The great Wilma Rudolph
Yesterday’s post about compelling life stories brought to mind the great runner of my youth, Wilma Rudolph. Slender yet strong, with a fluid grace; exhibiting dignity without haughtiness, and self-possession to spare; she deserves at the very least a post of her own.
Here’s a discussion of her early life and career, with photos, one of which I reproduce here. It amply demonstrates why the Italian press dubbed her “The Gazelle”:
Wilma was a revelation, her story a testament to perseverance. Twentieth of twenty-two children? Born to a poor family? Crippling polio as a child? A mother who wouldn’t give up? Wilma had it all, before such stories became hyped cliches.
Sadly, Wilma died of cancer in her early fifties. There are many tributes to Wilma at You Tube, although unfortunately not many videos. But I’ve found and posted two.
The first, a short black and white clip of her running the 100-meter dash at the 1960 Olympics, shows how she cleaned the other runners’ clocks with style:
And then there’s this gem, which has the added plus of a stroll down memory lane with the TV program “To Tell the Truth,” and a couple of later-to-be-more-famous celebrities looking younger than it seems possible to even imagine:
Nothing more to be said other than she was “an amazing woman”.
I used to live in the Fort Campbell area of north Tennessee where apparently she is from — I remember a street named for her. Extraordinary lady.
Wilma is an icon, where I come from….
glad her parents were pro-life
When I was 10 or 11 I read the story of Rudolph’s life – probably in Reader’s Digest – and was amazed by what she overcame and by how determined her mother was that she would do so. I read and re-read that story for months. Then life intervened and I essentially forgot about her. Thanks for giving her back to me.
I grew up in a family of runners, and Rudolph was one of my earliest inspirations. This was in the 80’s on the west coast, and even then jogging around the neighborhood was something only weirdos did. Obscenities and loogies from passing cars happened on occasion. And jogging at the track was only for “real” runners, you know, the kind who wear the right clothes and do all the right things…
I can’t imagine the stigma Rudolph must’ve faced: being the wrong color in the wrong location in the wrong time period, doing something normal people didn’t do, and looking funny doing it until she got her legs…she must’ve had a lot of inner strength. My brother and I preferred to jog at night because we hated the embarassment of jogging in the daytime.
there are so many who have incredible stories…
tonight i am reading (at belmont club) one about GI Joe, and not the pidgeon.
?One of the actual models for the Hasboro action figure GI Joe was Marine Medal of Honor winner Mitchell Paige. Paige who passed away in 2003, held a hilltop on Guadalcanal against more than a company of Imperial Japanese soldiers by manning each of the four machine gun positions in turn after everyone else had been killed.
pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/07/14/who-saved-gi-joe/#more-5039
http://www.hasbro.com/gijoe/en_US/
if you liked joe as a child… then maybe dont follow the link and read… (i didnt have a joe).
i forgot to point out the story is about more than just the original gi joe.
its about survivors of hardships common experience of the third man… so he mentions Shackleton, Reinhold Messner, Peter Hillary, and others who were in extreme conditions…
all tied together in the common experience of the third man…