Jesse Holt

BTW Class of 1961

Miami Herald October 17, 2016

For 41 years, Jesse Holt brought kids from the crucible of the inner city’s streets to the sanctuary of the track and field oval.

Whether they became doctors, lawyers, engineers, Olympians, or football stars, they learned first from Holt how to reach their own personal finish line. Holt, founder and coach of the Miami Northwest Express Track Club, died Sunday, October 15, 2017 doing what he always did – helping others. After attending church, he was moving furniture when he collapsed in the backyard of his Little River home, probably from a heart attack, family members said. He was 73. “The community has lost a giant,” said Roosevelt Richardson, former coach

and instructor at Miami-Dade North and Florida Memorial College and longtime friend of Holt from their youth in Overtown. “There was something special about his ability to motivate kids. It wasn’t about winning; it was about nurturing. He’d work as hard as he asked them to work.”

Holt was mentor to thousands of kids – and their kids’ kids – through the decades from the club’s base at Moore Park, which had been a “Whites Only” park until he and friend George Williams took it upon themselves to integrate it in 1960 when they asked to run on the track.

Holt wasn’t paid for coaching or for organizing South Florida’s largest annual meet, the Northwest Track and Field Classic that attracted athletes from throughout North America and the Caribbean. He was MC of the meet for the last time in June, days after suffering a stroke that left his hands so cold he wore socks over them. He wanted to make sure he was at the microphone to announce as many kids’ names as he could.

Holt, retired from Miami-Dade County’s licensing department, often took money out of his own pocket to buy shoes or pay registration fees for his athletes. They’d sleep and eat at his house when necessary. Running the club was a family affair, with Holt’s wife Claudette and children Alan, Darren, Reggie, and Teri sharing the responsibilities of washing uniforms, assisting at practices, handing out ribbons, and arranging parenting seminars and academic tutoring sessions.

Bershawn “Batman” Jackson, 2008 Olympic bronze medalist and former world No. 1 in the 400-meter hurdles, grew up in Liberty City and joined the club at age 7.

When Jackson ran in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he paid for Holt to attend his first Olympics and watch protégés Jackson and Tiffany RossWilliams compete. Jackson’s enduring memory after taking the bronze medal was embracing Holt in the Bird’s Nest Stadium stands and hearing him say, “I’m proud of you.” Jackson lives in Raleigh, N.C., where he’s started his own track club, and talked to Holt every single day. The club’s most famous alumni include Jackson, RossWilliams, Robin Reynolds, Tim Harris, Pavielle James and Ebony Gibson, plus National Football League players Artie Burns, Brandon Harris, Melvin Bratton, Willis McGahee, Glenn Holt, and Reggie Holt.

Holt was born in Shellman, Georgia, where he lived in the onebedroom concrete block house that his father built after serving in the U.S. Navy. In 1953, Holt and his family moved to Overtown, where his father ran a grocery store.

Holt attended Dunbar Elementary and Booker T. Washington Junior and Senior High. He became the first black athlete to compete against whites in an age-group meet in Florida and to be named to the All-Dade County high school track and field team.

He was a scholarship sprinter at Grambling State. He had Olympic aspirations until he injured his hamstring.

“He wasn’t just fast on the track – when he was writing term papers he was the fastest two-finger typer I’d ever seen,” Richardson said. “He was from a humble background, but all he wanted to do was give back.”

Bill Van Smith, formerly an editor at the Miami Herald, contributed to this report.