Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, October 28, 1997

Youngster from Welsh jumped into spotlight

by Jim Bradshaw

Romero was jumping that day in Dallas, Texas Centennial Olympic Games. By then he had been nicknamed "The Louisiana Jumping Frog." Three years earlier, in 1932, he had been the youngest male ever to be named to a U.S. Olympic Team.

He'd acquired the nickname at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. A newspaperman asked him how he got his leaping ability. The story goes that Romero looked at the man for a minute, then matter-of-factly told him "by jumping over alligators, creeks, and rice swamps."

Romero, then a freshman at Loyola University in New Orleans, was a tender 17 when he was named to the squad that first time, and then repeated as an Olympic team member in 1936 for the games in Berlin. He also captured the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and Southern AAU crowns in the triple jump those days, and held the Southern broad jump record with a leap of 24 feet 9 7/8 inches.

In 1932, Romero was 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighed in at 163 pounds. The summer before the Olympics he had set a U.S. record in the hop-step-jump of 49 feet 10 1/2 inches. He placed fifth in the 1932 Olympics.

Going into the 1936 competition in Berlin, his 52 feet made him the odds-on favorite, but once again the big prize eluded him and he jumped only 49 feet 6 inches, taking fourth place.

His own track coach, the highly regarded Tad Gormley of Loyola, once said of him that he was a "one-jump man," meaning that he could come out with great leaps, but only if his stride, timing, and physical condition were right on.

Scoop Kennedy, then sports editor of the New Orleans Item, noted that Romero had bettered 50 feet five times during the 12 months before his 52-foot leap, but said also that Romero was "the most consistent pelayer in the United States, maybe the world." (In competition, jumpers must take off from behind a certain point. To "pelay" is to jump from beyond that point, making that jump illegal.) "Sometimes he'll fool around all afternoon and only get in one good jump," Kennedy wrote.

First place in the Berlin Olympics went to Naoto Tajima of Japan, who set a new world record of 52 feet 6 inches.

But the young man from Welsh took more than his share of honors. He was the national champion at the hop-step-jump in 1936 and made the All-America team four years in a row, 1933 through 1936.

He died in 1975.

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