This week's cover story looks at the enormous effort by a group of Southern California businessmen to organize the financing, the facilities and the logistics of the third summer Olympic Games to be held in the U.S. Written by Associate Editor Tom Callahan, the story was largely reported by Correspondent Steven Holmes, who spent three weeks talking with those who have the responsibility of making Los Angeles a comfortable locale for 10,000 athletes and hundreds of thousands of spectators next summer—and of ensuring that Los Angeles does not go broke in the process.

Holmes has had a keen interest in sports since his student days at Mount Vernon (N. Y.) High School, alma mater of such athletes as baseball's Ken Singleton and basketball's Ray Williams and Gus Williams. Holmes was an outfielder on the school's baseball team, but early on ("I was good field, no hit") he decided that journalism might be better suited to his talents. After graduation from City College of New York and the Michele Clark Fellowship Program for Minority Journalists, he got a job as a reporter at the Yonkers (N. Y.) Herald Statesman, then moved on to U.P.I, in Dallas and the Atlanta Constitution. He has spent the past 4½ years in TIME'S Chicago and Los Angeles bureaus.

For the cover assignment, Holmes interviewed members of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (L.A.O.O.C.), including its president, Peter Ueberroth, government officials, law enforcement officers, athletes and representatives from the U.S. Olympic Committee. He also visited a dozen sites in and around the city where the athletes will compete. "I was impressed by the complexity of planning an Olympics," he says, "and also by the dedication displayed by those who are putting on the Games. It is a phenomenon that changes people. This was mentioned time and time again by those involved in the Olympic effort: a security planning chief who can't conceive of going back to being a police division commander, the L.A.O.O.C. head of personnel who doesn't want to return to punching a corporation clock, even the receptionist who is unhappy at the thought of teaching school again. If they can put on the largest Olympic Games ever held, they say, how can they ever return to mundane jobs?"

John A. Meyers