The Forgotten Legacy of Stella Walsh

by Sheldon Anderson

  22. Sharon K. Hanson, The Life of Helen Stephens, the Fulton Flash (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 260.

  23. Plain Dealer, March 7, 2000.

  24. Grace Butcher, “Remembering Stella Walsh,” Ohio Runner 9, no. 1 (July 1987): 15.

  25. Plain Dealer, March 7, 2000; Butcher, “Remembering Stella Walsh,” 15.

  26. Plain Dealer, March 7, 2000.

  27. New York Times, December 6, 1980.

  28. Plain Dealer, June 23, 1950.

  29. Joe Jares, “A Baker’s Dream Needs Dough,” SI Vault, September 7, 1970, http://www.si.com/vault/1970/09/07/611481/a-bakers-dream-needs-dough.

  30. Plain Dealer, August 5, 1951.

  Chapter 7

  1. Hilary A. Hallett, Go West, Young Woman! The Rise of Early Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 113.

  2. Plain Dealer, June 12, 1953.

  3. Plain Dealer, August 5, 1951.

  4. Plain Dealer, June 12, 1953.

  5. Plain Dealer, June 29, 1952.

  6. Los Angeles Times, July 3, 1952; Plain Dealer, July 3, 1952.

  7. New York Times, March 3, 1998.

  8. Nikoletta Onyestyák, “Boycott, Exclusion, or Nonparticipation? Hungary in the Years of the 1920 and 1984 Olympic Games,” International Journal of the History of Sport 27, no. 11 (August 2010): 1920–41.

  9. Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1952. In 2016, the IOC broke that precedent and recognized an Olympic Refugee Team, inviting ten athletes to the Rio Olympics.

  10. Plain Dealer, August 1, 1945.

  11. Sarasota Herald-Tribune, September 7, 1952; Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1952.

  12. Plain Dealer, July 3, 1952.

  13. Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1954.

  14. Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1955.

  15. Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1954.

  16. Mathias won the gold medal in the decathlon at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics.

  17. Wieś Wierzchownia can be translated as the “village of Wierzchownia.”

  18. A “secret word” was chosen before the show, and if the contestants said the word during the interview, they won $100. Stella said the secret word “name” right away, winning $100 for her and her fellow contestant.

  19. You Bet Your Life, episode 150, https://archive.org/details/You.Bet.Your.Life.

  20. You Bet Your Life, episode 150, https://archive.org/details/You.Bet.Your.Life.

  21. Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1956.

  22. International Olympic Committee, The Olympic Games Charter Rules and Regulations, 1955, 20, https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Olympic%20Charter/Olympic_Charter_through_time/1955-Olympic_Charter-The_OG-charter_rules_and_regulations_general_information.pdf.

  23. Times Herald (Pennsylvania), October 15, 1955; New York Times, October 15, 1955; Washington Post, October 15, 1955.

  24. Stella Walsh to John Jewett Garland, April 5, 1956, Avery Brundage Papers, quoted in Toby Rider and Sarah Teetzel, “The Strange Tale of Stella Walsh’s Olympic Eligibility,” unpublished paper, 2015.

  25. Toby Rider, “Eastern Europe’s Unwanted: Exiled Athletes and the Olympic Games,” Journal of Sport History 40, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 444.

  26. International Olympic Committee, Olympic Rules (Lausanne: International Olympic Committee, 1956), in Rider and Teetzel, “The Strange Tale of Stella Walsh’s Olympic Eligibility.”

  27. Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1956.

  28. Susan E. Cayleff, Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 140.

  29. New York Times, August 16, 1956.

  30. Plain Dealer, August 26, 1956.

  31. Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1956.

  32. Plain Dealer, August 11, 1957.

  33. Amby Burfoot, First Ladies of Running: 22 Inspiring Profiles of the Rebels, Rule Breakers, and Visionaries Who Changed the Sport Forever (New York: Rodak Books, 2016), 6.

  34. Grace Butcher, “Remembering Stella Walsh,” Ohio Runner 9, no. 1 (July 1987): 17.

  35. Plain Dealer, March 7, 2000; Plain Dealer, March 23, 2000.

  36. Plain Dealer, March 10, 1958.

  37. Louise Mead Tricard, American Women’s Track and Field, 1895–1980 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 386.

  38. Tricard, American Women’s Track and Field, 423.

  39. Jeanette Tuve, “Interview with Bertha Modrzynski,” Cleveland Memory Project, April 15, 1986, http://flash.ulib.csuohio.edu/cmp/ewc/modrzynski.html.

  40. Butcher, “Remembering Stella Walsh,” 17.

  41. “Faces in the Crowd,” SI Vault, November 5, 1962, http://www.si.com/vault/1962/11/05/670206/.

  42. Plain Dealer, October 20, 1962.

  43. Plain Dealer, November 5, 1962.

  44. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1971), 16.

  Chapter 8

  1. Dan Coughlin, Crazy, with the Papers to Prove It (Cleveland, OH: Gray and Co., 2010), 30; Plain Dealer, July 30, 1964.

  2. Andrew D. Linden, “Blue-Collar Identity and the ‘Culture of Losing’: Cleveland and the ‘Save Our Browns’ Campaign,” Journal of Sport History 42, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 343–44.

  3. Adam J. Criblez, “White Men Playing a Black Man’s Game: Basketball’s ‘Great White Hopes’ of the 1970s,” Journal of Sport History 42, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 378.

  4. Joe Jares, “Off to Russia without Love,” SI Vault, July 12, 1965, http://www.si.com/vault/1965/07/12/606343/off-to-russia-without-love.

  5. Memo, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 1; Plain Dealer, July 4, 1965.

  6. Jeanette Tuve, “Interview with Bertha Modrzynski,” Cleveland Memory Project, April 15, 1986, http://flash.ulib.csuohio.edu/cmp/ewc/modrzynski.html.

  7. Casimir Bielen press release, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  8. Montreal Gazette, December 6, 1980.

  9. Coughlin, Crazy, with the Papers to Prove It, 33; Plain Dealer, July 13, 1967; Plain Dealer, January 24, 1980; Elyria Chronicle Telegram (Ohio), May 18, 2003.

  10. Chuck Schodowski, interview in Rob Lucas, director, Stella Walsh: A Docu-mentary, 2014.

  11. Grace Butcher, interview in Lucas, Stella Walsh.

  12. Coughlin, Crazy, with the Papers to Prove It, 33.

  13. Helen Laville, “‘Our Country Endangered by Underwear’: Fashion, Femininity, and the Seduction Narrative in Ninotchka and Silk Stockings,” Diplomatic History 30, no. 4 (September 2006): 643.

  14. Stefan Wiederkehr, “‘We Shall Never Know the Exact Number of Men Who Have Competed in the Olympics Posing as Women’: Sport, Gender Verification, and the Cold War,” International Journal of the History of Sport 26, no. 4 (March 2009): 562.

  15. “Mosaic in X & Y,” Time, September 29, 1967, 74.

  16. Ethel Sloan, The Biology of Women, 4th ed. (Albany, NY: Delmar, 2002), 159.

  17. Jamie Schultz, Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women’s Sport (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 111.

  18. Wiederkehr, “‘We Shall Never Know,” 564.

  19. Wiederkehr, “‘We Shall Never Know,” 556, 560. The IOC now tests testosterone levels, but these can vary significantly.

  20. City of Cleveland Proclamation of Stella Walsh Day, April 13, 1970, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 1; Plain Dealer, April 14, 1970.

  21. City of Cleveland Proclamation of Stella Walsh Day; Plain Dealer, April 14, 1970.

  22. City Council Resolution, September 13, 1974, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 1.

  23. Sharon K. Hanson, The Life of Helen Stephens, the Fulton Flash (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 203.

  24. Aloysius A. Mazewski letter to Casimir Bielen, March 8, 1979, Ste
lla Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  25. Howard M. Metzenbaum article for the U.S. Congressional Record-Senate, May 6, 1979, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  26. U.S. Congressional Record-Senate, May 7, 1979, 10066, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  27. Casimir Bielen press release, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  28. Polish Consulate invitation to Stella Walsh-Olson, July 6, 1979, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  29. Walsh telegram to the Polish Consulate, July 22, 1979, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2; Casimir Bielen press release, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  30. Casimir Bielen press release, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  31. Walsh letter to Mr. Holtz, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  32. Plain Dealer, December 7, 1980.

  33. Plain Dealer, April 1, 1980.

  34. “Homily of His Holiness John Paul II in Warsaw,” Vatican, June 2, 1979, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19790602_polonia-varsavia.html.

  35. Plain Dealer, November 4, 1989.

  36. Plain Dealer, June 8, 1981; John F. McDonald, Urban America: Growth, Crisis, and Rebirth (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2008), 224, 226.

  37. Plain Dealer, June 8, 1981.

  38. McDonald, Urban America, 224, 226.

  39. Coughlin, Crazy, with the Papers to Prove It, 33.

  40. Plain Dealer, December 10, 1980.

  41. Plain Dealer, December 5, 1980.

  42. Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1980.

  43. Plain Dealer, December 10, 1980, in Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 14.

  44. Sztandar Młodych, December 6–7, 1980.

  45. Kuryer Zjednoczenia, December 24, 1980, in Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 14.

  46. Plain Dealer, December 10, 1980.

  Chapter 9

  1. Plain Dealer, December 6, 1980.

  2. Plain Dealer, December 10, 1980; Geauga Times Leader (Chardon, Ohio), December 14, 1980.

  3. Robert Ritchie, John Reynard, and Tom Lewis, “Intersex and the Olympic Games,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 101 (2008): 395.

  4. Pat Sheil, “Five-Ring Circus: The Twisted Tale of Stella Walsh,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, http://www.abc.net.au/olympics/s177264.htm.

  5. Telegraph (London), May 31, 2004.

  6. Harry Gordon, “Olympic Legends Honoured at Sydney’s Games Sites,” Journal of Olympic History (Summer 1998): 20, n5.

  7. Paul Farhi, “The Runner’s Secret,” Washington Post, August 22, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/21/AR2008082103680.html.

  8. “Stella Walsh,” USA Track and Field, http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=177.

  9. Anna Jakieła, “Stanisława Walasiewicz—Krótka historia” [Stanisława Walasiewicz: Short History], December 12, 2013, http://treningbiegacza.pl/stanislawa-walasiewicz-krotka-historia.

  10. Życie Warszawy, July 2, 2004.

  11. Matt Tullis, “Who Was Stella Walsh? The Story of the Intersex Olympian,” SB Nation, June 27, 2013, http://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/6/27/4466724/stella-walsh-profile-intersex-olympian.

  12. Cleveland Press, February 12, 1981, in Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 15.

  13. Plain Dealer, February 12, 1981.

  14. Ethel Sloan, The Biology of Women, 4th ed. (Albany, NY: Delmar, 2002), 159.

  15. Eduardo Hay, “The Stella Walsh Case,” Olympic Review 162 (1981): 221–22.

  16. Herald Sun (Melbourne), July 12, 2008.

  17. Washington Post, August 22, 2008.

  18. New York Times, December 21, 1980.

  19. Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1980.

  20. Plain Dealer, February 12, 1981.

  21. Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Virginia), January 23, 1981; Plain Dealer, September 8, 1992.

  22. Plain Dealer, December 16, 1980, in Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 14; Bielen press release, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 7.

  23. New York Times, December 21, 1980.

  24. Bielen press release, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 9.

  25. Plain Dealer, December 16, 1980.

  26. Cleveland Press, December 6, 1980, in Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 14.

  27. Bielen letter to the editor of the Plain Dealer, December 15, 1980, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 6.

  28. New York Daily News, December 9, 2008.

  29. Plain Dealer, April 13, 1979.

  30. Bielen to the editor of the Call & Post, December 14, 1980, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 7.

  31. Handwritten memo, unsigned, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 2.

  32. Bielen letter to Congressman Louis Stokes, December 15, 1980, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 7. Bielen sent the same letter to the others; Louis Stokes letter to Bielen, January 10, 1981, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 7.

  33. Track and Field News 1, no. 1 (February 1948).

  34. New York Times, December 6, 1980.

  35. Plain Dealer, February 12, 1981; Washington Post, February 13, 1981.

  36. Bielen memo, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 15.

  37. Slavic Village Voice, June 1983, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 15.

  38. Plain Dealer, February 14, 1981.

  39. New York Times, December 21, 1980.

  40. Walsh letter to Bob Weissman, Cleveland personnel director, April 7, 1979, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 11.

  41. Toronto Star, September 12, 2009; Toronto Star, March 12, 1989.

  42. Herald Sun (Melbourne), July 12, 2008; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 16, 1991; Plain Dealer, December 7, 1991.

  43. Toronto Star, February 28, 2002. Only six women ran in the finals.

  44. “A Roundup of the Week,” SI Vault, March 20, 1989, http://www.si.com/vault/1989/03/20.

  45. Plain Dealer, December 5, 1991.

  46. Plain Dealer, December 5, 1991; Plain Dealer, December 7, 1991; Akron Beacon Journal, December 7, 1991.

  47. Dan Coughlin, Crazy, with the Papers to Prove It (Cleveland, OH: Gray and Co., 2010), 34.

  48. Thomas Mulloy, “Enough Gender Bender Bullying,” Call & Post, October 21, 2009, http://www.cleveland.com/call-and-post/index.ssf/2009/10/enough_gender_bender_bullying.html.

  49. Washington Post, August 22, 2008.

  epilogue

  1. Coughlin interview in Rob Lucas, director, Stella Walsh: A Documentary, 2014.

  2. Unsigned letter to Bielen, January 8, 1981, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 6.

  3. Allen Guttmann, Women’s Sports History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 111, n57; William Murray, “France, Equality, and the Pursuit of Fraternity,” in The Nazi Olympics: Sport, Politics, and Appeasement in the 1930s, eds. Arnd Krüger and William Murray (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 111, n57.

  4. Doris Pieroth, Their Day in the Sun: Women of the 1932 Olympics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 105.

  5. Plain Dealer, February 13, 1981.

  6. Bielen speech at Walsh gravesite, December 9, 1980, Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 8. Walsh’s mother lived to be 100, and she is also buried at Calvary.

  7. Garfield Heights Tribune (Ohio), December 2, 1981, in Stella Walsh Papers, MS 4999, Container 1, Folder 15.

  8. Butcher interview in Lucas, Stella Walsh.

  Bibliography

  Bo
oks, Articles, and Films

  “25 Lat Temu zmarła Halina Konopacka” [Halina Konopacka Died 25 Years Ago], http://www.sport.wp.pl.kat.

  50 Lat na Olympijskim Szlaku [Fifty Years of Olympic Track]. Warsaw: Wydwawnictwo Sport I Turystyka, 1969.

  Baker, William J. Jesse Owens: An American Life. New York: Free Press, 1986.

  Banham, Reyner. Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1971.

  Basinger, Jeanine. American Cinema: One Hundred Years. New York: Rizzoli Publications, 1994.

  Benoit, Macon. “The Politicization of Football: The European Game and the Approach to the Second World War.” Soccer and Society 9, no. 4 (October 2008): 532–50.

  Berg, Stefan. “The 1936 Berlin Olympics: How Dora the Man Competed in the Women’s High Jump.” Spiegel International Online, September 9, 2009, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/1936-berlin-olympics-how-dora-the-man-competed-in-the-woman-s-high-jump-a-649104.html.

  Bergmann, Gretel. Ich war die grosse judische Hoffnung: Erinnerungen einer aussergewöhnlichen Sportlerin [I Was the Greatest Jewish Hope: Memoirs of an Extraordinary Athlete]. Baden-Wuerttemberg: Haus der Geschichte, 2003.

  Bouzaquet, Jean-Francois. Fast Ladies: Female Racing Drivers, 1888–1970. Dorcester, UK: Veloce, 2009.

  Burfoot, Amby. First Ladies of Running: 22 Inspiring Profiles of the Rebels, Rule Breakers, and Visionaries Who Changed the Sport Forever. New York: Rodak Books, 2016.

  Butcher, Grace. “Remembering Stella Walsh.” Ohio Runner 9, no. 1 (July 1987): 14–17.

  Cahn, Susan K. Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sport. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

  Cayleff, Susan E. Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

  Chin-Martin, Abby. “The First-Ever Olympic Village Was Built in Los Angeles.” KCET, July 26, 2012, https://www.kcet.org/history-society/the-first-ever-olympic-village-was-built-in-los-angeles.

  Churchill, Winston. Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, vol. 7, 1943–1949, ed. Robert R. James. New York: Chelsea House, 1983.

  Coughlin, Dan. Crazy, with the Papers to Prove It. Cleveland, OH: Gray and Co., 2010.