Marathon swimmer extraordinaire Diana Nyad just published a new memoir that’s a fascinating deep dive (ha, ha) into many topics beyond her epic 2013 Cuba-to-Florida swim. Now 66, Nyad writes frankly about being sexually abused by a coach when she was a teenager in Florida, growing up with a con man for a stepfather and much more. But her brief undergraduate career at Emory University, where she enrolled as a freshman in 1967, gets only one scant paragraph in “Find a Way.”
The AJC dug into Nyad's time at Emory (which ended when she was expelled for parachuting out of a fourth floor dorm window) two years ago. But when we interviewed her before her scheduled booksigning here earlier this week, we asked what else she remembered about her fleeting tenure at Emory.
In a word: Coca-Cola.
Or maybe that’s two words. Whatever. A disciplined athlete who’d eschewed all manner of caffeinated drinks as a youth, Nyad said she arrived at Emory “never having tasted Coca-Cola.” That definitely made her an oddity here in the original-and-forever home of The Real Thing.
“I will never forget at Emory in the morning, kids would go by the Coke machine and press a button and get a free ice cold bottle of Coke,” Nyad chuckled. “And I thought, ‘Oh my God, they’re all addicted here. They drink Coke for breakfast!”
She’s come around since then. So much so, in fact, that the folks over on North Avenue might want to consider using her in an ad campaign.
“In the ocean during long swims and in life in general, if I need that pickmeup, that Coke goes a long way,” Nyad said. “To me, it’s a powerful medicine.”
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