Olympic Memories-

Lapel pins and a beer can offer tributes to the games

My collection representing over forty years as a working professional include these Olympic themed pins.  Photo:  Newvine Personal Collection

The Olympics have been dominating our television sets and the social media outlets this summer.  

It happens every other year since the summer and winter games moved to an alternating schedule in 1994.  For a few months before the games, and during the sixteen days of competition, it seems everyone is talking about the athletes, the new records, the brewing controversies, and the uniforms.

I need not look any further than to my collection of lapel pins collected over four decades of work.  Each of the near two hundred pins was worn on my suit lapel at least one time.

Part of the news team I worked with thirty years ago. I’m the guy in the white shirt, tie, and dark hair.   Inset: a special pin made in anticipation of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France.  Photo: Newvine Personal Collection

One pin stands out from 1992. 

I was working for the CBS affiliate at a television station in Rochester, New York. 

The station was carrying the winter games.  That was the year of Kristi Yamaguchi and the US Women’s Figure Skating team.

My job then was as an executive producer in the station’s news department.

Our general manager determined that if we worked really hard we might be able to maximize the lead-in from those winter games on CBS to move our third place late newscast to second place. 

The manager gave us pins that displayed the Olympic rings, the CBS logo and our station call letters. The pins helped keep my focus on the big prize.

We succeeded, and at least for that particular local rating period, our late news made the jump in the ratings.

The years I worked in Rochester were linked to the Olympic games because of three major companies in the area. Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb were all official sponsors of the games.  

They were really big companies back in the nineties. But success does not last forever.  Tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft dominate the Dow Jones Average today. 

While most people will remember the US Hockey team’s win over the Soviet team when thinking about the 1980 Winter Olympics, I have a much different memory from the year the games were held in Lake Placid, New York.  

1979 was the first year I was working as a television news reporter. 

The games would start in early 1980 so Olympic fever was high throughout upstate New York.

I was earning a decent paycheck so I wanted to give extra special Christmas presents for my family.  I forget what I got for other relatives, but I do remember getting my sister an Olympic ski cap with images from Lake Placid on it.  

The Winter Olympic Snow can, sold as a novelty during the 1980 Lake Placid games. Photo: Newvine Personal Collection.

Also acquired that year was a special beer can. 

There was no beer in it, but rather a unique souvenir of the Lake Placid games.  Printed on the back of the can of “Lake Placid Snow” was a message from the manufacturer saying that sealed inside the can, there was a small packet of moisture guaranteed to be 1979 Lake Placid snow. 

I took their word for it and never opened the can.

The can has been sitting on a shelf in my den or stashed away in a keepsake box wherever I lived for over forty years.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced. 

He wrote about his experiences as a television reporter in 1979 and 1980 in his book Stand By Camera One.  The book is available at BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon, and at Lulu.com