The Forgotten Legacy of Stella Walsh

by Sheldon Anderson

  For many years, the Polish American community in Cleveland had whispered about Walsh’s sexuality. Stories of her drinking, athletic build, and masculine features contributed to rumors that Walsh was not “all woman.” Chuck Schodowski, director of Cleveland’s Fox TV, grew up with Walsh in the Slavic Village. He said, “I heard my father and uncles joke, ‘she’s half-guy’ or something like that, but I thought they were kidding and they were half-drunk.”10 Grace Butcher said, “I remember the first time I saw her stripped down to run. I was just astounded at her masculinity. . . . Stella was very mannish looking, but many women are, and we didn’t think anything of it.”11 In her early fifties, Walsh started dying her hair blonde, and when she began losing her hair, she donned a cheap, ill-fitting platinum blonde wig. Coughlin, Walsh’s drinking buddy, said that as Walsh entered her mid-sixties “she became hideously homely.”12

  Nonetheless, Walsh’s name did not come up when doubts arose in the mid-1960s about the gender of some of the female athletes from the Soviet bloc who were dominating international track and field events. Unable to beat the Soviet women on the field, Westerners began to question their sex. The Press sisters, Irina and Tamara, were the first Soviet female Olympic stars; Tamara won the gold medal in the shot put and a silver in the discus at the 1960 Rome Olympics, and Irina won gold in the 80-meter hurdles. Tamara won gold medals in the shot and discus at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, while Irina took home the gold in the pentathlon. The success of Soviet women athletes on the world stage seemed to confirm Communist propaganda that they were more emancipated than their counterparts in the West.

  The Press sisters and other Soviet-bloc athletes were so successful that some people speculated that they were not women at all. The new Soviet sportswoman was also a direct challenge to the bourgeois feminine image cultivated in the West, which valued beauty and grace. Some of the Soviet athletes, as caricatured by Tamara Press, were unadorned and plump. According to historian Geoffrey Smith, “The spectre of the Soviets as he-men and he-women . . . underscored the need for American women to take distance from their Soviet counterparts and become as feminine as the latter were mannish.”13

  The rumors about the “gender-deviant” Press “brothers” spread when they pulled out of 1966 European Athletic Championships in Budapest, where a sex test was to be administered for the first time. The Times (London) declared, “The absence, though for firmly stated reasons of injury and family illness, of several leading Russian women athletes from the championships has caused a great deal of discussion here on the subject of physiologically ‘borderline cases’ in women’s athletics.”14

  Opportunities for women to do sport in the United States grew rapidly, spurred on by the women’s liberation movement and the challenge from the athletes from the Communist countries. Women from the United States dominated the Olympic sprints in the twentieth century, except in the 1970s, when East German runners came to the fore. This was not a question of men posing as women, but doping. We now know that the East Germans ran a sophisticated program to supply their athletes with performance-enhancing drugs.

  Poland produced three of the greatest sprinters in history, all women. Beginning at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Irena Kirszenstein Szewińska and Ewa Kłobukowska carried on the legacy of the great Stella Walsh. When Nazi Germany attacked Poland in September 1939, Kirszenstein’s parents left Poland for Leningrad. Somehow they survived the Germans’ nearly 900-day siege of the city, during which 1 million civilians perished. Irena was born in 1946, a year after the war ended. The Kirszenteins returned to Warsaw when Irena was a young child, and she grew into the lithe, sinewy, strong, 5-foot-9 body of a prototypical sprinter. At Tokyo, Kirszenstein won silver medals in the long jump and the 200 meters, and, along with Kłobukowska, helped the Polish team win the 4 × 100 relay. At the 1966 European Championships in Budapest, Kirszenstein won the 200 meters and the long jump, came in second in the 100 meters, and anchored Poland’s gold medal–winning 4 × 100 relay team.

  After marrying sports photographer Janusz Szewiński in 1967, Kirszenstein Szewińska won gold medals in the 200 meters at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the 400 meters at the 1976 Montreal Games, and bronze medals in the 100 at Mexico and the 200 at the Munich Olympics in 1972. She also won four more bronze medals in the European Championships in 1971, 1974, and 1978. In 1974, Kirszenstein Szewińska became the first woman to break fifty seconds in the 400 meters. She established six world records in the sprints and is the only runner in history, male or female, to have held the world record in the 100, 200, and 400 meters simultaneously. Kirszenstein Szewińska ran in her last Olympics in Moscow in 1980, but she failed to make the 400-meter finals. One of the greatest Olympic athletes in history, she was elected to the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1992.

  Ewa Kłobukowska came in third in the 100 meters at the Tokyo Games, along with winning gold in the 4 × 100-meter relay. In 1965, she set a world record in the 100. She won the 100-meter gold and a silver medal in the 200 meters at the 1966 European Athletic Championships in Budapest and, with Kirszenstein Szewińska, won the 4 × 100 relay. Kłobukowska, like the other female athletes at the meet, had to submit to a visual examination by three women doctors. She passed the so-called “nude parade.”

  At the European Cup Championships in Kiev in 1967, Kłobukowska willingly submitted to a chromosome test. After all, she was raised a girl and was attracted to boys. According to a story in Time magazine, “Though she had negligible bust development, she seemed, with shoulder-length blonde hair, sufficiently feminine to attract plenty of male dancing partners in Warsaw night spots.”15 Three Russian and three Hungarian doctors determined that Kłobukowska had “one chromosome too many.” It is unclear which chromosome, but she probably had some “XYY” or even a single “X.”16

  Kłobukowska was stripped of her medals and banned from international competitions. “It’s a dirty and stupid thing to do to me,” she grumbled. “I know what I am and how I feel.” On the one hand, Polish authorities protested the ruling and took an enlightened attitude toward gender designation: “It is not sufficient to say that there is a dividing line, that this is a girl and this is not. . . . You must allow for those persons who are complicated to be able to take part in sport.”17 On the other hand, the Western press, prejudiced against any Soviet-bloc athlete, chided her with such headlines as “Polish Blonde Eva Kłobukowska Turned into ‘Adam’” and “Kłobukowska Misses Test for Misses.”18 She later birthed a son, exposing the myriad problems with sex testing.

  Polish sprinter Ewa Kłobukowska was found to have abnormal chromosomes and was stripped of her European Championship medals in 1967. She later birthed a son, compromising the validity of sex testing. Smithsonian Institution Archives. Image # SIA2008-4856.

  When drug testing and chromosome gender verification were instituted for the first time at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the Press sisters dropped out, adding to the speculation that there was something amiss with them. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “We shall never know the exact number of men who have competed in the Olympics posing as women.”19 If there was any cheating going on, it probably had to do more with steroids than gender. Many women in the Soviet bloc were taking performance-enhancing drugs.

  Chromosome testing was flawed as well, because some women have chromosomal anomalies. The IOC and IAAF ended routine chromosome testing in the 1990s Sydney Games, although both organizations maintained the right to conduct sex tests. The issue surfaced again in 2009, after the IAAF suspended 800-meter world champion Caster Semenya of South Africa for almost a year while trying to determine her sex. Today the IOC sets limits on testosterone for women athletes, which many have charged as unfair. Testosterone does not necessarily improve athletic performance.

  In the last decade of her life, Walsh was showered with honors. In February 1970, she was named to the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame, along with Babe Didrikson and Gertrude E
derle. In honor of her induction, Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes designated April 13th “Stella Walsh Day.” In the official declaration, Walsh was “acclaimed as the greatest all-around woman athlete of all time and recently inducted into the Hall of Fame for Women . . . the holder of sixty-five world and national American, Canadian, Polish, and Japanese track and field records . . . [and] has triumphed in more than 5,000 events.”20

  Her old Slavic Village friend and national AAU chairwoman Frances Kaszubski was there to hand out the awards. In her acceptance speech, Walsh said she was often asked what it takes to be a champion: “There are many things,” she replied. “You have to have good friends and financial backing. You have to adhere to hard training and strict diet. As you know, I don’t smoke and drink. And I never went out with boys till I was nine years old.”21 Of course, Walsh was known to put a few beers away, and outrunning boys was more important to her than going to the movies with them.

  On June 13, 1974, Walsh was inducted into the National Polish American Sports Hall of Fame, which had been created two years earlier. The track shoes on display at the museum in Troy, Michigan, are signed “Stella Walsh Walasiewicz.” The Cleveland City Council issued a resolution honoring Walsh for her induction. Several months later, the council again recognized her at the annual Pułaski Day Dinner Dance and Scholarship Awards Banquet, and lobbied for her to be nominated for the AAU’s James E. Sullivan Award: “Council believes that some of her more outstanding achievements qualify her being named as one of the ten most outstanding athletes of the year for the American Sullivan Award.”22 Walsh was nominated but did not win.

  Walsh and her old rival, Helen Stephens, stayed in touch, even exchanging Christmas greetings. On June 14, 1975, Walsh was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, which, at the time, was located in Charleston, West Virginia. In an odd twist, Stephens was inducted at the same ceremony. Stephens told her biographer that she had a hotel room next to Walsh, who was staying with a female companion. Stephens, who by that time had made public her homosexuality, claimed that through the shared wall she heard Walsh and her friend having some of their own fun.23 The story is probably apocryphal.

  Walsh with Polish boxers Zbigniew Kicka and Jerzy Skoczek at the Polish Falcon House, 1975. Cleveland State University.

  In June 1978, Walsh entered the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame in track and field, along with Kaszubski, in part for her work as president of the Lake Erie Association of the AAU. Later that year, Walsh became a member of the newly created Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame, which elicited a congratulatory telephone call from U.S. president Jimmy Carter. When Casimir Bielen, president of the Nationality Newspapers Service, nominated Walsh for an “Outstanding Ohioan” award from the Cleveland Public Schools, Polish American Congress president Aloysius A. Mazewski wrote him, saying, “I concur with you that she is the most outstanding woman athlete. She has been a credit to our people.”24 In late November 1980, a week before her murder, Walsh was inducted once again into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame, this time for her accomplishments in basketball.

  As Walsh piled up award after award in the last few years of her life, recitations of her record elicited repeated exaggerations and falsehoods. In 1979, she was inducted into the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame. Ohio senator Howard M. Metzenbaum submitted this entry into the Congressional Record, recognizing Walsh:

  We in Ohio are indeed fortunate to have the greatest of woman athlete [sic] in history as one of our citizens . . . Stella Walsh. . . . In 1928, as a member of the Polish Olympic team, Stella won a gold medal in the 100-meter dash. She came back to win the silver medal in the same event at the infamous 1932 games in Berlin.25

  When Metzenbaum was informed that Walsh had won her gold medal in Los Angeles in 1932 and a silver in Berlin in 1936, the senator corrected the mistake on the floor of the Senate the next day.26

  Walsh’s friend from the Slavic Village, Casimir Bielen, issued press releases whenever Walsh was honored. He wrote reference letters for her and hired her on as a sports editor. Bielen played loose with the truth and was the source of the many distortions of her record. He frequently claimed that the “indestructible athlete” was the “winner of five gold and four silver medals in the 1932 and 1936 Olympics.”27 In fact, Walsh won only two Olympic medals, gold in the 100 meters at Los Angeles and silver at Berlin. He included her victories at the Women’s World Games in 1930 and 1934 with her two Olympic medals.

  On July 6, 1979, the Polish Consulate in New York sent a letter to “Walsh Olson” at Clement Avenue, inviting her to a reception to award her the Srebrna Oznake Zasługi Polskiej Rzeczpospolita Ludowej [Silver Cross of Merit of the Polish People’s Republic], one of the most prestigious civilian honors that the government could bestow.28 Presidents John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford had previously received the award in Poland. Walsh sent a telegram to the consulate two weeks later, explaining that she had been out of town when the letter arrived. She had tried in vain to get a flight to New York. “Since I missed this important event,” she added, “I want to make amends by accepting this high honor of recognition at some future date.”29

  It might have been an embarrassment for Walsh to attend this official function at the diplomatic mission of the Communist People’s Republic anyway. She was to receive the award in conjunction with the government’s commemoration of “National Day” on July 22, which marked the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation in Lublin in 1944. The so-called Lublin Committee was the core of the postwar Communist government. The People’s Republic stopped officially recognizing November 11, National Independence Day, which the interwar government had celebrated as the date of the resurrection of Poland in 1918. In May 1980, Polish minister-consul Kazimierz H. Cias bestowed upon Walsh the Silver Cross at a ceremony at Eddy’s Chalet West Restaurant in North Ridgeville, about twenty miles east of Cleveland. The Ohio House of Representatives noted the award in its official record.30

  In 1955, a year before her death, Babe Didrikson wrote an autobiography in which she shored up her claim to be the greatest woman athlete of all time. Didrikson was a national figure, while Walsh was just a local favorite. Walsh contemplated writing her own story. Undoubtedly, she also hoped to make some money on a book deal. She was making a little more than $10,000 a year at her job with the Division of Recreation, the highest salary she had ever earned.

  When Walsh was inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1970, she had sent it some of her memorabilia. Now she wanted some of the items back. In a letter to the Hall of Fame she wrote,

  After 50 years of competition, with more than 5,000 awards, plus all the record-breaking victories and championship titles, no matter how short, my autobiography has to be a book!! Anyway, enclosed find two sheets of outstanding highlights. . . . Since, I am writing my Life Story [sic], I would appreciate the return of enclosed material.31

  A California woman was the unlikely source of some of Walsh’s memorabilia. Sick-abed with scarlet fever as a little girl in 1932, Ellen Gibson heard about Stella Walsh when she won her gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics. “I was quite envious being stuck in the house,” Gibson remembered years later, “and knowing that somebody was out there running and breaking records.” Gibson’s husband dealt in antiques, and in 1978 they bought several of Walsh’s things at an estate sale, for two dollars. Gibson phoned the Clement Avenue house to tell Walsh about her find, but Stella’s mother Weronica, who spoke little English, hung up on her. On April 13, 1980, Gibson finally tracked down Walsh at her Division of Recreation office. Walsh gratefully accepted the found items, telling Gibson that she was writing her life story. Gibson was surprised to hear that Walsh was still doing road work several times a week: “She didn’t seem to be a reflective woman, didn’t like to look back,” Gibson observed. “She was consumed by this urge to run and to teach kids athletics.” Walsh told Gibson that some of the kids s
he trained were “kind of tough” but that “as long as I can outrun them, they’ll respect me.”32 The autobiography was never written. Several months later Walsh was dead.

  Cleveland’s two greatest Olympic athletes, both winners of the coveted 100-meter gold medal as the fastest man or woman alive, died in 1980. Chain-smoking cigarettes finally caught up with Jesse Owens. On March 31, he lost his battle with lung cancer. He was sixty-six. As Owens neared death, he displayed the grace that had characterized his running style and the way he led his life. “Every night I get down on my knees and thank God for all that’s happened to me,” he said. “In what other country in the world could a poor black kid like me go to all the places I’ve been, seen all the things I’ve seen, and make so many friends.” Several days before he died, Owens reflected on his friendship with Luz Long, the German Olympian who had helped him win the broad jump at Berlin in 1936. Nearly forty years earlier, Owens had cried when he heard that Long had died fighting in World War II. The day after Owens passed, the Plain Dealer wrote, “Mr. Owens said the Olympic Games were never meant to be contests between nations, or differing political systems. The Games, he said, were meant to be contests between individuals.”33

  Those were also the sentiments of Pierre Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, but in reality, the Olympic Games became a fierce competition of nation against nation. Jesse Owens and Stella Walsh ran in the Nazi Olympics in 1936, the first of many Olympics exploited for explicit political gain. During the Cold War, the Olympic Games became a competition to prove whether liberal democracy or Communism produced the best athletes.

  Although her days as an Olympic athlete were long gone, in the late 1970s Walsh and her fellow Polish Americans were hopeful that Poland might finally break free of Communist rule. For all but twenty of Walsh’s sixty-nine years, her native land had suffered from German or Russian oppression. The worst of it was the genocidal Nazi occupation during World War II. The Red Army’s “liberation” of Poland replaced Nazi tyranny with a Communist dictatorship.