One of the principles my grandparents and parents instilled in me was that if you are content with the best that you have done in any activity or endeavor, you’ll never be the best you can be and that if you really want to improve at any level, you’ll go out of your way to change your weaknesses into your strengths. In this season of election politics, it’s disheartening to me to hear so many wannabe leaders speak about what we as a society should be given as opposed to that which we should strive to accomplish. Clearly, those stirring words delivered at his 1960 inauguration by John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” appears to be by too many of today’s political class an outdated aphorism unfit for the 21st century.
Some would argue that there is a large segment of our population that is disadvantaged, held back, and disenfranchised. As such, they must be given something or are owed something, for without such assistance they will surely continue to fail. While I believe that we, who are blessed with much, should help those of our brothers and sisters who are truly in need, none of us should expect or even wish for a world devoid of obstacles or challenges for it is through the sweat and toil of overcoming our weaknesses that we build our strength, our character, and our success. If our compassion for those perceived to be “needy” engenders dependence rather than independence, then our compassion becomes a barrier to rather than a ladder to self-value, achievement and success.
In keeping with that storyline, I’d like to share with you the story of Wilma Glodean Rudolph. It’s likely many of you will not find her name familiar, but at the 1960 Olympic Summer Games in Rome she made history and she did so despite the enormous barriers and obstacles that would have overcome those with a lesser will and commitment. As such, Wilma Rudolph’s story is not only inspirational, but she, herself, is sorely missed today as a role model to a generation too much indoctrinated by the voices of pandering to entitlement, defeat, and failure.
Wilma, the twentieth of twenty-two children, was born prematurely on June 23, 1940 in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee. She weighed only 4.5 pounds and the doctor told her parents, Ed and Blanche Rudolph, that he doubted she would survive. She did. Then Wilma developed polio as an infant which confined her to cumbersome metal leg braces for most of her childhood. As Wilma would later recall, “The doctors told me that I would never walk. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.” For years, Wilma’s mother, brothers or sisters would massage Wilma’s legs four times a day in an attempt to improve her muscle function.
As an African-American growing up in the South before segregation was outlawed, Wilma’s schooling was limited to all black underfunded and ill equipped schools which, due to her health limitations, she couldn’t begin until she was eight. Her family was dirt poor. Her father and mother worked tirelessly to provide meager support for their large, but tightknit family; he as a porter and she as a maid. Like the other poor people of that era, Wilma Rudolph’s family home was a grossly substandard shack with no indoor plumbing facilities, but it was fully equipped with love and unity. It was also permeated with the attitude that defeat and obstacles were impediments to be overcome rather than to succumb to.
When she was in the eighth grade, Wilma Rudolph’s older sister made the track team at Burt High School, but Wilma, still bearing some of the lingering effects of her childhood polio, didn’t. Her father told the track coach that the Rudolph sisters were a “package deal” – either both girls made the team, or neither girls made the team. Wilma thus made the team, and began to slowly develop her track skills, although basketball was her favorite sport. Her coaches soon gave her the nickname “Skeeter” because she “buzzed around them” so much during basketball games, hoping to get put into the game.
A few years later, Wilma participated in a track meet at Tuskegee Institute, where she lost every single race. But one person who watched her run that day — Track Coach Ed Temple of Tennessee State University — saw her and thought she had potential. He recruited her to his summer “track camps” at TSU. Only a year later, at the age of 16, Wilma Rudolph qualified for the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Despite the fact that she was the youngest member of the team, Wilma won a bronze medal in the sprint relay event.
Wilma Rudolph was now a hero in her home town of Clarksville. But she was still poor, and she still had things to overcome. When she went to her high school prom, she had to borrow a prom dress. Then, at the age of 17, and still single, Wilma Rudolph got pregnant. She had the baby and didn’t participate in sports her senior year of high school. For a while it looked like she might never participate in track again. But the next year she enrolled at Tennessee State University, while one of her sisters, who was married and living in St. Louis, took care of Wilma’s baby girl.
As a member of the TSU track team, Rudolph devoted herself to running and made the 1960 Olympic Team along with three of her TSU teammates. The 1960 Olympic games were a “golden” time for Wilma. After setting a world record of 11.3 seconds in the 100-meter dash in the semifinals, she won the 100 in the final round with a time of 11.0. Similarly, she broke the Olympic record in the 200-meter dash (23.2 seconds) in the semifinals before winning the gold with a 24 second time in the final. She was also a part of the U.S. team that beat the world record in the 4-by-100 meter relay in the Olympic semifinals before winning the gold in the final with a time of 44.5 seconds. With that victory, Wilma became the first American woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympic Games. In doing so, she became one of the most popular athletes of the Rome Games as well as an international superstar, lauded around the world for her groundbreaking achievements.
When she returned, Wilma Rudolph was greeted at home with a parade that is believed to have been Clarksville, Tennessee’s first biracial event. She also made several national television appearances and received a number of honors, including the Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year Award, which she received twice, in both 1960 and 1961. She retired from competition not long after, becoming a teacher and a track coach, but her accomplishments on the Olympic track remained her best known. Throughout the 1960’s, Rudolph was widely considered to be the world’s fastest woman.
In 1977, Rudolph shared her remarkable life story with the world with the publication of her autobiography, Wilma. Her book was later made into a television movie. In the 1980’s, she was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and she established the Wilma Rudolph Foundation to promote amateur athletics. Wilma passed away on November 12, 1994, near Nashville, Tennessee after losing a courageous battle against brain cancer. In 2004, the United States Postal Service honored the Olympic champion by featuring her likeness on a 23-cent stamp.
Crippled, poor, African-American, a woman, an unwed mother–Wilma possessed all of the traits that would defined her by many within today’s political class as someone who wasn’t dealt a fair hand and, thus, couldn’t make it on her own without access to massive lifelong assistance. Wilma, however, would never have agreed with that premise.
Wilma Glodean Rudolph left us with an inspiring legacy: No matter what your burden or barrier, you can still run to victory if it is within your will and you commit yourself to it, but, without such will and commitment, you’re running fast will most likely lead you nowhere.
“Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick yourself up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.” – Wilma Glodean Rudolph
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacqué