"A Piece of Junk Called a Rifle"

THE 1963 PAN AMERICAN GAMES

The International Olympic Committee ( IOC ) created the Pan American Games in 1932, but the first Pan American Games were not held until 1952 in Argentina.  The main idea behind creating the Pan American Games was to allow athletes from different sports practiced in the Americas to have their own international multi-sport competition similar to the Olympic Games.

The 4^th Pan American Games were held in San Paulo, Brazil in April 1963, with 1,665 athletes from 22 nations participating in 19 sports.   15 countries were entered in the shooting competitions with each nation allowed to enter four shooters in each event, with two of them designated as competing for individual awards and all four as members of their nation’s team for that event.

The tryouts for the 1963 USA Pan American Games Shooting Team were held in January at Camp Bullis, just north of San Antonio, Texas.  By then Gary had joined the Nebraska National Guard and the Army Marksmanship Unit had called him back on active duty for the tryouts.    Gary remembers that San Antonio had unseasonably cold weather during the time of the trials.  He said is was so cold he literally had to put his rifle down, take off his shooting jacket and run around the parking lot after every 20 or 40 shots just to stay warm enough to shoot.   He recorded in his diary for January 24, “it was extremely cold (about 17-18 degrees) and after the first 10 shots, I could not feel the trigger or pick up the bullets.”  Wind was another factor; one day it was so bad shooting was called off.  In spite of the wind and weather, Gary won both the 50m and the 300m team trials to earn a place on the USA Pan Am Team and his ticket to Brazil.  Immediately after the trials, Gary returned to Hastings College, Hastings, Nebraska to start the 1963 winter-spring semester, but with plans to take time off from school to attend the Pan Am Games.

Athlete's Participation Medal 

In April when the team left the airport in San Paulo for the Shooting Club Range on the Training Grounds of the Forca Publica, the luggage, team gear, including rifle cases, were loaded onto an overloaded truck.    Gary’s rifle case fell from the top of the heap onto the road, and Gary could only watch it happen from the team bus.    The rifle never did shoot well after that, likely due to damage to the bedding or barrel.    Gary’s diary makes no mention of the incident, but does describe difficulties he had getting his rifle to shoot accurately and how he finally borrowed teammate David Boyd’s rifle to shoot the last 20 shots in the prone stage of the 50 meter 3-position match.    Gary easily won the gold medal in that event with an 1147.  Even with his rifle problems, his score was 26 points ahead of second place.   

As an interesting sidebar to the 50m match, Gary shot the match on the firing point next to Mario Vázquez Raña from Mexico.  Mario later became the President of the Mexican Olympic Committee and subsequently a member of the IOC and President of the Pan American Sports Organization, the governing body for the Pan American Games.  Mario is a brother to the current ISSF President, Olegario Vázquez Raña.  To this day, whenever Gary sees Mario, he recounts the story of how he shot next to Gary Anderson in the 1963 Pan Am Games.

During the Games, there were also difficulties with the USA Shooting Team Captain.    Air Force Col. Pete Agnell was an old-school team captain who looked at his position as honorary, and not as someone who was responsible for helping the team do its best.  USA Team Captains in the 1960s came from the membership of the NRA International Committee or the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice that was providing government funding to support USA international shooting teams.  Col. Agnell was definitely a political selection.   After Gary won the gold medal in the 50m 3-position event, and before the 300m event, Col. Agnell announced to the team that he was going to enter somebody else in the 300m rifle event, “because Anderson has already won his medal.”   Gary protested that when you win the trial for an event you are entitled to compete in that event and that winning a medal in another event has nothing to do with that right.  After he threatened to take the matter to the USOC, Col. Agnell backed down.  This incident left an enduring bitter taste in Gary’s mouth because it was a prime example of how the NRA’s leadership of international shooting during that era was distinguished by cronyism and a lack of commitment to winning.  Gary went on to win the 300m 3-position gold medal too.

Award Ceremony 300m 

Award Ceremony 50m

Pan American Gold Medals - 2 individual and 3 team

Gary firing at the Pan American Games 

Even though he won quite easily, with a ten-point advantage, the match didn’t go as well as Gary planned, because his goal was to break the world record that then stood at 1147.  In the kneeling position, someone crossfired on his target and clueless responses by match officials forced him to wait 20 minutes before he could fire another shot.  This probably cost him two or three points.  He fired prone last and started out strongly with two 99s, but in his last 10 shots, he started getting wild shots he could not explain. He finished with a 1146 total to win the gold medal, but that was one point short of the world record.  After the match he checked his rifle and found that the rear action screw had come loose, having backed out nearly a full turn.      He wrote in his diary, “My hold was not great, but never bad enough for a finish like this.   I have been screwed out of a world record by a piece of junk called a rifle.”

After the Pan Am Games, Gary returned to Hastings College to finish the spring semester.  During that semester, he carried 21 hours of classes, worked as a dorm counselor, attended National Guard drill sessions and trained two to three hours a day on the range at the Hastings, NE National Guard Armory.  As soon as the semester ended he reported for U. S. Army Infantry Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning, GA.  He finished OCS as the Honor Graduate.  He was first in his class 161 officer candidate graduates.  He left Ft. Benning for Camp Ripley, Minnesota where he was commissioned a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Nebraska National Guard.  He immediately went from there to Camp Perry where he shot with the Nebraska National Guard Rifle Team in the National Matches.  Until then, Gary had had very little experience in shooting service rifles, but his brief stop at Camp Perry was successful.  The Nebraska Guard Team placed third in the Hilton Trophy Team Match.  1963 was the last year for the M1 Garand and the free-arm standing position that was then required in service rifle shooting.  There were a total of 60 shots standing on the old 5V target during the entire National Matches and Gary earned the distinction of being the only person in National Matches history to shoot a perfect offhand score during the entire National Matches.

Gary's graduation picture from OCS  

      Immediately after the last shot in the Camp Perry National Trophy Team Match, Gary drove all night and into the next day to his hometown of Axtell, NE to attend the wedding of his sister.    He arrived 20 minutes before the ceremony started.  It had been a busy summer.