The Olympics always remind me of times and places in my life. Today, watching the U.S. Women’s volleyball team play, I remember being the program director of KUHT, the public television station in Houston, TX in the mid-1970s. I got to do so many things there that lead to an overall wonderful life. Here’s one that has to do with volleyball.

A tall, striking woman named Mary Jo Peppler was an Olympic star in volleyball. She had gone to college in Texas at a place called Sul Ross. Somehow, after the Olympics, she came to Houston where she put together a women’s volleyball team called E Pluribus Unum. She and I were connected through some other feminists I knew and worked with on various issues around town and on television.

I don’t remember what opponents Mary Jo Peppler’s team played before (DRUM ROLL HERE) the Chinese women — considered to be the best volleyball players in the world — came to town. Somehow, Mary Jo Peppler convinced me, and I convinced my station manager, that KUHT should broadcast the game.

Now, the game was obviously played on location somewhere in Houston, and the station only had two cameras, and I know we didn’t (couldn’t) carry the match live so our coverage was rather limited and tape delayed. I remember that there were some incidental expenses amounting to $200 for which we had no budget, but I told my station manager I’d find the money.

So I picked up the phone and called my father in Leslie, Arkansas, who probably had never seen a volleyball game other than one played in someone’s yard, and asked him to “underwrite” the game. So when the demonstration match between the Chinese women’s team and the local E Pluribus Unum  aired on KUHT in Houston, it carried an underwriting spot at the beginning and end that went something like this: This program is made possible by a grant from Virgil Blair. And, Virgil Blair never saw any of it because whatever copies we had were on 3/4 inch videotape; at that time, no one had these playback machines in their home.

So seeing the U.S. women play today led me to Google and E Pluribus Unum and Mary Jo Peppler and memories of video recorders as big as cars. And, of all the sports I’ve loved and sportspeople I’ve met, and not incidentally, that much of my life has been made possible by a grant from Virgil Blair.