V 6 N. 58 Grace Butcher, One of America's Legends in Women's Track and Field

Grace Butcher was never a household name in the US sportsworld, but she was truly a pioneer who fought hard to put women's distance running  on the map where it belonged.  Recently though she has been recognized and lauded in Amby Burfoot's latest book,

Grace Butcher running for  the Magyar Athletic Club, Cleveland, OH

First Ladies of Running: 22 Inspiring Profiles of the Rebels, Rule Breakers, and Visionaries Who Changed the Sport Forever

 Grace had to overcome almost total indifference to women's running when she was a teenager just after WWII, then set her dreams aside for almost ten years before finally winning the right to compete like men had always been able to compete at distances greater than 220 yards.  Her life did not  stop with success in the world of running,  she became a poet, a professor, a motorcycle racer and writer, an actress, a coach and an example  of independence and self fulfillment in a world that is still reluctant to grant women the rights that men assume the moment they pop out of the womb and head down the street.

Opening lines of Tag by Grace Butcher

                                                                  Tag

                                Tag was running as pure as it could be.
                                When I was "It," I caught them all , almost,
                                 especially the boys who didn't think
                                 a skinny girl like me could run so fast.
                                 I ran them down.  An arrow from its bow
                                 could not have gone more straight and clean than I
                                 along that dusty path behind the school.

Grace grew up playing with boys, chemistry sets, getting her feet muddy and wanting to be a runner by the time she was in high school in Chardon, Ohio.  She asked the boys' coach if they could have a team.  He said he'd get back to her.  When he did, the answer was discouraging,.  "Even if we had a team , there would be no one to run against".  Chardon did not even have a track for its boys' team.

Hide and Seek

In the time it took to count to 100, we could have run to the end of the world.

But we never trusted the one who was "It,"

rushing the numbers in slurred clusters,

counting by two's, or worse, by five's,

or peeking around the tree that was  goal

to watch us disperse in the guerrilla warfare

of chldhood.  Who was the  fastest?  The smartest?

Who was the stealthiest of us all?

It was always me.  I could slip into 

the most unlikely spaces:  the cobwebby hole 

under the porch, the prickly corridor

between haybales in the stiffling loft.

I could hold my breath forever

behind the open door of the outhouse

or gently edge under the horse's belly

to bed down in his manger like a parody of Jesus.

Nobody ever found me anywhere.

And when I spied poor "It" go by, 

I'd shed my cloak of invisibility,

run for goal , my thin legs flashing

in the golden afternoon as if I were

all the wild horses in the world.

Galloping "home" I chanted my victory cry:

"N'yah, n'yah n'y n'yah n'yah!"

and hugging the tree I was safe.

Reaching the goal was so easy then.

I didn't know I was safer there

than I'd ever be again.

Fortunately Grace had an incredible mom who tracked down a club, the Polish Falcon Club in Cuyahoga Heights forty miles away where Grace could get some coaching from Stella Walsh, the Polish Olympic 100 meter champion in 1932.  This was well before the days of suburban soccer moms, personal trainers,  and interstate highways.  Forty miles each way on two lane country roads.  What a mom!  Mom wouldn't commit to travel every night but a couple of nights a week for over a month that Spring of 1949, the two  made the trip.  Stella couldn't train Grace for the the mile, her preference, there was no mile for girls then, so she became a sprinter, hurdler and broad jumper.

Stella gave Grace a pair of her own spikes to train with, and Grace responded by building her own hurdle to practice over at home.  After those practices at the Falcon Club, Grace's mom and Stella would have a beer together.   Stella would later drift elsewhere, out to the West Coast and Grace's track fortunes eventually withered but not before winning  the hurdles at a national junior AAU meet held in Cleveland.

Selected lines from Red Rover

Grace Butcher

When the recess bell hurled us 

onto the playground

and the choosing began,

even before we started,

my heart was pumping me up,

making me faster than anyone,

my tight braids, my scrawny body

electric with excitement.

.......

Then through the crackling air, 

my name!  "Red Rover, Red Rover,

let Gracie come over!"

And I received it with unholy rapture,

knowing who I was and what I could do.

I sprinted in ecstasy

across that shimmering concrete,

everything I would ever be

compressed into the sound of those steps

echoing forty years into the future.

With all my skinny violence

I crashed through those fiercely clasped hands,

broke apart that tight line of friends,

and took one back with me, captive,

to be on my side forever.

After high school  her brief running career came to a near  halt as she attended Baldwin Wallace College.  She went to Baldwin Wallace, because she could train there over the same hurdles that Harrison Dillard had trained on.   But before the year was over she would run off and get married in Louisiana where her husband to be  was stationed in the Army.  Years later she was back at it in the running world, getting hooked up with the Hungarian refugees who had migrated to Cleveland after the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising in their country and were part of the Magyar Athletic Club.  Alex Ferenczy and Julius Penzes were her coaches.  Grace finally got training to run middle distances and then in 1957 began lobbying to get an 880 yard race sanctioned by the AAU.  It took a lot of letter writing and  phone calls by Grace and Alex and others to eventually lead to a national AAU meet putting the 880 into its program.

The last time American women had run that distance was 1928 in the Amsterdam Olympics.  Thanks in part to some obtuse reporting by several American journalists including Knute Rockne Pittsburgh Press, correspondent (he coached track at Notre Dame before he was the football coach) William L. Shirer, Chicago Tribune, (author of the bestseller Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) and John R. Tunis  (later a popular writer of boys' books), the women's 800 was described as a disaster and included false descriptions of the women finishers in a state of collapse after the race.  Pierre DeCoubertin the founder of the modern Olympic movement was once quoted as saying that,  "...the role of women in sport should be as in the ancient games,  to award the victors.  Only the male athlete  is capable of great performances."    It is reported (though not proven) that Paavo Nurmi collapsed after the 5,000 meters at those games.    He definitely fell way off the pace on the last lap as Willi Ritola set an Olympic record.  In reality only one woman in that 800 meters fell after a lean at the tape and was on her feet a few seconds later.  The first four finishers broke the world record.  Who wouldn't be tired?  All had run semis the day before, and the second place finisher Kinou Hitomi of Japan, who was primarily a sprinter and long jumper, ran her first ever 800 series and broke the world record.  A discussion of this controversy can be seen in Sport in History,  'Not a Very Edifying Spectacle, the Controversial Womens 800 Meter Race in the 1928 Olympics' by Colleen English.    Films of the race clearly show that these women ran with a lot of talent, great form, and a boat load of aggressiveness.  I have not been able to find some film of the finish of the race (it does exist) however here is a link to a very condensed version of it along with other events.  The speed of the film is too fast as you will note.  If we can find the better version we will bring it to your attention in this article.
Amsterdam 1928

The better version of that 800


Lina Radke winning the 800 in WR followed by Kinou Hitome of Japan, 

 Maybe that success in the 800 was too much for the male ego to absorb and accept. Certanly men were in charge of international athletics in those days as they still seem to be today albeit with a somewhat more enlightened viewpoint.   There were no running events for the women except the 100 and 800 and 4x100 relay in 1928.   Due to the lack of international events in any sport  for women back then, Alice Milliat had formed the Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale (FSFI)  and had already hosted several international women's games.  But the IOC and IAAF conspired to take any power already acquired away from the FSFI and put women in their place.  That lasted until Rome 1960 when the 800 was contested again after 32 years.  Even today some people still believe the misrepresented truth about that 1928 Amsterdam 800.


Finally in 1958 that first 880 came to pass in the indoor nationals in Akron, so close to home, and as she lined  up for that first nationally sanctioned race, who did she see but Stella Walsh going to the line against her.  Grace would win,  Stella would finish fourth.

With her husband and boys.  Grace let us know that there was nothing in the pot, just a posed photo op.

Julius Penzes, Grace and Les Hegedus

Dick Damko , Grace and Julius Penzes at Cleveland West Tech Track

Racing the Russians, July, 1959
Greene, Butcher, Yanvareva, Shavtsova

Lilane Greene (2:24.9) , Grace Butcher (2:23.9)  , Lyubov Yanvareva (2:13.3) and Ludmilla Lysesk Shavtsova (2:11.3)

 If we travel back to a hot weekend in July, 1959 to Franklin Field in Philadelphia when Grace was lining up with Lilian Greene to face  off with two very experienced Russian middle distance runners, we might remember more readily some of the events of that track meet  and that time.  The civil rights movement was in its infancy; the French were still in Viet Nam.  Paul Anka's 'Lonely Boy' was at the top of the charts.  Sylvester Stallone was 13 years old.   The Cold War was on the upswing.  The previous year the Russians and Americans had met each other in the Soviet Union and the American men had prevailed against a strong Soviet team, and the US women had been hopelessly trounced by the Soviet women, giving the Eastern Bloc comrades the combined score win over the Americans.  Of course the American press poopooed and downplayed the importance of the women's team in general and blamed them for the overall loss.  Track and Field News would hardly even mention that the women competed those two  afternoons in 1959.
USA USSR Meet 1959

Report on US USSR 1959 from Philly.com

When queried by Grace about the  lack of coverage of the women in that meet or any meet, Bert Nelson would respond that there weren't enough pages in Track and Field News to include women's events and nobody cared anyway.

 During the day, it was 83 degrees fahrenheit and 77% humidity, and we saw  for the  the effects of heat and dehydration on distance runners as Bob Soth went on an uncontrolled dance midway through the 10,000 meters eventually falling and staggering back to his feet before finally collapsing and being carried off the field on a stretcher.  It was remeniscent of the Jim Peters meltdown at the 1954 Empire Commomwealth Games in the marathon.

10,000 meter meltdown 1959

 One of the Russians went through a similar dance of his own though he would never have made the call back  for the Bolshoi,  he still managed to finish.  His coaches claimed Max Truex had been lapped and was still back in third place that afternoon.  Some of the AAU officials were apparently as confused as the runners  and went along with the Russian appeal.  Barbara Jones would win the 100 while  Wilma Rudolph would pull a muscle in the 100 and limp home fourth, still waiting to be seen as a sports heroine the following year in Rome.   Lucinda Williams and Isabelle Daniels would go 1-2 in the 200.   Ray Norton would  capture both sprints but  become the  goat in Rome   when he would be soundly beaten by Armin Hary, Dave Sime, Figueroa, and Peter Radford and then DQ his team in the 4x100.  Dyrol Burleson would outkick Jim Grelle and his Russian opponents in the 1500,  Tom Murphy would take the 800.  On the women's side the Press sisters and Nina Ponomereva would dominate the hurdles, shot put, and discus.  Back on the track for the women's 800 Grace and Liliane were facing two Soviet women whose personal bests were well under the American record and more than ten seconds better than either American lady had run.  There would be no Cinderella story about the Americans overcoming incredible odds on the track that day.  They had already overcome the odds just being on the track and running 800 meters  instead of watching the meet on TV at home, 'running a wash', and fixing a TV dinner while hubby was out playing golf.

What is significant about this meet is that it was televised nationally with the Cold War on the table.  The Soviets were seen to win the meet overall due to the weaknesses of the American women's program.  Program?  What program?  The Tennessee Tigerbelles who made up most of the sprints and jumps part of the team only had three meets on their schedule that year.  Olga Connolly who would  come over to the US after the 1960 Olympics found the US National women's meet an exercise  of ineptitude  and a farce from an organization stand point.  There was no women's program that compared to what was going in on in Europe.  How can you go into a meet where the world is watching with only three meets prior?   It is noted in American Women's Track and Field , A History 1895-1980, by Louise Mead Tricard that there were only two dozen women's track clubs in the country in the late fifties.  There were  no women's or girls' teams in high school in anything until Title IX came into effect.  Cheerleaders and a kickline were the options for girls or private lessons.   But by 1966,  the US began meeting a long dormant need, and there were several hundred women's track clubs and a lot of age group activity for pre high school girls.  My two co-bloggers  Roy Mason and Steve Price were a part of that movement to promote track and field for young girls in the early 1960s.  Steve coached the Kettering Striders in Ohio, and Roy coached the Hutchinson Track Club, later the La Mirada Meteors in SoCal.

A recent photo of Grace Butcher with her horse

Grace is now 81 years old and I would hesitate to say semi-retired.  She lives on the small farm in Northeast Ohio and rides her horse daily while looking after the acreage where she grew up  near Chardon.

 Her running career did not  end with the USA Soviet Union dual meet in 1959.  In 1960 she was US indoor champion and an AAU All American and set the US record several times.  Her PR was 2:18.  Her racing  did take a bit of a down turn by the 1960 Olympic Trials in Abeliene, TX where she was suffering from an un-diagnosed stress fracture in her foot from the three a day workout schedule she was enduring with coach Julius Penzes.  She took a shot of novacaine from a trainer  up in the stands but it wasn't enough to permit her to make an attempt at securing a place on the team.  She would heal up and continue however competing locally in road races and eventually in Masters competition.  In 1985 she was fourth in the 1500 at the World Masters in Rome and second in the 800 again at the World Masters  at Eugene, OR in 1989.   In 1996 she set a world Masters mile indoor record in Greensboro, NC.   Grace has written  articles in Runner's World, Sports Illustrated, Reader's Digest, and Ohio Runner.  In 1996 she was Ohio Poet of the Year for her book, Child, House, World  published by Hiram College. She is retired from teaching at Kent State Geauga Campus in 1993 as Professor Emeritus.

Regarding the coaching piece at KSU-Geauga, Grace wrote,

           "I did love that running program!  It was a hoot! Had men and women , young and old,
            had gone to State or had never run before, on and on.  And it was at a time when the
            existence of our tiny campus was in jeopardy; the legislature with collective pen poised
            to eliminate an unnecessary expense in the over-built higher ed. of northeastern Ohio.
            We had about 200-250 students, all commuters, and from them I started with 5, then
            12-15--and went from a club sport to Varsity Cross Country with a 1 PE credit hour.
            Ironically, the dean had a big fight to get that PE credit,  because I didn't have a degree in PE.
            The fact that I had been several times US champion and record holder didn't seem to
            qualify me to teach even a fitness jogging class!  But reason prevailed, and on we went....".

Pat Douthat, Jo Ann Abbott, and Grace 

Also of note is Grace raced motorcycles from 1973 to 1993 and wrote extensively for Rider magazine.  Her list of accomplishments goes well beyond what is documented above.

Lilian Greene, Grace's teammate in that Philadelphia 800 would also have an illustrious career completing a Ph.D. and eventually working for UNESCO in Paris.

Back in Training

The seeds for this article came when visiting Les Hegedus in 2013 in Cleveland.  Going through his scrapbook we saw several pictures of Grace and a poem she had written for Les.

Les Hegedus  click here to read that article.

That reminded me of an encounter I had had with Grace about 1979 in Muncie, IN when I was a grad student at  Ball State's Human Performance Lab and Grace had been invited to speak on her poetry by the BSU English department.   That morning Grace and several of the guys from the lab and I went for a 5 mile run in a blinding snowstorm.  Afterwards we were entertained by her poetry reading, and I still remember that it centered around a poem called Cycle Song that talked about her motorcylce experiences.  Quite a turn from her track and field days.  I wasn't quite prepared for that.

Poems by Grace in this article are from Child, House, World  by Grace Butcher, Hiram Poetry Review Supplement Number 12,  1991.

Other sources for this article were:

"Collapse of a 30-Year Hoax"  by Julia Chase-Brand, MD , PhD,  Marathon and Beyond, March/April, 2015.

"Remembering Stella Walsh" by Grace Butcher, The Ohio Runner, July 1987.

Quote of Pierre De Coubertin   from film documentary   '1914-1918 Le Sport a l'Eprouve de Feu'

George Brose



What a great article George ! You may have outdone your self this time.......the pics were wonderful...... got Les in there. too plus a bit about Alex Ferenzi the debonair Hungarian coach. When I went to Moscow in 74' , Alex had a few phone #'s from his little black book for me to call. Alex got around and was a real charmer. If not mistaken, I think he worked as a designer/builder of racing wheelchairs in Cleveland. He was one of the REAL pioneers and a good guy........He had that same "grab your shoulder, look you square in the eye" confrontation as Lazlo Tabori. Never sure they knew each other..maybe. 

V 10 N. 44 The Hungarians are Coming! The Hungarians are Coming!

Grace Butcher recently sent us a collection of photos from her scrapbook.  Many of you will recall that Grace was one of the early national class women's runners at distances from 800 meters and up.  She was on the US team in 1959 that competed against the Russians in the heat in Philadelphia where Bob Soth crashed into overheating problems and was running incoherently on the track during the 10,000 meters.  It was one of the first national experiences we had to witness the effects and hazards of heat injury.  Grace was third in the 800 that day.

For a bit of background on the photos, Grace grew up thirty miles outside of Cleveland and wanted to run track like the boys, but her school like all schools in those days did not have girls' sports.  So her mom drove her thirty miles each way several times a week to train with a Polish emigre coach Stella Walsh, the women's 100 meter champion in the 1932 Olympics.   When Stella left town, Grace moved on to the tutelage of a recent Hungarian distance runner who had escaped in 1956 when the Russians moved tanks into that country to 'stabilize' the Communist government that they supported while a revolt was going on amongst these people.  The Russians played hardball and soon controlled the country for the Hungarian Communist Party.   For several years prior to these events, the Hungarians were busy establishing themselves as some of the top distance runners in the world.  Sandor Iharos had set world records in 5,000 and 10,000 meters.  Lazlo Tabori was the world's third man to run a sub four minute mile.  Istvan Rozavolgyi was breaking records as well, and several of that group of men took down the 4x1500 meters three times.  Their coach was the soon to be famous Mihaly Igloi.  Igloi and Tabori would defect to America after the Olympics.  Rozavolgyi and Iharos stayed home.  In fact I'm not sure Iharos was allowed to go to Melbourne.  He was a little suspect in the eyes of the state secret police.   Grace's coach at the Cleveland Magyar AC was  Julius (Gyula) Penzes, another Hungarian  who had run the 5,000 and 10,000 in the  early 50s. He had the 6th fastest time in the world (29:48.6) in 1953, and though he was no longer running, he was not against leaving the country for a better life and ended up in Cleveland coaching the Magyar Athletic Club  to which the young Grace now belonged.    After things settled down in Hungary, Rozsavolgyi came to the US to compete indoors in New York and Cleveland.  It was a time for reunion of those Hungarians including Igloi to see their old friend.  Igloi formed the Santa Clara Youth Village track team which morphed into the L.A. Track Club and produced the great running group including Bob Schul, Jim Beatty, Jim Grelle, John Bork, and many others.  Igloi spent his last years coaching in Greece.

So here are the photos Grace sent along.

Istvan Rozsavolgyi, Grace Butcher, Laszlo Tabori, Mihaly Igloi, and Julius Penzes

Grace and Laszlo

Grace, Igloi, Penzes at US men's indoor nationals NYC 1959

Grace, Tabori, Louise Mead, Jim Beatty, Igloi (headless) Mike Rawson, Brian Hewson after Cleveland K of C Meet 1960

Julius Penzes with  Grace Butcher and Laszlo Tabori

Rozsavolgyi, Iharos, with two other runners who helped them set the WR for 4x1500 meters

Grace and Rozsavolgyi.  He has that
James Dean look.

Grace may look the ingenue in these photos.  A young woman in awe of these incredibly gifted runners.  But she went on to a long career of racing and bringing women into the world of distance running when there was no place on the roads or tracks in this nation.  She also is a prolific writer and poet, raced motorcycles and wrote about in journals.  She lives today on a small farm southeast of Cleveland near where she grew up, rides her horse Spencer daily and acts in local theater.  


Sandor Iharos Interview  clik here

In looking for some additional pictures from that time, I found this youtube clip of an interview with Iharos before his death in 1996.  There is some very good footage of Iharos and Rosvavolgyi running a dual meet in Helsinki, Finland on the Olympic track.  An incredible crowd on hand.

Here is a photo of Julius Penzes and Rozsavolgyi from another source that we used in an earlier story.  It is in Cleveland in 1959.

V8 N. 68 Bits and Pieces from Air Quality to the Footlights

Our colleague and co-conspirator, Roy Mason, who writes the T&FN synopses, sent me this report on air quality in Northern California and its effect on the high school cross country season.
As you are well aware, the state has been ravaged by forest fires.

Air quality caused the qualifying meets for the North Coast Section of CIF to be canceled ten days ago.  Everyone was advanced to the NCS meet which qualifies for state this Saturday, the 24th.  That meet was to be last Saturday but the air quality index was too high so the meet was held yesterday.  There were ten races, five of which were completed before the AQI exceeded the CIF limit of 151.  When the AQI reached 154 the meet was canceled.  Those divisions in which competition was not held will have qualifiers (individual and team) determined by the vote of a committee.  Odd, but true.

Grace Butcher on right running for Cleveland Magyar Athletic Club

On another vein entirely, I recently received a report from Grace Butcher, now an octagenarian, who once was the top 880 runner in the US, that she is now and has been performing on stage in her local theater in the Cleveland, Ohio area.  Grace has always been an iconoclastic individual, who not only ran track but raced motorcycles, wrote and published poetry, and was one of the women who pushed hard for equal rights to compete in races longer than 220 yards when it was deemed unseemly and physiologically dangerous for them to be engaging is such activities.  

Here are excerpts from a review on her current passion by 
Breanna Mona > entertainment@newsherald.com

That's Grace in the long black dress

Geauga Lyric Theater Guild brings you the kooky and spooky “The Game’s Afoot,” on the stage of the Geauga Theater in Chardon. it’s just what the doctor ordered.

It’s not quite Halloween — although try telling that to major retailers — and the show is set in Christmastime in 1930s New England, but this ominous comedy is the perfect way to gear up for skeleton season.

The first 25 or so minutes of the show are a little stale and may not have you convinced fun does indeed lie ahead, but it's worth the slow boil for the hilarious hijinks that ensue. The script may be to blame for the early lull, or maybe the actors are using the opening dialogue as a warm-up. However, when things finally take off, they rarely slow down.

This production of Ken Ludwig ‘s 2012 play is directed by Patty Osredkar. Although it’s mysterious and murderish, above all else it’s a comedy.

How are the jokes received? They kill (pun quite intended).

The funniest member of the cast is, by far, Grace Butcher, who plays the innocent and elderly Martha Gillette. Butcher simply slays her lines and leaves the audience in fits of laughter. She’s a natural comic, and her scenes are easily the smoothest and most-adored moments of the show.

Martha is the mother of William Gillette (Michael J. Rogan), an actor who fancies himself a real-life Sherlock Holmes. Rogan captures the bold and boisterous aspects of William’s spirit. He’s endlessly loud and proud. His character is a self-absorbed show-biz personality who’s intent on discovering who is after him following his being shot on stage during his performance as Sherlock Holmes......

Hope to see you at the Emmys this year, Grace.

A look back: (We're always looking back)  Our longtime readers may recall this entry from 4 years ago about two good runners who also followed their dreams to the stage and screen.

Once Upon a Time in the Vest

    Clik Here

Wishing everyone a peaceful and happy Thanksgiving Weekend.
George Roy Steve

I didn't realize that smoke impacted the N.Cal. Regional and State XC Qualifiers. Bummer.

We have had far less smoke but they still closed th schools early.

It doesn't matter, one would think, if kids breathed the smoke indoors at school or indoors at home, here in S.calif.

I saw Grace Butcher run indoors at vaious indoor Venues, like Cleveland KC Meet, Chicago Daily News Relays & The Milwaukee Jouirnal Games.

She has true grit.

John Bork

V 13 N. 106 Another Coach Who Took a Knife to One of Her Runners

 Grace Butcher liked Paul O'Shea's story about "Taking A Knife To His Runner's Throat"  and relayed another of those blood lust thrillers to our collection.   Well not really blood lust, but there was a knife involved and without it, there would have been a long day for one of her runners.   

Grace Butcher as many of you know represented the US in the USA vs. Soviet Union  dual meet in Philadelphia in 1959.   For years she was one of the top middle distance runners in the US and was a pioneer in getting women's events longer than 200 meters into international and national events in this country.     Here is her story.

As you know, I taught English for 25 years at the Kent State University Geauga Campus. In 1980, because I was doing a lot of my own training on campus, I thought I'd see if any students wanted to join me, and maybe I could start a cross country program there. We were the smallest branch of Kent State with only about 200 commuting students at the time, but I did get 5 students to start running with me, or training under my direction as they were beginners at the time.

The program grew from that year to 12 the next year, and leveled out at about 15 for the twelve years until I retired.  To accommodate the various schedules of the runners, I ran two workouts a day back then with a morning and afternoon practice, running with the team in the woods and fields of our rural campus and on the adjacent county fairgrounds property. We were just a kind of rag-tag independent group of runners, not in any league, going to area road races and cross country meets as a team every weekend through the fall. Finally the program was accepted as an official Phys. Ed. credit course. The dean fought some battles to get that accreditation since I didn't have a degree in PE. Seems that being a former national  800m champion/record holder/All-American  hadn't struck the powers-that-be as being qualified to teach what was listed as a fitness jogging class. Thanks, Larry Jones. 

One of my best runners was Dave, a tall, blond, thin, likeable guy. At a big road race one weekend, I took my runners to the starting line—I was also running and a little nervous—but where was Dave? Nobody knew. Finally, minutes before the start, here comes Dave jogging up to the line. He's still got his sweatpants on. "Dave!" I said. "Get your sweats off!"  "I can't," he says, yanking at the waistband. "I've got a knot!"  "Here, let me," I say, female coach fumbling with my male runner's pants.  I can't undo it either. I look over at the spectators milling around in the start area. I yell, "Pocket knife? Pocket knife? Does anybody have a pocket knife?!"  A hand appears with the rescue knife, I cut Dave out of his sweat pants, the gun goes off along with his pants, and off we all go.

A follow-up to this event was at the last race of our season, a 5 mile cross country run on our campus, the Cornfield Caper. (Yes, it did go through a cornfield.) Our uniforms were made of sweat pant material; the loose-fitting shorts had a drawstring waist. On the first of the two loops around campus, the adjacent woods and fields, I see Dave coming.  He seems to be clutching his stomach. As he goes by, I yell, "Dave, what's wrong?"  "My drawstring broke!" he yells back. He had to run the better part of 5 miles holding his pants up.

At the year's-end banquet, after all the usual awards, I gave funny gifts to all the runners, based on something that had happened during the season. For Dave, the only possible gift was a pair of suspenders.  

Grace Butcher

* This reminds me a bit of Tom O'Hara the great miler from Loyola of Chicago.   The coach must have ordered shorts too large for Tom, because he was always tugging them up during his races.  ed.  

From Bill Schnier:

Grace Butcher's post was fabulous, enhanced by the fact that she had been an outstanding runner.  I especially enjoyed her never-before-heard comment: "the gun goes off along with his pants."  I once coached a very good distance runner who strangely faded in midrace on a foggy Saturday morning.  As I stood next to his parents, impatiently waiting for him to pass by, his mother shouts out "I think Todd is in his underpants."  Sure enough he strolls by us, devoid of shame, wearing only his tighty whities, missing his black shorts which had lost its elastic band.  He was well behind where he should have been but at least he was able to run with both arms pumping.

...

V 9 N. 3 "(Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph", A Book Review by Grace Butcher

Rita Liberti & Maureen M. Smith. (Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015. 328pp.

Reviewed by Grace Butcher.   .

   Authors Liberti and Smith take a close look at the story of Wilma Rudolph, one of the greatest sprinters of all times (3 gold medals in the 1960 Rome Olympics: 100, 200, and 4 x 100 relay) through the lens of current events, “by examining who is served by continually romanticizing the track star and her achievements for the past half-century.” In seven chapters, arranged thematically rather than chronologically, plus a lengthy introduction and conclusion (along with almost a hundred pages of notes, bibliography, and index) the authors dig deeply into events as presented in the media of those times. They focus on errors, omissions, and misrepresentations that now seem obvious with hindsight in our own era of intense and instant scrutiny of the lives of famous athletes.

   The erroneous identification of Rudolph as the first woman ever to win three gold medals in the Olympics is quickly corrected although it has persisted over the decades.  “What is safe to say is that Rudolph was the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field in a single Olympiad...also the first African American woman....” 

   Chapter One describes the behind-the-scenes activity, the planning and plotting, as Clarksville Tennessee became the focal point of the nation for the brief period of Rudolph's homecoming celebration.  Rudolph's unusually bold request to public officials that her homecoming events, the parade and dinner, be integrated, led to Clarksville's claim to being in the forefront of a new and liberal South. In reality, few changes would occur in the status of Blacks in that city or elsewhere in the South for years after her few moments of glory.

   Chapter Two, subtitled “The Politics of Race and Beauty,” calls our attention to Rudolph's image as taken up by the press: “...a slender beauty...the legs of a showgirl.” (Sports columnist Jerry Footlick) . Or Newsweek: “...unlike many American female athletes, she looks feminine.” Sports Illustrated called her a “cafe au lait runner,” a reference to her light skin color. Mademoiselle: “...the very embodiment of black grace, a beautiful, flowing, lissome sight....”  Her athletic accomplishments were often in the background of an article as if proving that her beauty, femininity, grace, poise, and sweetness were her most important attributes.

     At the sold-out (14,000) Los Angeles Invitational indoor track meet in Jan. 1961, her presence completely overshadowed that of any other Olympians, male or female. One of the photos in this book shows her prior to the meet, in a form-fitting skirt and frilly blouse, feminine above all else, jogging on the indoor track, followed by Olympians Dickie Howard and Don Bragg appropriately dressed in their USA warm up suits. This photo, ironically, is the only one in the book that shows her on a track, “running.” Some photos of her Olympic victories—or any other of her races—would have been welcome, but Liberti and Smith have chosen to de-emphasize her athletic accomplishments, as much as the media of her day seemed to do, in their goal of spotlighting, instead, everything that was not brought to light during Rudolph's journey to Rome and beyond.

   In Chapter Three we see the unexpected connection between the Cold War and female athletes in the US.  In the famous dual meets between the USA and the USSR, the Soviets granted their women equal respect and status as athletes, their points in the meets being totaled with the men's to determine the outcome of the competition. The US insisted on scoring separately, to be able to say that while our women lost, our men won. The incongruity of this approach was not lost on athletes and fans alike. The obvious reason for it was that at the time US women were not of the caliber of the Soviet women whose training was serious and intense year round, providing an unfavorable comparison of the US “democratic” way and the USSR's “communist” commitment to excellence.

   The government-funded Soviet programs “designed to develop fully the most talented, irrespective of gender...cast a rare spotlight on US female athletes....” The beauty issue continued to rear its ugly head.  However “the nation's fears of being beaten by the Russians eclipsed anxieties of mannish women running around a track.”  It could be said the real winners of the Cold War were all the young American girls so long denied opportunity to excel in sports.

   Ironically, Rudolph's victories also served to call attention to our years of racism and segregation. We glorified our Black athletes only when it was politically expedient and relegated them to obscurity once the spotlight was turned off.  The 1961 film, Wilma Rudolph, Olympic Champion, produced by the United States Information Agency, “features the athlete's accomplishments on the track, as it simultaneously obscures the racial injustices she endured away from it.”

    Rudolph's only known participation in public protest, a failed attempt, with others, to be served at a Clarksville restaurant in June of 1963, received little notice in the press other than a small headline in the Pittsburgh Courier that read “Wilma Finds Key to City Doesn't Work.” By 1964, with husband Robert Eldridge, her high school sweetheart, she had settled into relative domesticity and didn't even mention the incident in her 1977 autobiography, apparently opting to remain “a Cold War icon rather than a civil rights soldier.”

   Chapter Four deals with Rudolph's childhood of illnesses and disability: “double pneumonia, scarlet fever, whooping cough, measles, chickenpox a tonsillectomy and an appendectomy” plus a leg brace from age five, worn for some years. However, by the time she was in high school, and later in college at Tennessee State under famous coach Ed Temple, her running ability brought her the feeling of freedom that her actual daily life did not. Even in traveling with the highly respected Tigerbelles track team she experienced all the restrictions in transportation, hotels, and restaurants as she always had throughout her earlier life.

    Discovering she was pregnant in her senior year of high school seemed barely an issue. She says, “The black girls stayed in school pregnant, like nothing was wrong at all…and there really wasn't any stigma to it....” She enrolled at Tennessee State shortly after having her daughter who went to live with Rudolph's sister while Wilma pursued her Olympic dreams. She had actually won a bronze relay medal at age 16 in the 1956 Olympics, a feat little noticed by press or community. Her goal was gold four years later. But after achieving that goal, she settled into family life, finding few opportunities for competition and focusing instead on the value of relationships within her very large family. (Her dad's two marriages had produced twenty-two children.)

    “Biopics, Nostalgia, and Family in the 1970's” is the subtitle for Chapter Five, Wilma. The famous Olympic documentary film maker, Bud Greenspan produced the film of that name saying, “I wanted hers to be a true sports story.” Yet her relationship with her father seems to be the main focus of the film. The authors argue that Greenspan presents a nostalgic and unrealistic look back at the significance of family in the 50's: “Rudolph's life and her experiences are flattened, simplified, and made two-dimensional” as the film neglects “larger social issues and forces.” Liberti and Smith take issue with Greenspan's overlooking her real life as a “poor black girl raised in the Jim Crow South,” and giving audiences only “cinematic comfort food.”

   The four major male figures in her life—her father, her high school track coach, her coach at TSU, and  later her husband—command so much screen time in the film in their directives and decisions about her future that her athletic accomplishments seem “barely an afterthought...throughout the film.” Greenspan's “determination to be inspirational” leaves us viewing Rudolph's track career as if through the wrong end of a telescope while magnifying a family life that was lived under the shadow of the  racism of the times. In films, children's books, newspapers, and magazines from Rudolph's own era, we're never told the whole truth of the struggle by  female athletes in general and Black female athletes in particular for recognition and opportunity.

    Chapter Six re-emphasizes the limitations of biographies written for children. The twenty or so books about Wilma focus on her overcoming a crippling disability in early childhood, persisting in her Olympic goal, and eventually triumphing through hard work and determination. In these books her life is “seen as being under the total command of the track star herself,” while in reality, every step of her journey was made with great difficulty as she struggled with the discrimination and social injustice of the 50's and 60's. Liberti and Smith maintain that “[B]ooks written for children about Wilma Rudolph remain mired in [the] past....”  They see these stories as “devoid of any political and social context...filled instead with stereotypes and misrepresentations of [prevailing attitudes about] disability.”

   The last chapter shows us, in part through the few illustrations, the various earlier efforts to memorialize Rudolph: a statue, an obscure historical marker, a neglected section of local highway bearing her name, an event center in Clarksville and a dorm and indoor track at TSU also named for her. In 2004 a twenty-three cent stamp bearing her likeness was issued by The United States Postal Service as part of its Distinguished American series. At the time, that was the price of a postcard. 

   In their conclusion, the authors say, “We often lamented her early death [from a brain tumor in 1994 at age 54]...and the loss of her voice and the opportunity to 're-write' her story.” In this book, they have, in a sense, done just that. They find it less than honest to separate this great athlete from every nuanced detail of her difficult life and to focus only on the inspirational story which has prevailed for many decades.  One must delve into the history of the segregated South and weave it into every aspect of her too-brief life in order for any story about her to be true and complete.

   Re-writing/revising/ re-presenting history can be a daunting task. It couldn't happen in Rudolph's own time, but the authors have dug deeply and made it happen now. Liberti and Smith seem to wish that the media back in the day had told it like it was, and that Wilma Rudolph could have used her golden powers for social change. Instead she chose post-Olympic domesticity and relative obscurity.

   Perhaps she had no golden powers then. She was Black, she was female, she ran.

Lest it be forgotten,  Grace Butcher was several times US women's 880 champion and member of the US team that competed against the Soviet Union in Philadelphia.  Grace has had a multi-faceted career as a runner, poet, professor of English, motorcycle racer and writer, and mother. She was one of the major movers in the effort to get US officialdom to allow women to run distances over 220 yards.   She lives outside of Cleveland, OH.  Grace is featured in Amby Burfoot's 2016 book  

First Ladies of Running: 22 Inspiring Profiles of the Rebels, Rule Breakers, and Visionaries Who Changed the Sport Forever

For some of her literary work we refer you this this posting on our blog .  

Grace Butcher  clik here.

V 12 N. 91 And Still More Long Beach Archives Featuring Bob Soth

 

Darryl Taylor has provided some more photos from his private collection.  Here's how he accounts for having those pictures.

George-here is what I remember. When I came to LBSC (Long Beach City College) in the 1961-62 school year the current school records were fair but nothing . exceptional.  There was a LB Press-Telegram sports writer who covered LBSC T&F and after a couple of track meets he sensed that some very big changes were on the horizon. Don't ask me why but he picked me as a target for the Sunday edition of the sports page and I would wake up Sunday to find my photo in the paper. I must have gathered five or six photos from the paper that year.  When I graduated in 1964 I went to his office in downtown Long Beach and asked if there was any way I could get a negative or 8x10 of the photos he had from those articles. He asked if I would care to have some others he had in his files and of course I jumped at the offer. I cannot tell you which ones were in that first bunch or which ones I obtained from the LBSC Forty-Niner school paper. These are a mixture of those two sources and just grabbing old programs and asking for copies here and there. The photos of Ullis Williams and Lindgren I got from Tom Jennings at some point in the past. Always looking to save things that were being tossed. I worked in the equipment cage for a while and one day when emptying the trash I found a set of brand new Wilson spikes that Rose had tossed that dated back to the opening of the school circa 1949. No telling the origin of any particular image but that pretty much covers it.

I am always interested in the past! Explains why my wife took me to a surprise visit to the Orange County Center for the Performing Arts last night to see JOHNNY MATHIS perform old songs and Christmas carols at the age of 87. He pulled it off if I must say.  More historical stuff coming your way as the new year gets underway.

Darryl,

You probably have all the photos that got nixed by the photo editor at the paper.  There must be incredible numbers of great pictures in old newspaper archives.  One of those resources I've used in the past is the Wright State University Library in Dayton, OH.  The old newspapers donated their files to the library.  They have several people working at that collection who are very helpful at digging out old pictures and stories.  To our readers, some of you may have a detective nature and be willing to go that route to find track history in your local libraries.   George

Here are a  few more photos for that special 5K Rose put together in an effort to get Bob Soth on the Olympic team. He had already finished 3rd in the trials but needed to meet the Oly standard:  Darryl

                                                                 The Meet Program

George Young pacing Bob Soth in attempt to qualify for 5000 for 1960 Olympics

Jack Rose on sideline

He makes it.  13:38.8  3 Miles

This is the man who was widely featured collapsing in the heat in the 10,000 in the Russian 

dual meet in Philadelphia in 1959.

He made it.

Mrs. Soth, "We're going to Rome"

Long Beach State Staff 1961

Bob Soth, Chuck Polizzi, Coach Jack Rose, 

T&FN Don Potts, Ty Hadley

Beach Run Trophies,  Bob Soth, Bill Tilney, Beach Run Queen Lee Miller

Recent Article on Bob  link:     BOB SOTH

                                                 The Near Tragedy in 1959

Grace Butcher Wrote About The Russian 10,000

I was there, trackside, being one of the two US women in the 800---a pitiful ten seconds behind in our race, novices compared to the experienced Soviet women.  Soth's grotesque struggle to keep going in the heat and humidity was horrifying; they should have taken him off the track long before they did---he'd already fallen several times and was leaning over backwards as he staggered along.  And the second Russian collapsing backwards into the arms of his teammate who'd left the infield and come up behind him at the finish line. And Truex being sent another almost impossible lap when he'd made what he thought was his finishing move. 

We were all left shaken by it. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Tears in my eyes just remembering it. Thank God they were all OK later. Grace

Tom Pagani-I was the anonymous poster regarding the Philly fans and their comments in the 1959 dual meet between the USA and USSR. 

I had checked the box with my email address and assumed my name would appear. No need to be anonymous. It was not one of the best moments for US track fans. 

Grace Butcher's recollection:

No, I don't remember negative crowd reaction to the Russians in the 10k. May have been, but the focus on Soth and his struggle is my only image. I don't remember a lot of details about the whole thing tho have a number of photos, of course. Just being on the team was wonderful; running injured was awful. I was there alone (story of my life!), my coach came only for the meet; my parents kept my boys who were 5 & 7, brought them for the meet, drove back home together, I proudly wearing the simple wool skirt and jacket with the USA emblem on a steaming hot July day. G