Al Oerter, the greatest amateur athlete in Long Island history, died on Oct. 1, 2007 at his home in Fort Myers, FL. He was 71.

Oerter's fame---and he was one of the more famous athletes of the gaudy 1960s---came through his dominance in the discus throw event. From 1956 through 1968, Oerter won four consecutive Olympic gold medals in the discus event. Only Carl Lewis has matched his gold medal streak.

Oerter was born in Astoria, Queens, and raised in New Hyde Park. He attended Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park. Oerter excelled in track at Sewanhaka and earned a scholarship to the University of Kansas. From there, it was on to Olympic glory.

Oerter's first Olympics were the 1956 games at Melbourne, Australia. At age 20, Oerter won the gold with a heave of 56.36 meters. He repeated his gold medal success at the 1960 games in Rome, where he defeated the world record holder and fellow American, Rink Babka.

In 1962, Oerter set the world record for the discus throw, becoming the first man to break 200 feet.

However, it was at the 1964 and 1968 Olympic games where Oerter earned his greatest glory.

At the Tokyo games in 1964, Oerter competed against Ludvik Danek of Czechoslovakia, a man who had just set the latest world record in the discus throw. A week before the event, Oerter, while practicing, slipped on wet concrete, tearing a cartilage in his rib cage. The injury involved some internal bleeding and team doctors told him to forget the Olympics and take six weeks off to recuperate.

But Oerter was having none of that.

"These are the Olympics," he told the doctors. "You die before you quit."

And compete he did, winning the gold with a 61.00 meter toss.

Covering the event was Paul Zimmerman, longtime writer for Sports Illustrated. Writing on SI.com, Zimmerman recalled how he had access to the small room that athletes were ensconced in before being led to the victory stand. Zimmerman fondly remembered Oerter's reaction to winning his third straight gold medal.

"He [Oerter] was still wired when he got to that little room," Zimmerman wrote. "He smashed the side of his hand against the wall and then, and I'll never forget this, threw back his head and let out this one, wild, ear-shattering roar that caused a few worried officials to pop their heads in, fearing someone was being murdered. Of course, the beer might have had something to do with it, too. Danek had brought a case of Czech beer onto the field, to celebrate his expected triumph. Oerter helped him drink it."

In 1968, Oerter now 32 and considered "old" for track events was the underdog again, this time to another fellow American, Jay Silvester. But the man from New Hyde Park did it again. On his first throw, Oerter recorded a 64.78-meter toss, securing his fourth gold medal.

After the 1968 Olympics, Oerter retired. But the pull of competition proved enormous. Oerter attempted to qualify in both the 1980 and 1984 Olympics. Although he failed to make the team, his throwing ability had hardly been diminished. In 1984, for instance, Oerter, according to Zimmerman, was throwing the discus 40 feet farther than he did in 1956.

As with many New Yorkers, Oerter relocated to Florida. There, he began a second career, this one as an artist and painter. His most prominent work was Art of the Olympians, in which he collected the work of 14 Olympic games veterans, including Cammy Myler, Shane Gould, and Bob Beamon.

A great athlete in his prime, Oerter even managed to cheat death. After becoming ill with cardiovascular disease, Oerter, on March 13, 2003, was pronounced clinically dead. However, a change of blood pressure medications allowed for a fluid build-up, saving him on that day and giving him another four years to continue with his life and art.

Despite Oerter's greatness, his death attracted scant notice in metropolitan area media outlets, with an obituary in The New York Times as an exception.

Outside of New York, Oerter's passing received both national and international coverage.

Paul Zimmerman, who has witnessed every great athlete of the past half century, praised Oerter as "the greatest competitor I ever saw."

R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr., editor-in-chief of The American Spectator, quoted another Olympian, Harold Connolly, who called Oerter "the greatest field-event athlete of the century."

In all, Oerter was hailed as one of the last of his kind, the product of a long-vanquished era when athletics, as Tyrell observed, were more about the "love of sport" and the "sheer fun of competition," than money.

Oerter himself had little use for today's athlete and the "drug culture" which claimed that by the 1980s had "taken over" sports.

In the 1990s, Oerter visited an Olympic training camp and was dismayed by what he saw. "I saw these athletes in their 30s training full time," he told The New York Times. "That's their life. What happened to the rest of it? I'm happy I had a normal life, with a career and family. That makes a person whole."

Family members said that memorial donations can be made on the website, www.artoftheolympics.com.

(Information for this article came from Wikipedia.Org.)