When news spread that Terry Albritton, the Stanford Hall of Famer who once held the shot put world record, had died Sept. 1 in Cambodia at 50, some friends were surprised.
They thought he was already dead.
``It was widely rumored among throwers that Terry had been in southern Thailand and disappeared in the tsunami last December,'' said Al Feuerbach, another former world-record holder in the shot put.
``I guess the irony is that many of us felt the shock nine months earlier. Then we learned he really died later in Cambodia.''
But then, Albritton -- nicknamed ``Space Putter'' in the track world -- always did the unexpected, according to numerous family members and longtime friends interviewed by the Mercury News.
He was a favorite to win the 1976 Olympic gold medal before being slowed by an injury. Later, he walked away from chances to play in the NFL and become a pro wrestler, retreating to a quiet life in Maui.
Albritton was an eclectic character -- a globe-trotting free spirit who spent his last months in Southeast Asia, writing first-person stories modeled after those of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
``His mind was always kind of far out, to use a term from those days,'' Feuerbach said.
Today, Albritton's death remains mysterious to family and friends because so little information was provided by the Cambodian government. His body was cremated before the family could have it examined, and the cause of death was listed as asthma.
``I'm still asking myself, `What the hell was he doing over there?' '' said his friend Jim Neidhart.
Albritton's oldest son, Shane, said his father was doing what he wanted: living a carefree life on his terms.
``My dad kind of put his craziness on hold while my brother and I were growing up,'' he said. ``In retrospect, I think he was just waiting for us to get older so he could continue his adventures.''
`Organized chaos'
• From youth, full of potential -- and rebellion
At his athletic peak, Albritton stood 6-foot-5 and weighed 260 pounds. But he had a lean frame, and he could run and jump. Said Neidhart: ``He was a perfect athlete if there ever was one.''
He also had a rebellious streak. Albritton started smoking at 12 and later was sent briefly to military school.
But by the time he reached Orange County's Newport Harbor High, Albritton had blossomed into a good student and football star who earned scholarship offers from 150 colleges, according to the book ``World Record Breakers in Track & Field Athletics.'' After one year at Stanford, though, Albritton withdrew.
``He had the world by the tail being a scholarship athlete at Stanford,'' Neidhart said. ``And then he says (expletive) it, I'm going to Hawaii and get my head together to break the world record.''
That's exactly what he did Feb. 21, 1976, at an all-comers meet in Honolulu. Albritton, just 21, threw 71 feet, 8 1/2 inches -- breaking Feuerbach's mark by 1 1/2 inches. The record, as Neidhart recalls it, was fueled by beer.
``We went to a party the night before and got really wasted,'' said Neidhart, who had left UCLA to join Albritton at the University of Hawaii. ``I walked to the ring with him that day and we had a couple of Coors Lights.''
Albritton stood out in a free-wheeling era where it was widely believed that many track throwers used both recreational and performance-enhancing substances.
``I plead the Fifth about anything Terry may have done,'' joked Tony Ciarelli, a javelin thrower who roomed with Albritton at Hawaii. ``The throwing community in the 1970s tended to be more wild than anything you see now.
``But Terry was organized chaos. He was never reckless in his wildness or in trouble with the law. He was always under control.''
And he put his own spin on the world. Albritton sometimes wore a floral Speedo at competitions. He advocated creating a shot putters' union and had unique ideas on how to promote the sport.
Said Feuerbach: ``He once told me that we should all show up in the arena in leopard-skin suits and start fighting before the event.''
Beneath all that, said former Stanford track coach Payton Jordan, was a sensitive soul who went out of his way to make competitors feel good about themselves -- usually after he just beaten them.
Albritton should have been the man to beat at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. But he didn't even make the U.S. team, finishing fourth at the Olympic trials. A contributing factor was a pectoral muscle he had injured in training.
When Hawaii dropped its track program, Albritton returned to Stanford, where he won the 1977 NCAA title.
In 1978, Albritton and Neidhart signed with the defending Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys and drove to camp in Thousand Oaks. But he lasted just a couple of days. Albritton, a defensive tackle, didn't like the brutality of pro football, and his chain-smoking had taken a toll.
``I threw away his cigarettes when we got to camp and he said, `Jim, you took my last cigarette,' '' Neidhart recalled. ``But I said, `Yeah, you're huffing and puffing out there.' I woke up the next morning and he had gotten in the car and left.''
The following year, Neidhart asked Albritton to be the best man at his wedding and join him as a pro wrestler. (Neidhart became successful as ``The Anvil.'')
``I sent Terry a plane ticket and he never showed up for the wedding,'' Neidhart said. ``But that was Terry.''
Off to Asia
• New chapter offered affordable, low-key life
Albritton became the strength coach for the University of Hawaii's athletic program and later followed his wife, a lawyer, to Maui. When the marriage ended in divorce, he settled down as a Catholic high school teacher-coach.
``He had so much success so early in life, and it's kind of mind-boggling that he went from that to such a low-key lifestyle, basically living in a sea shanty,'' said Shane, 24, a college student on Long Island. ``But my dad was perfectly content with the island lifestyle.''
Albritton took Shane and his younger brother Thomas on a trip to Thailand and Cambodia in 2002, falling in love with the undeveloped region. Two years later, he moved there, seeing it as a place to live cheaply, without restrictions, as he pursued writing.
There was a tone of finality when he left Maui. He gave his kids keepsakes from his athletic career and told them he didn't want a somber funeral when he died.
He kept in contact via e-mail with family and some friends, regaling them with colorful tales.
After the hard-living Thompson committed suicide in February, Albritton decided to pick up the torch for the often outrageous writer, penning a series of tributes.
``One was a story about an experience in Cambodia called `Fear and Lusting in Sihanouk Ville,' '' Shane said, the title referring to a beach town. ``It was pretty funny stuff.''
Sometime after the tsunami, Albritton let some people know that he was OK -- although that message never got passed along to others. Albritton had been in Phuket, Thailand -- a region devastated by the disaster -- just a month earlier, but had since moved on to Cambodia.
But in early September, Shane received a call from his mother: His father was dead.
Not enough answers
• Details of final days hard to come by
A U.S. embassy representative told the family that Albritton was found in his rented house in the Cambodian tourist town of Siem Reap and had died of natural causes. Because the body wasn't discovered for four days, it had badly decomposed in the tropical conditions and needed to be immediately cremated.
Albritton was asthmatic, still smoked and weighed more than 300 pounds when he died. Despite his poor health, his sons have questions that may never be answered.
Cambodia is rebuilding from 30 years of war and genocide, and Shane said his father wrote to him about government corruption. That makes him wonder whether there was ever a serious investigation of his father's death. He doesn't know, for instance, if there was an autopsy.
``My mom is convinced it was asthma,'' he said. ``But having been in Cambodia, I know it's a pretty shady scene. A lot of details just don't add up for me -- even after speaking with the embassy.''
A U.S. embassy official said he could not comment.
Adding to the sons' concerns was an unsettling incident when the family prepared to scatter Albritton's remains in Maui.
``All we found was some shards of bone and no ashes'' in the urn, Shane said.
One question when a former elite athlete dies young is if performance-enhancers played a role because of their potential long-term effects.
``It's fair to ask, but I think there's probably a more clear explanation,'' Feuerbach said. ``People do die because they are overweight and because they don't take care of their health.''
Shane said his father, who was always open about his vices, never talked about steroids -- other than to say that one reason he walked away from the NFL was that he had been encouraged to use them.
Added Jordan: ``He wondered if he should be using drugs because he knew people he might be competing against did use them. I told him I could never condone that. I believe he would have told me if he did, but Terry didn't need to do that -- he was so good.''
Shane said his father once told him he wanted people to remember him well and not be sad when he died. Albritton got his wish.
Many of his friends laughed as they talked about their memories.
``Terry was like a lost treasure over here,'' said Jim Klaczak, who worked with Albritton on Maui.
``He was just a wonderful bear of a man. . . . I want to think that he stopped breathing in his sleep one night and that was it.''
Terry Albritton essentially called his shot put world record. Here are his comments to a newspaper reporter after he broke it Feb. 21, 1976:
``I had been throwing very well in practice all week so I told all of my friends and acquaintances to be sure to come to the track meet that Saturday.
``I told them I thought I might break the world record.
``But that night before the meet I went to a bachelor party. I must have drank at least a quart of tequila and didn't get back home until about 5 the next morning.
``I woke up about 10 o'clock realizing the meet would begin in a couple of hours. And, I had a bad hangover.
`` `Oh, God!' I thought. Three hundred people are coming out to watch me break the world record and I don't know if I'll be able to even pick up a shot.
``But I got out to the field, took a few warm-ups, and felt pretty good.''
He threw 71 feet, 8 1/2 inches for a world record.