Fire on the Track

by Roseanne Montillo

  Elizabeth Waterman, the IWAC’s athletic director, had accompanied the Chicago contingent on the overnight train journey to Newark. She had dragged a large valise with her, hoisting it up into the train’s alcove while wearing a tweed dress that induced heavy sweating. She had seemed as excited about the trip as her athletes were, slouching forward in her seat as the concrete city rolled by, soon giving way to the pastoral landscape as the train headed east.

  As Betty settled into her own plush seat, she felt ready to break the routine she had become accustomed to since March. Her training had intensified following her win at Soldier Field, and now, with her school year behind her, she was free to concentrate solely on her athletic endeavors. Racing had revealed to her a desire for winning she had never known she possessed, despite her years of dancing. Both disciplines required hard work, but they were of course different in many ways. The movements of ballet were fluid. They told a story, beautiful and at times tragic; languid and full of whimsy, the routines took time to appreciate, to develop as a character and a tale. But running was unlike that. Betty often had no time to think at all; a race ended almost as soon as it began. There was no fluidity to it; it was hurried and fast, as fast as a bullet from one of her guns. It was a test of strength and endurance rewarded only seconds later. And Betty liked that.

  —

  The IOC had previously agreed to add ten disciplines to the women’s track-and-field events, but by the time the 1928 Olympic tryouts rolled around, only five were officially on the roster: the 100-meter dash, the 800 meters, the high jump, the discus, and the 4-by-100-meter relay. This significantly narrowed the pool of athletes who’d been training.

  Helen Filkey and Nellie Todd, a runner Betty did not know very well, were also representing the IWAC and had taken the train together. Helen and Nellie had become friendly—though not friends—in the past few months. Each knew she had a shot at making the team and was intent on proving she deserved it. They brought different strengths to her respective specialties: Helen had the chance of gaining a spot not only in the 100 meters but also in the 4-by-100-meter relay. Unfortunately for Nellie, who was the world record holder in the broad jump, that event was not going to be included in Newark or Amsterdam. She could potentially qualify only in the 800 meters, a race few American women took part in, and she was neither familiar with nor prepared for it. Betty, on the other hand, would run in the 100-meter qualifiers, as well as the 4-by-100-meter relay.

  The three saw one another as impediments to their own dreams—and they had not only one another to beat but everyone else, too. As potential members of the first US women’s track-and-field team, they were collectively working to appear as a united front. But Betty realized the truth: though they were fighting together to take their place alongside the men, each performed as an individual, and what mattered most to them was how they each came out in the end.

  They spoke of their chances as they unpacked their clothes in their sticky hotel room, sweating with excitement in the unbearable heat. Although Betty appeared perfectly calm, the other two were apprehensive about the meets ahead. For them, this was to be the culmination of months and years of hard work, and everything would come down to seconds and inches. They were awed and slightly uneasy about the prospect of being there, their anxiety settling in their bellies like stones at the bottom of a river. Helen and Nellie spent a restless night tossing and turning in their beds, trying to wipe away the sweat that soaked their sheets. Betty, on the other hand, slept deeply.

  —

  As July 4 dawned, the thermometer had already reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit and was predicted to climb even higher throughout the rest of the day. A warm yellow sun heralded the upcoming meets, which would be held at the Newark Schools Stadium, where seating for more than fifteen thousand spectators was available, making it one of the largest auditoriums in the area. Officials had expected a reasonable turnout, but by the start of the tryouts only some four thousand spectators had shown up—and even they looked ready to bolt. It was a perfect storm brought on by various conditions, officials assured anxious coaches, who were trying to determine why so few had attended. Held on a national holiday, the trials were interfering with earlier plans; barbecues, excursions to the beach, and visits with families were long-held traditions broken only by few important events—track and field not being one of them.

  The weather had also colluded to bring about a lack of attendees. Who would want to spend hours watching young women go through drills in the heat of the afternoon when the cool waters of the Atlantic beckoned at the Jersey shore? Few people were enthusiastic about women’s track and field, and those who showed up to root for their favorites wore light clothing and floppy beach hats, holding jugs of water to refresh themselves, the ice cubes in the bottles melting as quickly as the ice cream they licked.

  By midafternoon, the stadium had nearly emptied; what had been tolerable earlier in the day soon became unbearable, and though a severe thunderstorm brought momentary relief as it swept over Newark and drenched the remaining contestants, it ultimately only caused further discomfort.

  A local reporter hired to cover the events blamed neither the heat nor the thunderstorm for the lack of spectators but was more pragmatic about it. “Only about 1,500 people witnessed the contests at the stadium, which was a disappointment to the sponsors,” wrote Len Elliott in the Newark Evening News on Thursday, July 5, 1928. “Newark is a great athletic town until it comes to track contests. The town doesn’t give a tinker’s heck for the Track and Field racket and maybe someday that fact may sink into the dear old A.A.U. and inspire that organization to try its championship meet in Scranton or Dobbs Ferry.”

  The officials worried that the young athletes would wilt beneath the punishing sun. Doctors had been brought to the stadium to deal with the eventuality of one of the athletes becoming ill in such extreme temperatures. They watched for exhaustion brought on by too much sweating as well as minor signs of heat cramps, perhaps involving the calf muscles. But they were most fearful of the violent signs of heatstroke. Several younger children had been enlisted to go onto the infield to hand out water, dousing the athletes like flowers in pots.

  There was tension in the air as the long afternoon meets drew on. Although Helen was the superstar of the sport and Betty’s own name was on the rise, it was not the Chicago athletes that the reporters had come to write about. Instead, it was the members of the Northern California Athletic Club who provided entertainment—in particular its star, Elta Cartwright, a twenty-year-old college student from Humboldt State College known as “Cinder-Elta.”

  Born on December 21, 1907, in California, Elta, the fourth of five daughters, always credited her mother for her astounding running abilities. When she was in high school, track meets were very popular, and Elta won them in dramatic fashion. She graduated in 1925, the same year the AAU National Championships were held in Pasadena. There she captured first place in the 50-yard dash and second place in the 100-yard dash, followed by the 50-yard-dash title in 1926 and 1927 along with second and third places in several other meets throughout 1926 and 1927.

  By the time she reached Newark, Elta had grown into a tall, slim girl with dark hair who favored a round bowl haircut—an unsophisticated girl, some ventured to say, though on the track she was all lean perfection. Betty waited her turn and watched Elta—her biggest obstacle to qualifying—move from one event to the next. Some papers had even gone so far as to declare Elta victorious, even though the race had not yet taken place.

  Yet Betty felt none of the anticipatory anxiety the others seemed to feel. Perhaps her age allowed her to swagger into Newark as she did. Younger than most of the competitors and certainly the least experienced, if she were to make it to Amsterdam, the Olympics would be only her fourth official competition. She did not have the baggage the others brought to the trials, namely, the expectations of coaches, fans, families, and, most especially, themselves. She did not have years of training that had led her to this mome
nt, nor the terrible sting of recalling defeat suffered at other races. She came with a practically clean slate, which, she believed, would give her a distinct advantage. She also arrived in Newark wanting to prove that she not only belonged in the same class as the other athletes, despite her inexpertness, but was someone the others should watch out for.

  The athletes warmed up lightly, not wanting to raise their temperature too much. They had already run laps, jogging up and down the darkened corridors of the hotel in the morning as the smell of bacon and coffee lingered. Still, not all seemed bothered by New Jersey’s temperatures: the California contingent, apparently in its element, was hardly breaking a sweat.

  —

  The Californian Anne Vrana and Betty whizzed through the second and third semifinal heats; Elta won the fourth in 12.4 seconds. Sixteen-year-old Jean Shiley, who, along with Betty, was one of the youngest competitors, qualified as a high jumper. Jean was still a student at Haverford Township High School, and not a stranger to hard work. She was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1911; the family soon relocated to pastoral Havertown, nearly twenty-six miles west of Philadelphia. Jean was a tomboy and always had ample open space surrounding her and enabling her and her siblings to run for miles.

  Luckily for her, Haverford Township High School had no qualms about offering the same activities for girls that it did for boys. She competed in track and field and tennis, as well as basketball and hockey. Basketball, in particular, suited her well. Her tall, lean body—she stood over five feet, nine inches—came in handy with the jumping required, and her strong legs made running that much easier. It was that experience that ushered her into being an Olympian.

  During one of Jean’s basketball games, Dora Laurie, who wrote for a Philadelphia newspaper, spotted her. A former high jumper herself, Dora understood that Jean possessed untapped potential that went beyond basketball. She followed her into the locker room after one of her games and asked her if she had ever thought of being a track-and-field Olympian. Jean hadn’t, but the idea intrigued her.

  Jean’s athletic promise was further solidified when Dora introduced her to Coach Lawson Robertson. Lawson, who would go on to coach the 1928 men’s Olympic team, was at the time teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. He was known as a tough, hard-to-please man who hardly ever coached women. The meeting took place in Lawson’s office, Dora and Jean sitting across the coach’s desk as he spoke little and smiled even less, unnerving Jean, who fidgeted in her hard-backed chair. She spoke slowly about the sports she played, detailed the games she had taken part in. He only nodded. Finally he instructed her to move to the track field, where he put her through strenuous drills. Dora stood by the sidelines, watching. Lawson took out a stopwatch and timed Jean as she sprinted, jumped, and tumbled. He was quiet throughout and spoke only after she was finished, when he agreed to coach her.

  Jean’s relatives were not happy with what they considered her “masculine” bent and abilities. The place for a woman, her father believed, was in the home, behind a stove. All that jumping, running, hurdling, sweating, and playing was unbecoming, and he did not support her activities, let alone her desires and her ambitions to become an Olympian. In fact, he never attended any of her meets—not that she cared. She became defiant, and the more she was told not to run, the more inclined she was to do it.

  —

  When all was said and done, on the evening of July 4, 1928, the members of the Northern California Athletic Club came away victorious. “Yesterday afternoon Newark got its first taste of what it means to be invaded by a California Track and Field outfit. For on the turf of the Newark Schools Stadium the girl athletes of the Northern California Athletic Club made a Roman Holiday out of what we thought was an American Holiday,” the Newark Evening News reported. “These athletes of the N.C.A.C….made a ridiculous show of what competition the East and Middle West could give them….The total was more than three times the total of their nearest rival.”

  That evening, officials from the AAU had the difficult task of choosing thirteen athletes to represent the country. Not surprisingly, Betty, Elta, and Jean were among them. Although Betty had been picked by a few oddsmakers to win the 100 meters, given the numbers she had arrived with, Elta reached the finish line more than a foot ahead of Betty at 12.4 seconds, just a tenth of a second behind the world record. Elta also won the 50 yards and the running broad jump. Betty finished second and watched, disappointed, as Elta and her friends celebrated her win.

  —

  Former track star Mel Sheppard was forty-four years old when he was appointed coach to the first all-female track-and-field team heading to the Olympics. He was a reserved man with dark, thinning hair and pointy ears that stuck out; few of his charges realized that, just like them, in his youth he had accomplished much to advance the sport, breaking long-standing records and winning titles in the AAU half-mile division in 1906, 1908, 1911, and 1912, earning the nickname “Peerless Mel” along the way. In 1910, he had broken Lon Myers’s 1,000-yard record, which had stood unbroken for nearly thirty years.

  Although he now worked as a personnel director for New York’s John Wanamaker store, he often thought back to those years, particularly to 1908, when he had seen himself on the cusp of achieving all of his goals: passing the physical examination for the entrance into the police department and attending the London Olympic Games.

  His police exam had been scheduled for just days prior to his departure for London, which had struck him as a good omen. He was in top physical condition thanks to his strict regimen, which he prided in detailing to examining doctors. So it came as a shock when doctors discovered an enlarged heart, which immediately disqualified him from entering the force. He never forgot how hard he had pled his case or how it felt to watch one of his two dreams evaporate so quickly.

  Perhaps fueled by this exclusion, he dedicated the rest of his energies toward the Olympics, where he had displayed no signs of the heart condition the doctors had discovered, quickly and easily winning the 1,500 meters and defeating the British favorite and world record holder, H. A. Wilson. It was a feat few (including his own coach, Mike Murphy) believed could be repeated on the following day in the 800 meters. But he proved them all wrong, winning again and setting a world record of 1 minute, 52.8 seconds.

  He had run as much to set records as to prove that his doctors had been wrong in their diagnosis, still assuming that there had been some kind of mistake. His training was brutal, but he never suffered chest pains or felt at a loss for air. He would have seen indications of the disease during those training sessions, which always followed the same pattern, interspersing long runs with exhausting bouts of exercise throughout the day. Even his coach had demanded a reexamination, for anyone who ran that much surely did not suffer from any heart conditions. (He had no way of knowing in 1908, of course, that he would die at the age of fifty-eight from what the coroner determined was a severe bout of indigestion, though many of his peers thought it more likely to have been due to heart problems.)

  How strange, he thought that hot day in Newark in July. Having been forced to abandon his police officer dream and long since given up on his own career as an amateur runner, he’d now be coaching the first female track-and-field team bound for the Olympics.

  —

  Although Betty was thrilled to have made the team, the reality was that she had expected a lot better of herself and was disappointed with her second-place finish. While traveling to Newark, she had rehearsed so long and so well that she had imagined emerging as the winner. She had gone so far as to feel the sweat trickling down her back and soreness from the blisters forming on her toes—small prices to pay for the glory that would have been hers when she crossed the finish line first. It was not only her burgeoning self-confidence but a sense of entitlement bestowed upon her by her newly discovered talent and the advantages of her early life: she simply could not, would not lose.

  But she had come to learn the harsh truth. She was merely one of
the many contenders vying for a spot to the Olympics, and she was not necessarily the best. In Riverdale she had been anointed the new queen of the track, capable of beating any opponent, but in Newark she had ended her run a shade lower than expected, disappointing not only herself but also her supporters from Riverdale.

  She penned a letter to the Evening American in the hope of explaining. It was both full of feeble excuses and laced with a touch of humility that she had not expressed before. “I am sorry I did not do as well as everyone expected me to do,” she wrote, “but I tried my best. We had to run the 100 meters three times inside an hour, which, I think, tried all of us quite a bit. We had a terribly warm day for the meet, which made it hard for those who were not used to such weather.” She knew that her words, however true, sounded pitiful. “I am going to train hard and I think I will be able to work up to my record time again because the time for the final was slow compared to what I have done,” she continued, humbly adding, “I promise you I will train harder than ever to win in the Olympics because I know now what it is to have keen competition and to be beaten.”

  On July 6, the Evening American replied by taking out a full-page ad to congratulate her on her accomplishments; it did not comment on her second-place finish or on the fact that Elta Cartwright had turned out to be the breakthrough athlete of the trials. The paper wrote nothing of her apology. It simply wished her good luck in Amsterdam.

  —

  Away from the glare of flashbulbs from the few newspaper reporters in Newark, as the athletes celebrated their victories and induction into the inaugural team, an awkward young woman sat on a bench and took note of all that was happening around her. She stood up, wrapped a towel around her neck, and began a slow walk around the track, feeling the black cinders beneath her feet as she allowed the realization of what had just happened to sink in: having come a fraction too short, she had lost her bid to qualify for the team, edged out by Mary Washburn. It was a soul-crushing defeat that galled her.