Fire on the Track

by Roseanne Montillo

  After disembarking in the United States, Harry remained in New York for a few short months before making his way to the Midwest, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Wilson, a young woman born in Goderich, Ontario, Canada. Lizzie and her two sisters, Debora and Fannie, had been born to parents who had also emigrated from Ireland. Just months after Lizzie’s birth, the Wilsons moved to Chicago, where nearly two decades later she married Harry Robinson. Lizzie was a very opinionated woman who’d gone to work in a candy factory and who, unlike her fellow workers, did not know how to bite her tongue or hide her thoughts when in the presence of a man. Perhaps it was this innate straightforwardness that initially appealed to Harry. He had no idea that the willful girl would eventually drive him mad and would, in her later years, develop a peculiar fondness for watching wrestling on television.

  Just days after their marriage, the two moved to Nebraska, where in 1899 their first daughter, Jeannette “Jean” Robinson, was born. Not two years after Jean’s birth, the restless feeling Harry had always suffered from reared its head again, prompting him to relocate the family back to Illinois. Chicago and its surrounding towns were providing favorable opportunities for recently arrived immigrants and business-minded men like himself. By 1901, thousands had flocked to the Windy City, but it was one of its suburbs that appealed most to Harry, an up-and-coming community in need of a new infusion of blood: Riverdale.

  The Calumet River to the north and 138th Street to the south bordered the town. It was only seventeen miles south of Chicago, a mere extension of it—far enough away to be called a village—yet close enough for residents to be able to find work in the city’s factories or shop in its fine stores. The village worked very hard to develop a separate identity from its larger neighbor, so much so that an article went so far as to state, “There is no desire on the part of Riverdale settlers to be part of Chicago. Indeed, it would cause quite a stir if anything like that should come up.”

  By 1878, an abundance of lumberyards had grown along the Calumet, what is now the Indiana River, replenishing the area with additional employment. It wasn’t long before settlers discovered that the clay in the area made for excellent bricks, and soon large brickyards such as Purlington & Company and Pather Brickyards sprang up and dotted the landscape. With that discovery eventually came an influx of Canadian, French, British, and Irish workers who made Riverdale their home, the Robinsons included.

  For Harry, this was the place where he wanted his family to settle. He witnessed the industrial efficiency of a small town on the move, with factories planting roots there and bringing with them not only prosperity but also a sense of optimism as everyone rushed headlong into the new century.

  By 1901, a second daughter, Evelyn, was born. Though a son had not appeared, as Harry had always wished, he and his wife now believed that her childbearing years were over—until 1911. It was on a steamy August day in 1911 that Betty Robinson made her debut, during one of the hottest spells the town had ever felt. This precocious child with hazel eyes and blond hair (which would eventually darken to a more chestnut hue) quickly became the apple of the family’s eyes.

  Harry was a happy man. By the time he had gained employment at the Riverdale Bank, which had opened in 1917, little more than a thousand inhabitants populated Riverdale. During the years spanning the 1850s to the 1890s, railroad construction had provided employment to countless immigrants and was also a vital link between the village and Illinois’s larger communities. In the last half of the nineteenth century, streetcar companies such as the Chicago Surface Lines lengthened their service from Michigan Avenue to Riverdale’s 138th Street and Leydan Avenue. Some six years later, Riverdale was connected to Roseland by the Red Line Company. And in 1918, the Acme Steel Company relocated to Riverdale, purchasing large swaths of land along the river and adding to the fleet of factories and brickyards on its banks. Though the steel plant did not add much physical charm to the landscape, the fact that it employed nearly twelve hundred people made up for its unsightliness.

  Right away, Harry became a part of the town’s establishment, ingraining himself so deeply in the bank’s daily operations that by 1928 he had become its president. His employees respected him, though occasionally they regarded him as rigid. They would respect him more only a year or two down the line, when the bank, just like other banks across the country, teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, yet he continued to employ them. But in 1928, he had no vision of a darker future looming ahead, nor could he be bothered to think about it.

  As he settled into middle age, his hair, a thick mop into which he smeared a daily dab of pomade, began to sprout gray at the temples. He sported a sweeping black mustache that he kept neatly trimmed and curled at the ends. He had become a prominent member of the town, moving about its streets in double-breasted, dark-tailored suits over pressed white shirts, a sign of success. Another mark of his achievements was buying a large, three-story brownstone for his ever-expanding extended family. It was located at 3 East 138th Street, then a quiet, respectable leafy street inhabited by other families raising young children of their own.

  On the first floor lived Evelyn and her family. Prior to World War I, Evelyn had married a local boy, Frank Mills. Frank, who had been drafted, returned from the war with a reminder of his time abroad that didn’t fully disclose itself until 1930, when he died of complications from mustard gas exposure. He never saw his daughters, Betty and Patricia, grow up into young ladies, or his son, Jack, follow his footsteps into the army.

  Jean occupied the third floor with her own family. She had married James “Jim” Rochfort, a man of Irish ancestry (a fact that pleased Harry enormously), and from that union a boy was born, James Jr. Jim had also served in World War I, his own memento of the ordeal being a Distinguished Service Cross, of which he never spoke. During his time abroad he had also developed gloomy moods and a certain reticence that set him apart from the rest of the family, and whatever ghosts still plagued him he tried to keep at bay with solitary backyard games of basketball or baseball, which Betty Robinson often watched while leaning against the window of her bedroom on the second floor she shared with her parents.

  It was with Jean and Jim that Betty had formed a unique alliance. Her mother and Evelyn were two of a kind, sharing similar characteristics: both were loud, stubborn, always wanting to get their way. Two peas in a pod, relatives said—a pod neither Betty nor Jean could penetrate. It was Jean and her family, happily more than dutifully, who attended most of Betty’s school and afternoon performances, and it was to them she related her adventures, her musical achievements, the small tokens of flowers and candies boys handed to her. It was to Jean and Jim that she took her fretful thoughts when she lost the lead part in a school play and to them that she spoke when a boy she had taken a liking to seemed to prefer her cousin, a much homelier and less charming girl. And in time it would be Jean and Jim—Jim in particular—she would rely on once her running career took flight.

  Because Betty’s father worked long hours and was involved in the church activities and his various clubs, he was rarely home, and when he was, he retired to his comfortable chair to read. Whereas Jim, a stoic younger man, was always available and listened intently to Betty regardless of the triviality of her words, even when they involved boys, a subject he knew she could not speak of with her strict Irish Catholic parents. For Jim, religion did not matter as much, particularly after his return from the war. Betty appreciated that, for she had never felt the same religious devotion that the rest of her family did.

  Her sisters were already married by the time Betty started elementary school, and her father, a pillar of the community who—unlike others in the area—had money to spare, delighted in splurging on his youngest child. He was also a little more lenient in his parenting skills, a fact Betty soon learned to take full advantage of.

  Betty was schooled at the Bowen Grammar School at 137th and State Streets, a one-room schoolhouse where many of the children who attended were related to one
another. After her school day ended, she was allowed to join a sewing club, become involved in a children’s theater group, and enroll in ballet lessons, and she was free to partake in whatever other activities she desired. Newspaper photographs of her as a child taken at various recitals show a pretty, smiling young girl in a blush-colored tutu and ballet slippers, a large bejeweled tiara atop her head and her hands folded before her, striking poses for the camera.

  She also learned to play the guitar, and a photograph of her in The Pointer features her as part of the 1920 school band, wearing a checkered dress cut high at the waist while draping an arm over her cousin Evelyn Palmer, who played the piano. Theodore Hedtke, her bandmate, the tenor sax player, stands apart, and Theodore Reich is on the drums and xylophone. Her friend Betty Wike strikes a pose while holding a guitar, and Oliver Schwab shows off his hands on the violin.

  By 1925, Betty had moved from the printed page and taken over the airwaves. Bowen School pupils were offered the opportunity to give broadcast performances from WLS (the Sears-Roebuck station) in Chicago, and “Miss Robinson,” The Pointer noted, “gave the solo titled ‘Buttercups and Daisies.’ ”

  She also played the piano, the natural outcome being regular recitals. During the summer she attended Miss Naomi Grant’s classes at the A.O.U.W. Hall, where each Monday night the pupils displayed their talents to the Riverdale community. Of particular interest was June 29, 1925, when she played two solos. The paper gushed over her with the headlines “A Perfect Little Lady” and “Revel of the Wood Nymphs.”

  What The Pointer didn’t tell its readers, or preferred to keep at bay, perhaps thinking it inappropriate for such a gentle little girl, was that Betty, aside from all her singing, dancing, and recitations, also handled a rifle with the ease of a hunter, a skill her father had taught her early on. It was not unusual for Betty, at five or six, to arm herself with a shotgun and aim it masterfully at a target propped up against a stump in the woods behind her home—wearing the same pink tights and fluffy ballet slippers she had donned hours earlier at a dance recital. She always shot at her mark carefully, yet she never displayed a moment of hesitation. In fact, it was a skill she practiced and carried with her throughout her life.

  By 1928, sixteen-year-old Betty had grown to be a slight girl of five feet, six inches tall, not quite 120 pounds, with those bewitching hazel eyes and light chestnut hair that she kept bobbed short in the fashion of the latest starlets. Her grades were straight A’s, and her social calendar was full to the brim: Theater Club, sewing classes, Latin Club, Glee Club, and the Girls’ Club of the Oak Hospital Party Committee, of which she was the chair. Those activities alone would have made her a popular student at Thornton Township. That she resembled a Hollywood ingenue also lent her a certain allure. Her bright personality, sociable demeanor, and genuine interest in other people further solidified her stellar reputation.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A NEW PAIR OF SHOES

  Thornton Township High School, a large brick building flanked by oak trees, reveled in the reputation of its boys’ football team, baseball team, and track team, as well as its other various male sporting clubs. Like most high schools in the country, it had few athletic activities for the girls. It did not even have a track team for them, though the young women had been requesting one for years and the coaches had been offering their support.

  Betty arrived to meet Coach Price in the first-floor corridor minutes after the last bell of the day sounded. She was punctual as always, a trait her father had instilled in her from a very young age. Right away Price introduced her to Bob Williams, a student whose help he had enlisted to time her.

  Robert “Bob” Williams was a senior and a member of the track team. A tall, handsome boy with a haphazard flop of sandy hair falling across his forehead and large dark eyes, he had, according to the 1928 yearbook, fixed his ambition on becoming “the coach’s right hand man.” In following that aspiration, he had quickly assented to Coach Price’s request for help and now, clad in his track uniform, was holding a stopwatch in his hand. Bob was acquainted with Betty from afar and had attended several of her plays. Those were always popular not only in school but also in the community, weepy romances concocted by the theater teacher, which all the girls clamored to take part in, while the boys were often conned into participating to earn extra credit. (Luckily for Bob, his grades were always very good.) He smiled at her as he looked down at her shoes: she was wearing not track shoes but simple scuffed white tennis shoes. He was not surprised; track shoes were ugly, and she struck him as the kind of girl who paid attention to such things.

  Betty followed Coach Price toward one end of the corridor, while Bob moved to the other. Prior to Betty’s arrival, Coach Price had measured out 50 yards, nearly the length of the entire corridor, and placed markers at each end. The corridor was otherwise empty, but Betty heard voices just beyond it as the after-school bustle of the afternoon’s activities got under way. She was grateful that today she wasn’t missing any social engagements, though tomorrow she was required to attend Latin Club. She did not know what she would have done if Coach Price had asked her to meet him tomorrow; she never missed her club’s commitments.

  Betty had not run in any official races and knew nothing of the rudimentaries of track and field. Feeling apprehensive, she asked Coach Price what to do. For the moment, he told her, she was simply to bend one knee, crouch down, take a deep breath, and at the sound of his whistle run toward Bob as fast as she could. He was interested in her speed more than her form or technique. That would come later.

  Betty did as told, crouching, breathing, and setting off—waging war against the watch until she reached Bob, sweat pouring down her forehead, her lungs expanding with the effort. It was extremely hot in the corridor, as humid as it was when she was running by the lakeside during the summer holidays with her family. At the other end, Coach Price held his thumb firmly on the stopwatch.

  He then asked Betty to return to her starting position and repeat the run. She walked back toward him, crouched down once again, and awaited the blow of the whistle before racing toward Bob. Catching her breath, she reached him seconds later and wiped her face with a towel he handed her. When she looked back at Coach Price, he was staring down at the stopwatch in disbelief.

  Price had clocked her at 6.2 seconds in the 50-yard dash. It was an astonishing time, and he knew it. Betty, ripe with untapped potential, had just run the length of the corridor barely a tenth of a second shy of the US indoor record. Remarkably, she had no sense of what she had just accomplished. Coach Price immediately told her he’d like to coach her, as well as allow her to train with the boys’ team. The two of them could also run together after her classes. She agreed, said she would like that. All she needed now, he told her, was an appropriate pair of track shoes.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DEBUT

  Betty felt impeded by her new shoes, unaccustomed to their tight grip. The pair she’d purchased in Chicago’s Loop district, with Bob’s help, molded snugly around her feet, the tightly drawn strips emphasizing the curves of her toes. She tried to wiggle her toes, but they wouldn’t budge. The black shoes were a far cry from the ballet slippers hanging on a hook behind her bedroom door. They were hard, unyielding, could be heard from afar, whereas the ballet shoes left no echo. There was a rhythm to the track shoes as they beat over the cinder tracks—a rhythm that some likened to heartbeats.

  Although she still didn’t know precisely what she was training for, she had started a daily workout regime, Coach Price awaiting her as the last bell of the day rang. When she was not running with the boys, she was back in the corridor, going through a series of drills, runs, and jumps. Coach Price doled out his directions quietly and sparingly, following each set of exercises with a nod of his head that indicated that she should repeat them.

  Betty soon realized that running after a nephew and running toward a finish line were two very different things. She also learned that there were many details th
at most amateur runners never paid attention to until they started working with a coach, and that running on spiked shoes was not the only obstacle. She learned that sprinters use the balls of their feet first, landing on their toes, while keeping their bodies either totally upright when reaching maximum velocity or leaning forward when running against the wind. A runner had to appear relaxed, and even when entirely exhausted and agitated, she had to try to keep her facial muscles calm. Would-be athletes also learned that different race distances made different demands on the body, that the muscles required a certain amount of oxygen to work properly, and that the mind was just as important as the body: the two needed to work in unison to excel in a proper race.

  As Coach Price knew, Betty could develop the leg muscles so crucial for a runner only by performing a variety of strength-training exercises that included jogging at various speeds, hopping from leg to leg and atop boxes, and leaping over hurdles of various heights. Acceptable running starts were practiced over and over again, and in the process her posture, angle of the elbows, and position of the trunk in relation to the rest of the body were adjusted. While all of this strengthened her body and improved endurance, it also increased her mental stamina. It was hard work, but the hours went by quickly.

  —

  Coach Price possessed an innate talent and a reputation for spotting athletic strength, though it seemed odd to those he came in contact with that he was privy to such insights; he did not look the part of a recruiter. Even in his youth, his bland appearance had conveyed nothing extraordinary. That did not change as he aged. In a faculty yearbook photograph taken a year or so before 1928, Coach Price came across as a bespectacled, sallow-eyed educator fighting a receding hairline and the inevitable decline of middle age. In person, that was the case as well. Still, people were drawn to the quietness of his character, to that unidentifiable quality that allowed them to share their secrets without prying into his (which they didn’t believe he had).