Yesterday's low-key ribbon-cutting ceremony at the splendid new United States Olympic Committee (USOC) headquarters in downtown Colorado Springs is still a quantum leap from the opening of the first USOC Olympic House in the summer of 1978 on the grounds of the unoccupied ENT Air Force Base in mid-town, a 34-acre complex filled with run-down buildings and presented to the USOC for lease at one dollar a year.

But yesterday's modest news media event was hardly more significant than the August 1, 1978, first day at the old building at Boulder and Union and its place in the history of the USOC and the Olympic Movement.

We had just concluded the USOC’s inaugural National Sports Festival on July 30, a  national multi-sport event for some 3,000 American athletes in 25 sports who came to the city from across the nation to be part of a fledgling event created to showcase our Olympic hopefuls and give our elite and rising athletes something to do in the summer.

But on that Sunday, August 1, Olympic House officially opened without a ribbon-cutting on a hot day with Executive Director F. Don Miller, President Robert J. Kane, Director of Special Events Baaron Pittenger and a handful of reporters still hanging around from the Sports Festival - Neil Amdur of the New York Times, Kenneth Reich of the Los Angeles Times, Joe Concannon of the Boston Globe and Mike Kelly of the Omaha World-Herald, among others.

Pittenger had arrived in Colorado Springs in January, charged with the task of staging the first Sports Festival and readying the building that would become Olympic House for the arrival of Miller and his small staff in the summer. The building had once housed the office of the Commanding General at ENT and his staff, and it underwent a massive overhaul under the direction of Pittenger, who had been hired by the USOC from his position in the athletic department at Harvard in 1977.

He skillfully got both projects done, but not without headaches. "I almost forgot to have a phone system put in at Olympic House," said Pittenger yesterday morning. "We were just six weeks from opening before I remembered that, and I was working with our designer, Marshall Morin, on stuff like the wallpaper and colours in Olympic House, which originally were a lot of black and gold, and working with the city and our volunteer organizsng committee to put on the Sports Festival. I won’t ever forget that summer."

Only ten people made up that first USOC staff, all packing up and moving from 57 Park Avenue in New York City to head West and create a new beginning for an organisation thrust into the limelight in 1978 by Congress and the Amateur Sports Act, and charged with control of the Olympic Movement in the United States in the aftermath of a decade of problems and showdowns between the old AAU and the NCAA over athlete rights and who was in charge.

Miller’s small cast that first day at Olympic House included his secretary, Marty Duncan, Pittenger, chief financial officer Bill Bachert, office manager Jim McHugh, attorney Doug Dunlop, marketing chief Arthur I. Kuman, operations director Jerry Lace and his assistant, Larry McCollum, and press chief and tireless historian C. Robert Paul, Jr.

Duncan, Bachert and McHugh were there only for a short time, not wanting to make the move to Colorado Springs on a permanent basis, and they returned to the more comfortable, predictable noise of Manhattan within a few months. Miller and Pittenger brought me on board in late December, hiring me away from my role as Sports Information Director at the University of Colorado, after I had helped Pittenger by volunteering to run press operations and publicity for the Sports Festival.

I had turned them down on an earlier offer about the job because CU had just hired Chuck Fairbanks away from the New England Patriots as its new football coach, the man who had led Oklahoma to a pair of national titles, and I wanted to be part of that Boulder gridiron renaissance, or so I thought.

When I changed my mind and joined the USOC, I was not sure I had made the right decision, but two years into Fairbanks' reign at CU, I realised I had basically missed the Titanic at the dock. I intended to stay about five years, but it turned into a quarter-of-a-century.

Miller, a decorated Army officer, liked to have his staff quiet and in the background, but I guess he liked me and I broke that mould. But the day before Olympic House opened, July 30, a secret meeting in Miller’s office at Olympic House, almost now forgotten, created history, and had it not taken place, yesterday morning’s nice ribbon-cutting downtown might never have happened.

Miller, Kane and USOC treasurer William E. Simon hosted Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and John C. Argue, head of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organising Committee (LAOOC) to seek resolution to keep the Games in Los Angeles after the citizens of Los Angeles were back-pedaling on a commitment of funding, leaving the event in jeopardy.

The IOC had given the LAOOC and the USOC until August 31 to come up with a guarantee, or else the Games were going elsewhere. While the Sports Festival wound down on its final day, the Olympic leaders hatched a bold plan in which a group of prominent LA business leaders and the USOC would create a private entity to assure the Games' finances.


 
The USOC guaranteed $25 million (£16 million), which it did not have, the LA moguls pitched in another $25 million (£16 million) to indemnify the city against a shortfall, and the USOC gave the IOC a $300,000 (£197,000) deposit in good faith, allowing the Lausanne officials to wink and keep the Games in Los Angeles. Since only Tehran had bid for the Games against Los Angeles, it’s anyone’s guess now where they would have moved the Games if Los Angeles, like Denver in 1973, had given them back
 
In February, 1979, the IOC made it official and LA used a USOC loan to hire Peter Ueberroth. The Games were a huge success, earned a nice $225 million ($148 million) surplus, gave the USOC back almost $111 million (£73 million)  for its gamble, and probably saved the Olympic Games for the future.

It was fitting that USOC President Emeritus Bill Hybl took part in yesterday's ceremony, because it was in the winter of 1977 that Hybl, then the Vice President of the El Pomar Foundation,  presented Miller with a check for $1,000,000 (£659,000) on behalf of the legendary Thayer Tutt to seal the deal and the USOC’s relocation from New York to Colorado Springs when nobody else really wanted the organisation, by today’s standards a relative mom-and-pop outfit.

It has been Hybl and El Pomar, again, that have played a major role in making sure the new building downtown became reality, along with a long term commitment for the USOC to keep calling our city it’s hometown. There are likely no pictures in the new digs downtown of Miller, Kane, Simon, Pittenger and Hybl, but there should be. These men, and others not as well-known, saved the USOC and helped preserve the Olympic Games when they were in danger of extinction.

The 225 USOC employees who have moved downtown have never heard this story, and most won’t notice. But it’s important, and it’s the genesis of USOC history in Colorado Springs. CEO Scott Blackmun and his staffers will no doubt witness moments of historic significance in their new offices over the years, but they should understand, that but for the bold actions of a few, they might now have very different lives, as would the more than 300,000 athletes who have come and gone from Colorado Springs and the Olympic facilities, chasing their dreams.

Mike Moran was the chief communications officer of the USOC for nearly 25 years before retiring in 2003. In 2002 he was awarded with the USOC's highest award, the General Douglas MacArthur Award. He worked on New York's unsuccessful bid to host the 2012 Olympics and is now director of communications for the Colorado Springs Sports Corporation.