Olympic Legend Billy Mills: One Man Is Still Going the Distance for Two Nations

Billy Mills poked at a healthy plate of poached eggs, grilled vegetables and dry toasted rye Friday morning. The distance-running legend has neither the knees nor the appetite to compete in the 30th annual Marine Corps Marathon tomorrow, so you wonder if the old sage has finally left the finishing kick to the young bucks.

"Nah, getting ready for Beijing," Mills said, laughing. "Hey, if no one comes around in the 10K, I'll be there."

Forty-one summers ago, Mills stunned the world at the 1964 Tokyo Games -- becoming the first American to win the 10,000 meters and the last Native American to win Olympic gold. At 67, the pride of the Oglala Lakota Sioux nation is sitting in a downtown Washington hotel, still teetering between two worlds.

On one side are his ancestors.

In a ceremony at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian today, Mills will honor members of Running Strong for American Indian Youth, the nonprofit organization for whom he is national spokesman. Running Strong comprises six American Indians and 22 non-Natives from across North America and helps communities with self-sufficiency programs, youth activities and cultural identity projects.

On the other side is the country Mills proudly served.

Last night, the former Marine lieutenant was invited to a special military reception, where Mills planned to meet a veteran who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm honored to be a part of something like that," Mills said. "On the other hand, though, it's hard to reconcile the two sides. Because, do you know the most Congressional Medal of Honors given out for one 'battle?'

"Wounded Knee," he said, referring to the 1890 massacre near the South Dakota reservation where he was orphaned at 12. "They gave 21 or 23 -- I can't remember for a slaughter of 350 people.

"I'm proud of my country and proud to be an American citizen, but I still see the imbalance. You see it all over."

Mills's Lakota name is Makata Taka Hela. Loosely translated, it means "love your country." Despite his misgivings about the U.S. government's treatment of his people, he has.

His commission ended two weeks before much of his unit was sent to Vietnam. He lost a nephew and his former college roommate at Kansas -- Cliff Kushman, an Air Force captain who was shot down in 1966 -- to war. Kushman was a silver medalist in the intermediate hurdles at the 1960 Rome Games. Guilt-ridden he was not sent abroad himself, Mills was eventually denied a request to have his duty extended.