The Auto Worker Who Became America’s Best High Jumper

Ypsilanti — One of the greatest track athletes in American history is an auto worker from Ypsilanti who spent just one year in college, took five years off from the sport, started training again, and then set the U.S. record in the high jump.

He became one of the best high jumpers in the world, but then his life spiraled out of control due to drug and alcohol abuse. He served time in jail, found redemption thanks to his old high school coach, got sober and stayed sober, and then joined the Masters circuit and started setting U.S. records again. He was still clearing almost 7 feet when he was nearly 50.

His name is Dennis Lewis, and as athletic legends go, you can’t do much better than him. He’s 67 years old now and lives a fairly anonymous life in Ypsilanti, where he runs a lawn-care business. He belongs in the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, and ESPN needs to do a documentary on him. Everyone in his home state needs to know his riches-to-rags-to-riches story.

It all starts back in the 1970s. Dennis Lewis grew up in Ypsilanti. He was one year ahead of me at Ypsilanti High School, graduating in 1977. He was a great basketball player for the Braves, and during his senior year, Ypsi played Lansing Everett and Earvin “Magic” Johnson in the Class A state quarterfinals.

Ypsi got destroyed in the game, 86-57, but the highlight for us Braves fans was when 6-foot-4 Dennis Lewis blocked 6-foot-9 Magic Johnson’s shot. It was awesome—and it showed everyone just how much bounce Dennis had.

As good as he was in basketball, he was a zillion times better in track. He won the high jump at the Class A state meet as both a junior and senior, setting the national high school record by clearing 7-foot-2 along the way.

Coming into his senior track season, his coach at Ypsilanti, Levi Simpson, said, “By June, he’ll be every bit the national figure in high school track that Earvin (Johnson) is in basketball.”

That was pretty accurate. Every track fan in the country knew who Dennis Lewis was, and when he graduated in 1977, he had his pick of any college track program in the country. Tennessee wanted him badly, but he elected to stay close to home and join Magic Johnson at Michigan State.

Lewis was a star from the start. He set the MSU school record as a freshman and then cleared 7-3 at the NCAA indoor nationals, finishing in second place and earning All-American honors.

That was his one and only season at Michigan State, though. He was killing it in track but struggling in school, so two weeks after becoming an All-American, he dropped out of MSU and went home to Ypsilanti.

“I could study, but I really didn’t have any study habits at all,” he said in a 1996 interview. “It was a big school, and I didn’t think anybody would know about me, so the reception I got was a shock. I’d go to the cafeteria and people would whisper about me and point.”

He didn’t just drop out of school; he dropped out of track. He went to work at Ford in the summer of 1978 and started playing pickup basketball to keep in shape. He would occasionally drop by Bowen Field House at Eastern Michigan University and try a few high jumps, just to prove to himself that he could still do it, but he wasn’t training or competing.

Fast-forward five years, and Lewis was still working at an auto factory in Ypsilanti. In the winter of 1983, he turned on the TV and started watching the Millrose Games, a prestigious indoor meet held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. When the high jump came on, he saw the winner clear 7 feet 4 1/2 inches.

“I told my dad that I could beat those guys,” Lewis said. “I was jumping that high at EMU, just screwing around without track shoes.”

He hadn’t competed in a track meet in five years. He had no spikes, no coach, no sponsors, no official place to train. All he had was a hell of a lot of talent and the desire to start jumping again.

So the auto worker from Ypsilanti started training in earnest at EMU, using a borrowed pair of track shoes. EMU track coach Bob Parks was helping him at this point, and within a year, Dennis Lewis wasn’t just back to his old self; he was better than his old self.

He competed unofficially at an indoor meet at EMU in January 1984, clearing 7-6. Parks called the promoter of the Millrose Games and talked him into letting Lewis compete. That ticked off some of the other jumpers, including Dwight Stones, the reigning world record holder and an Olympic medalist.

“The promoter called me back and said that Dwight Stones said that Dennis was a total fraud and other deserving jumpers were being left out,” Parks said. “I told him that I guaranteed him that Dennis was deserving and it would be a real feather in his cap to have Dennis in the meet.”

Lewis rewarded Bob Parks’ faith, jumping 7-4 to take third place. He kept going up from there—literally. He cleared 7 feet 4 1/2 inches to take second place at a meet in New Jersey and then jumped 7-7 to win the USA National Indoor Championships. Less than a year after returning to the sport, the factory worker from Ypsi was a national champion.

Stones finished fourth.

That landed Lewis a shoe contract with New Balance and made him one of the hottest stars in the sport. He seemed like a good bet to make the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, but he had an off meet in the Olympic trials and finished fifth. (Only the top three make the team.)

It was a temporary setback. He enrolled at Long Beach City College, and in 1985 he had the biggest jump of his life. The U.S. record at the time was 7-8, held by (of course) Dwight Stones. Competing at a meet in Los Angeles, Lewis cleared all the heights and was in first place, and then he told them to put the bar at 7 feet 8 1/4 inches. He was going for the national record.

On his first jump, he grazed the bar, and it fell. On his second jump, though, he made it over cleanly. Dennis Lewis was now the national record holder in the jump jump. He was better than Dwight Stones, better than Dick Fosbury, better than any American high jumper who ever lived.

The guy who took five whole years off from his sport was now the greatest American high jumper of all time.

That height was extraordinary in 1985 and it’s just as extraordinary today, 41 years later. To put it in perspective, Lewis would have won a bronze medal in the 2024 Olympics with that jump, just a half-inch away from earning gold. Four decades later, it still ranks him as one of the dozen or so greatest American high jumpers who ever lived.

Oh, and it’s higher than Dwight Stones ever jumped.

Rather than bask in the glory and continue to get better, though, Dennis’s life started to spiral out of control after that jump. He’d fallen in with a bad crowd in Los Angeles and started to get heavy into cocaine and alcohol, and it was taking a toll on his body and his life.

“I lost control,” Lewis said. “I was doing cocaine every day. I was lying and cheating and doing things addicts do. I couldn’t hold a job. I wanted to quit but I didn’t know how.”

Lewis eventually dropped out of the sport in 1988, partially because he wasn’t jumping as well and mostly because he knew he’d fail any drug test he took.

He hit rock bottom in 1993. His cocaine addiction was taking over his life, and Lewis started stealing things from stores to support the habit. He got caught and the judge was about to sentence him to a year in jail.

That’s when a hero arrived. His name was Mike Mickevicius, and he was Dennis’s old teacher and freshman track coach at Ypsilanti High School. Mickevicius had reconnected with Dennis when he found out about his addiction and legal troubles.

“One time I found him standing by a street corner in the projects and got out to talk with him,” Mickevicius said. “We drew a crowd—a white guy in a suit talking with a guy in the projects. A lot of people didn’t know who I was. He was high then—a harmless high like he was in a stupor.”

That was about the time that Lewis was about to get sentenced to jail, but Mickevicius went to court with him and pleaded with the judge to let Dennis get treatment instead. Mickevicius said he would personally make sure that Dennis stuck with the plan.

The judge agreed, and that’s what happened. Lewis served just four months in jail, and when he was released, he went right to the John Lucas Treatment Center in Houston.

You don’t always hear of rehab success stories like this, but in Dennis Lewis’ case, it worked. He got sober on Oct. 3, 1994, and he’s been sober ever since. “If it wasn’t for Mike and my parents, I’d still be in the projects,” Lewis said. “They stuck with me.”

He also decided to get back into jumping. He was competing on the Masters circuit at this point, and once again, he started winning meets and setting records. He cleared 7 foot 3/4 inches as a 37-year-old and then 7 foot 1/4 inches when he turned 40. Forty-year-old men are not supposed to be able to clear 7 feet in the high jump, but that’s what he was doing.

In 2006, as a 46-year-old, he set a national age-group record by clearing 6 foot 8 1/4 inches. He was closing in on 50 years old, and he was still jumping damn near 7 feet.

With his life and his career back on track, Dennis was inducted into the Ypsilanti High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006. He was 20 years clean and sober, and he delivered an inspirational speech that night that people in Ypsi still talk about.

That’s the only Hall of Fame that he’s part of, though, and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame needs to be next. There are only a handful of track athletes in the MSHOF, and Dennis Lewis certainly needs to be among them.

He meets every criterion there could possibly be. He was the national record-holder in his event at every level, starting in high school and continuing through the Masters. He beat addiction and incarceration and came back better than ever. He’s a Michigan legend that almost nobody in Michigan knows about.

He’s just a guy in Ypsilanti mowing lawns these days, but he’s also one of the greatest track athletes who ever lived. Put Dennis Lewis in the Hall of Fame.