One of the best stories I've ever heard.

The man who helped Jesse Owens beat him in the long jump at the 1936 Olympics -- a German track star named Luz Long -- courageously befriended Owens on the track right in front of Adolph Hitler.

That's right...the best long jumper in Germany, and the odds-on favorite to win gold in the long jump, watched as Jesse nervously fouled on his second qualifying attempt after his first came up short. He had one more.

Long gave him a tip. He told Jesse that his jumps were more than long enough, and that he should take advantage of this and put his foot on the strip about four inches back, rather than trying to get right up to the last half inch like most of the competitors.

Jesse did this, and qualified for the medal round on his last attempt. He then went on to beat Luz Long and win the gold medal, as Adolf Hitler angrily looked on. The two left Berlin as friends, a wonderful development given the place and the zeitgeist.

Luz Long was soon deployed to the African theater. He kept in touch with Jesse through letters from his wartime locations, and in 1943 he seems to have foreseen his death. Not hard to do if you're at the front, I guess.

This is the letter he wrote to Jesse just before he was killed in battle in Italy. Long wrote it in English, a politeness to his American friend for whom finding a translation from German might have brought attention from officials concerned about espionage.

I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not fear so much for myself, my friend Jesse, I fear for my woman who is home, and my young son Karl, who has never really known his father.

My heart tells me, if I be honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is a something so very important to me. It is you go to Germany when this war done, someday find my Karl, and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we not separated by war. I am saying—tell him how things can be between men on this earth.

If you do this something for me, this thing that I need the most to know will be done, I do something for you, now. I tell you something I know you want to hear. And it is true.

That hour in Berlin when I first spoke to you, when you had your knee upon the ground, I knew that you were in prayer.
Then I not know how I know. Now I do. I know it is never by chance that we come together. I come to you that hour in 1936 for purpose more than der Berliner Olympiade.

And you, I believe, will read this letter, while it should not be possible to reach you ever, for purpose more even than our friendship.

I believe this shall come about because I think now that God will make it come about. This is what I have to tell you, Jesse.

I think I might believe in God.

And I pray to him that, even while it should not be possible for this to reach you ever, these words I write will still be read by you.

Your brother,
Luz

Here is Jesse, back in Berlin thirty years after the Olympics for a television retrospective on those games, telling Karl Long how things can be between men on this earth.

Luz Long was right; God did this. God delivered the letter from North Africa to the United States, finding Jesse Owens somehow, over a year after Long's death. God made a friendship that defied the times and the odds.

Last I saw of Karl, he was in his eighties and a member of a European track and field commission, among whose other members also sat a proud granddaughter of Jesse Owens.