53.2

It’s funny how the simplest of things—a cancelled check from the 1960s, a yarn-covered hanger from a Christmas long ago, or even a number—can help us remember, or perhaps learn about, our family history. Yes, even a bare number such as 53.2 has a story to tell about a Buller moment in the sun a little more than sixty years ago (cue music from Chariots of Fire).

Beginning in the 1950s (and continuing even today) Doane College of Crete, Nebraska, sponsored an invitational high school track and field meet, a place for the top athletes across the state (for example, a certain Gale Sayers from Omaha Central in 1961) to compete against one another in two classes: A for the larger schools, B for the smaller schools.

Of most interest to us is the April 1954 meet, when a certain runner from Grafton High School set the class B Doane Invitational record for the 440-yard dash with a time of 53.2 seconds. That runner was none other than Wayne Buller. Wayne’s record was tied in 1956 and again in 1959, but it was not actually broken until 1961, seven years after he set it (see newspaper clipping on the right).

Remarkably, Wayne had an even better 440 time that year. According to the 29 April 1956 Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star (see below), Wayne set the Class D district record of 52.9 in 1954, and it still held two years later. Further, the 27 April 1954 Lincoln Evening Journal and Nebraska State Journal reports that in 1954 52.9 was the second fastest time of all high school quarter-milers in the entire state. Not bad for a Lushton farmboy!

Records, of course, will inevitably be broken, but they need not be forgotten. So it is that we add this episode, this shining moment to the telling of our family story. Let us tell the story often.