Sports

Bronze for Hoffa after blaze as kid

LONDON — As 3:30 p.m. approached, Diana Watts began to feel a little nervous, a little antsy. She had clicked on Channel 12, the NBC affiliate in Jacksonville, Fla., and though there were track and field athletes on her screen, they were skinny women and they were running. Watts was looking for a large man with a shot put.

“I checked out the other channels that’ve been showing the Olympics and knew it was getting closer to the event,” Watts said by telephone last night, “so I raced to my computer, played around, and found it on the English website. And that’s where I saw it.”

That’s where Watts saw a 34-year old named Reese Hoffa heave his third attempt 21.23 meters, solidly in third place behind the two best shot putters in the world, Poland’s Tomasz Majewski and Germany’s David Storl. And that’s where Watts waited, as Hoffa waited, through three more rounds, hopeful for a better throw (it never came), praying the field behind him wouldn’t plunk one a centimeter or two beyond.

That never happened, either.

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“There were so many things that went through my heart,” Watts said. “Mostly joy.”

Twenty-nine years ago, Diana’s last name was Chism and she lived in Louisville, Ky., on $100 a week, trying to raise two sons: Lamont and Maurice. One day, Lamont, older by two years, was upstairs in the family home showing his little brother tricks with a cigarette lighter. He left the room, and Maurice tried to copy him. A string caught fire. Then a drape.

And then the house.

What happened next happened in a blur: Diana took the boys to a Catholic orphanage, realizing they deserved a better life than she could provide at that moment. They stayed for six months. One day, a local family, the Hoffas, met Maurice, fell in love with his smile and his personality and decided to adopt him.

And so Maurice Antawn Chism became Reese Hoffa. As he grew, he became a good football player and a good baseball player, but when he was handed a shot put he discovered his true athletic calling. He became one of Earth’s most proficient twisters of a Rubik’s Cube, once solving it in 38 seconds. He earned a scholarship to the University of Georgia. He qualified for the Athens Olympics in 2004 and Beijing in 2008. Both times he failed to medal.

The athletic burden was one thing.

“I’m a traditionalist, and this is a country with a long tradition of success in the shot put,” he said. “But you can’t be a part of that until you earn a medal.”

Excluding the boycotted 1980 Olympics, the U.S. has medaled in the shot in every Olympics but 1936 and 1976. Reese wanted in.

As he pursued that, he also wanted something else. His adopted parents, Stephen and Cathy Hoffa, urged him to locate his birth mother, a reunion Diana Watts had been pursuing for years. When they finally connected, in 2002, there was something Reese wanted to tell her:

“I’m sorry I burned down the house.”

Diana has been a part of the extended family ever since, Reese calling her B-Mom (for birth), calling Cathy McManus (she and Stephen divorced) A-Mom (for adopted). And last night, on the most important stage of his career, Reese Hoffa had two moms cheering him on, A-Mom from inside Olympic Stadium and B-Mom on a computer 3,600 miles away in northern Florida.

“I started my life as a kid with a mom who wanted to give her son a great life, and now I sort of have two mothers,” Reese said in the stadium corridors later, his freshly awarded bronze medal dangling from his neck. He has become a strong supporter of adoption, because he has seen — he has lived — what an opportunity it can provide.

“I’m a very lucky guy,” he said. “It could have gone the other way.”

Diana feels lucky, too. The second the result became official last night, she fired off an e-mail and a text message. She married attorney Mark Watts in 1990, and they have two young children. Through the years, both Diana and Reese have been reluctant to discuss Lamont, who had, sadly, “gone the other way.”

But last night would not be one to dwell on sadness. Reese said he would be taking his wife and his A-Mom to dinner. Back home, B-Mom had her own plans.

“Now,” she said, “I think it’s time we open up a celebratory bottle of wine.”