NEW JERSEY HALL OF FAMEAT AMERICAN DREAM MALLIS ‘DREAM COME TRUE’TO JOETTA CLARK DIGGS

By ELLIOTT DENMAN
  As four-time Olympian Joetta Clark Diggs told her audience, “to me this is just a dream come true.”
 And her dream is just perfectly located.
 It was “Joetta’s Day” at the gala gathering recently held at the all-new and sparklingly-inviting New Jersey Hall of Fame Entertainment and  Learning Center.
  Just where exactly is this new attraction located?
  At The American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, of course.
  For far too long, “New Jersey jokes,” have been material for entertainers seeking an easy target.
  The American Dream Mall tells them “you’re all so very wrong.”
  It’s a short hop, step and jump away from the stadium that is home to the New York Football Giants, the racetrack that has been site of an array of top-line thoroughbred and standardbred racing events, and the former arena where she delighted crowds with her middle-distance track and field racing feats.
  In her long and brilliant track and field career, at Columbia High School, the University of Tennessee, and far beyond, she was a 1988-92-96-2000 800-meter USA Olympian, 12-time USA champion and, most amazingly, a star competitor for 28 consecutive years.
  Joetta and the Clark family are track and field royalty.
  Dad Joe Clark was a distance runner at Montclair State, then the famed educator of tough-love “Lean on Me” film fame.  Sister Hazel Clark and sister-in law Jearl Miles-Clark were multi-Olympians and record-breakers, too.  Famously, the trio comprised the full USA 800-meter team at the 2000 Olympic Games. Brother J.J. Clark, now head coach at Stanford and one of the most honored mentors in college track, is a Villanova grad and 3:41.5 1500-meter runner (3:59 mile pace.)   They have been inducting – the finest of the fine in sports, enterprise, arts/entertainment, historical and general categories – into the New Jersey Hall of Fame since 2008 – but at last/at last their talents and achievements have a permanent home.
  Joetta Clark Diggs’s class of 2013, was saluted that year along with President Grover Cleveland, and the music world’s  Dionne Warwick and Whitney Houston.
  Mobile Hall of Fame exhibits had toured the state for years before “this dream came true.”
  The American Dream Mall is an enterprise that its developers, the Triple Five Group, tell you is “ an unparalleled mix of world-class entertainment, retail and dining,”  a three million-square foot home to such leading attractions as DreamWorks Water Park, Nickelodeon Universe Theme Park, The Gameroom Powered by Hasbro, Sesame Street Learn & Play, The Dream Wheel 300-foot observation wheel overlooking the New York City skyline, and an array of leading shopping and dining opportunities.
  And, oh yes, The Big Snow indoor skiing hill. Itching to slalom in mid-August?  Here’s your spot.
   Now the New Jersey Hall of Fame joins that roster of attractions.
  A few questions:
  Where exactly is the New Jersey Hall of Fame located at American Dream?
   It’s on the third floor, near the the Nicelodeon theme park, the new Toys R Us, and DreamWorks Water Park.
   What’s one of the the first items you see on arrival?
  The historic Model T. Ford car that charter Hall of Fame inductee Thomas Alva Edison received from Henry Ford in 1933.
   Stepping inside, you see that the spacious New Jersey Hall of Fame, termed the first such state-focused facility in the nation, is fully inter-active, and loaded with immersive activities and virtual-reality tours.
 Governor Phil Murphy said he was “incredibly excited”  at recent Grand Opening Ceremonies.
  Thomas Alva Edison, of course, had to be a charter-class inductee back in 2008.  So many basics of 2024 electro-life were first turned to realities at his West Orange and Menlo Park laboratories.
   That brilliant Class of 2008 also included Albert Einstein, Clara Barton, Buzz Aldrin, Malcolm Forbes, Robert Wood Johnson, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Meryl Streep, Toni Morrison, Norman Schwartzkopf and Harriet Tubman.
    Beyond those immortals of “the real world,” they were joined by the sports world’s Bill Bradley, Yogi Berra and Bill Bradley.
   The very first USA Olympic Team (1896 at Athens) primarily consisted of New Jersey guys – Princeton trackmen recruited by Professor William Milligan Sloane.
   So it’s totally appropriate that the state’s fastest and mightiest track people have found their Hall of Fame niches.
   That list now includes Carl Lewis (2010), Milton Campbell (2012) and Joetta Clark Diggs (2013.)
  Oh…and such famed Olympians (of other sports) as Christie Pearce, Heather O’Reilly and Carli Lloyd (soccer), Anne Donovan and Patrick Ewing (basketball), Dick Button (figure skating) and Laurie Hernandez (gymnastics.)
  There’s some “over-lapping” here, too.
  Astronaut Buzz Aldrin had been a West Point pole vaulter. Baseball Hall of Famers Larry Doby and Monte Irvin had been high school trackmen, Entrepreneur Peter Cancro (of Jersey Mike’s fame) is well known for his lifetime dedication to track and field. 
    And 2018 enterprise category honoree Tim McLoone is well recognized as a Seton Hall Prep/Harvard University/Shore Athletic Club distance running great.  The non-stop, forever multi-tasking McLoone still finds time today to coach the champion track and cross country athletes of Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School.
  Wisely, the Hall of Fame creators at American Dream have left plenty of room for further expansion.
    Ladies and gentlemen of the selection committee may I thus nominate for the future honors list such thoroughly qualified fellow Garden Staters as:  Renaldo Nehemiah, Johnny Hayes, Horace Ashenfelter, Tom Flemlng, Andy Stanfield, Dave Sime, Ron Freeman, Marty Liquori, current superstar Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone…and some more.
 So stay tuned.
 As Hall of Famer Joetta Clark Diggs reminds, the American Dream and its hallowed Hall of Fame "did not happen overnight." And only the best of the best of the best have “made the cut.”
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