Robert and I tried out for the high school baseball team. He didn’t make it.

He then tried out as a pole vaulter on the track team, telling me he would not give up, even though he was going over the bar sideways!

The next year, he broke the school record, and in our senior year he set a national record of 16 feet, 7 ¾ inches. Nope, he didn’t give up.

Robert attended USC, qualified for the Olympic team, then became a Los Angeles police officer, establishing a decade-long LAPD Olympic Program for kids. He passed away in 1989.

He was part of a 1969 Los Angeles High School team that took the California State Championship, with the best sprinters and middle-distance runners in the nation.

Our track was dirt. Fifty years later, I went back to a school meeting, and the track was still dirt. Every high school where I now live has a tartan turf track.

In the spirit of equality, I vow to raise funds to have a new L.A. High track installed, because I learned from Robert not to give up.

In his honor, it will be dedicated as the Robert Pullard Memorial Track.

Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D., is a geriatric house-call physician who serves as president of the Los Angeles County Commission for Older Adults and Assemblyman to the California Senior Legislature. He has practiced in the Santa Clarita Valley for 32 years.