Fire on the Track

by Roseanne Montillo

  Aside from the idea that sports such as track and field seemed to cause women to develop muscles deemed “too masculine,” which in turn supposedly prevented them from attracting a male suitor and producing babies with him, there was also the absurd belief that some of those women were not only taking on the appearance of men but becoming men themselves, their gender and sexuality interwoven.

  Rogers continued in his article: “It is almost futile to argue this point with either feminists, many of them violate nature themselves, or psychologists, whose measuring instruments are unfortunately still too crude to discover emotional and mental sex offences. Nothing is so tragic as the so-called ‘divided self,’ when the self is divided between male and female impulses and interests. ‘Manly’ women, no less than ‘effeminate’ men may constitute nature’s greatest failures, which should, perhaps, be corrected by drastic means as those by which the most hideous deformities are treated.”

  As opportunities for women grew despite staunch opposition, female athletes also learned that they had an unlikely antagonist: Mrs. Herbert Hoover, Lou Henry Hoover herself. The president’s wife headed the Women’s Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation (NAAF), and, like those who had held the post before her, she felt that women should be involved in sports simply as “play for play’s sake.”

  In 1929, Mrs. Hoover called the Conference on Athletics and Physical Education for Women and Girls. On April 6 and 7, seven representatives met to discuss “Limitations for Women and Girls in Athletics,” along with other related topics. Mrs. Hoover and other like-minded individuals hypothesized that women benefited from physical education and sports not in a competitive environment, but only when they stressed pleasure and the opportunity to socialize. A woman’s involvement in such activities for any other reason, Mrs. Hoover suspected, would derail her from her true path: marriage and motherhood. The conference representatives further asked that they be allowed to address the IOC members in the hope of convincing them to take women’s track and field out of the schedule of the Olympic events permanently. It was a particularly odd request coming from Mrs. Hoover, as she had grown up a sort of tomboy herself, in her youth participating in many activities that had not been classified as typically feminine.

  —

  By the time “Olympics for Girls?” was published, women had already received the right to vote. By 1930, more than a quarter over the age of sixteen were working, and the divorce rate was rising, thanks in part to women’s newfound ability to work and take care of themselves. Physically, some women were also doing away with tradition altogether, chopping their hair off and grooving to the sound of the Charleston, at the same time engaging in sexual promiscuity. Yet it seemed that, despite such advances, the world of sports still refused to allow them full admittance, feeling perhaps that equality would hurt sports’ reputation. But whose reputation their exclusion was protecting, no one knew.

  Still, women athletes soldiered on. And with the Los Angeles Games ahead, a greater number of them found themselves on the cusp of becoming household names.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FLYING HIGH

  By June 1931, a dangerous heat wave was spreading across the country, working its way steadily from the East Coast to the West. The papers reported that throughout the Midwest, and particularly in the Chicago area, the temperature would continue to rise alarmingly, producing several more days of record-breaking heat before relief came in the shape of storms. Meanwhile, the Depression was continuing to take its toll, and by late 1931, nearly two million Americans were without any form of income.

  As jobs disappeared, there was little that people could do to better their situation. Unemployment lines lengthened, food became scarce, thousands joined the long lines at the soup kitchens, and thousands more fell behind on their mortgage payments, the prospect of homelessness soon going hand in hand with that of hunger. Even the shelters were overcrowded, and looting became commonplace. Matters were dark and turning darker, so much so that even the gangster Al Capone opened a soup kitchen in Chicago to help his fellow Chicagoans.

  President Hoover, on the other hand, did not agree that matters were as dire as everyone made them out to be. The country was on its way up, he said, if people would only find humor in the situation. “What the country needs is a good laugh,” he told Senator James R. Clapper in February 1931. “If someone could get off a good laugh every ten days, I think our trouble would be over.” But no one felt like laughing.

  Despite the bleakness across the country, on the grounds of Northwestern University Betty’s training had redoubled; she wanted to participate in more meets, and the forthcoming Ninth National Track and Field Championships in nearby Chicago—where eleven of the athletes participating were defending champions—especially excited her. Everyone was expecting a terrific competition—Babe Didrikson had been making waves and was being touted by her hometown newspapers as the runner to watch. But for Betty, Stella was still the one to beat, the potential troublesome splinter on her road to another medal.

  —

  Although as a young girl Betty had tolerated and even enjoyed the heat, with age she was becoming sensitive to summers, bothered by the hot spells, especially the recent oppressive heaviness. She yearned for a cool dip in the Illinois Women’s Athletic Club pool or a swim in Stone Lake. But her coaches, including Frank, cautioned against swimming. Water sports used entirely different muscle groups from running, and despite studies proving otherwise, it was still thought that overtraining those muscles would permanently damage the heart and other internal organs. Betty understood their worries, and though she did not like being reprimanded, nothing could jeopardize her training for the Olympics, so she mostly obliged.

  The morning of June 28, she practiced for hours with the rest of the group at the IWAC, breaking at midday. Her mother and nephew had been watching. The heat was unbearable, and by the end of the session she needed a respite.

  It was then that an idea struck her. She proposed to her mother and nephew that they all return to Riverdale, perhaps for a very short dip in the Calumet, though she had other intentions in mind. Her real plan was to call on her cousin Wilson Palmer, who was a year younger and part owner of an airplane. She piled her family into her car and rumbled away from Chicago, driving toward Riverdale, as she always did, at a dizzying, almost terrifying speed, the freedom she felt on the road akin to that of running a race.

  —

  Small-framed, freckled, and with a shock of red hair that revealed his Irish ancestry, Wilson, or Wil, as he liked to be called, loved his plane. A year ago, he and two of his friends had purchased the red Waco biplane fresh off the assembly line. He was a calm, warm young man with a slight streak of mischief, and the plane allowed him to spend time on his own, which he sometimes yearned to do, given the size of his large family. But he never minded joyriding with Betty, one of his many cousins and—truth be told—his favorite.

  The plane, a new version of a three-seater open-cockpit biplane that had been introduced in 1927 by the Advance Aircraft Company, was widely used by amateurs for pleasure. It appealed to Wil, and to Betty, the freedom the flight offered from the constraints she sometimes felt; the abandonment of worries she experienced as she breathed a different air up above. She liked to look at the town, spread out before and below her. For such occasions, she had even purchased a helmet that reminded her of Amelia Earhart’s. Within the compact plane, Betty felt the same exhilaration that she imagined Earhart experienced.

  Betty and Wil had gone up together ever since he’d become part owner of the “flying machine,” as some people in town called it. Like dozens of Americans, Betty was fascinated by aviation, and when Wil could not take her up, she often found someone else who could.

  Earlier that morning, Wil and his father had gone to the field to check on the plane and decided to take it for a short flight. The two flew together often, so the short trip over Riverdale and Harvey was a familiar excursion. On returning to the field, the
y drank from flasks of lemonade, and Wil mentioned that he was going to take a longer solo flight a little farther out. But this time, the engine would not start. Wil tried several more times, as did his father, but there was no response. Unable to figure out the problem, Wil ran toward Harold Brown’s home in the hope that he might be able to help them.

  Harold, who owned a third of the plane, was awakened by knocks on the door of his 155th Street home. All of the partners had flown before, although Wil was the most unseasoned of the three, having been a pilot for less than a year. Harold and the other partner owned another plane together, which they kept in a bunker located at the edge of a field in Harvey, one they often took out for jaunts with their lady friends. Harold opened the front door to the breathless Wil, who asked him to go over to the field and help him restart the engine. Given the heat, he invited Wil inside for a glass of cold water while he went to dress.

  —

  Meanwhile, Betty sat behind the wheel of her Model T and cruised down the road toward the Riverdale airstrip, her mother and nephew in tow. As soon as she arrived, her automobile got stuck in one of the ditches skirting the airstrip; consequently, Wil and Harold had to push it out of the muck before returning to the plane, while Betty and her family looked on from the side of the road.

  No one was worried, least of all Betty, that the plane was having difficulties starting, nor did they believe that their excursion should be postponed until a mechanic gave its engine a thorough look. Dusty and sweaty from the car ride, Betty was eager to leave the ground behind, and, streaking her shoes with mud as she climbed out of her car, she kissed her mother and nephew and impatiently hurried toward the plane.

  Clambering inside, she settled into the front while Wil hopped in behind her, taking the pilot’s seat. He flipped a switch, the engine finally groaning to life, and Betty felt a jolt as the plane roared down the short runway. She waved enthusiastically at her mother and her nephew, who watched as the plane careened unsteadily before slowly lifting off.

  Although the air was stale, Betty reckoned that it had to be cooler up above, and soon the world shrank beneath her and Wil as he began a series of maneuvers that delighted her, soaring faster and higher, then dropping at a 45-degree angle toward the earth. The horizon opened up as they flew over places they knew so well. Betty watched the streets spread out like veins, noted the urban squalor of the abandoned Main Street, its foreclosed storefronts now occupied by dogs and transients. Factories were strewn across the dry, arid landscape, the blue-gray waters of the Calumet calmly rushing through the city beneath them, as the exhaust from the Acme Steel factory rose through its smokestacks and billowed along the adjacent lots now overgrown with weeds, the thick layer of humidity blanketing the area with a further sheen of dreariness.

  Wil made a quarter turn to the left and continued his stunts, ascending and descending, higher and lower, rising four, five, six hundred feet, until they both felt a jolt. Time stopped for a moment before their sudden, steep decline; a harrowing descent, the earth rapidly becoming closer.

  —

  The police department received an anonymous call stating that an aerial accident had just occurred. Quickly, the desk sergeant on duty placed a call to the Kerr Ambulance Service and the county police, who were immediately dispatched to the scene. But when the ambulance arrived, the personnel found only the remains of an empty plane, no trace of the pilot or his passenger. They soon learned that a boy and girl, both in extremely critical condition, had been taken to two area hospitals.

  Once word spread that the girl was alive and who she was, The Harvey Tribune began a vigil outside the hospital, keeping tabs on her condition. Reporters had initially been told that she had been mistaken for dead and taken to the local funeral parlor. The dreary story began to circulate around Riverdale, taking hold of people’s imagination.

  Betty’s doctor, Jacob Minke, freely spoke to the press, acknowledging that her situation was desperate. If she lived, he said, her chances of running again were highly improbable, given that the injured leg would likely remain shorter than the other one. Even walking seemed doubtful. Her thighbone had fractured in numerous places, and a number of silver pins had been inserted. They would cause her pain but also act as a barometer, aches commencing as the weather changed. Her left arm had been mangled—shattered in at least three places—and her right was also injured, though not as badly as her left. She had suffered a laceration over the right eye and had internal injuries too many to list, though the damage to her vital organs was still being assessed.

  Giving an interview to the Chicago Tribune, Betty’s sister Jean acknowledged that Betty’s love of flying had developed nearly two years earlier. “She has been up before with Palmer,” she told a Chicago Tribune reporter. Despite being frightened by her flying curiosity, none of the family had imagined an accident like this occurring.

  Wil had also been injured and was later taken to Ingalls Memorial Hospital, where members of his family gathered nearby to offer support. Not only had he suffered a severe injury to his lower leg, which doctors insisted on amputating in the hope of saving part of it, but the impact had also smashed his body against the plane’s instrument panel, causing grave damage to his face and skull. His jaw and nose were broken, he had a skull fracture, and he had yet to wake up from a coma.

  As Betty and Wil lay in their hospital beds, people who had heard of the accident hurried to the scene to view what remained of the plane, but to their disappointment the machine had already been removed. As was standard for all plane crashes in the United States, the wreckage had been taken away just moments after the accident by officials from the Aeronautics Division of the US Department of Commerce for inspection. The inquest revealed that nothing had been amiss with the plane; all parts had been functioning properly. Harold Brown, who had helped Wil start the plane and watched it take off from the small airstrip, agreed that the plane was not to blame. Though he did not directly fault Wil for the accident, he believed Wil might have had difficulty gaining altitude due to the weather or that he might have fainted because of dehydration. A stalled motor didn’t explain the crash, he said.

  All that remained of the crash was a hollow depression imprinted in the earth, upon which reporters flashed camera bulbs from various angles. They planned on using their stark photographs next to the articles appearing on the following day, alongside the one of Betty wearing the string of pearls gifted to her after the Olympics.

  —

  Visitors arrived daily at Betty’s room, her mother a constant companion. On hearing of the accident, Helen Filkey made her way to the hospital, eager to see for herself how Betty was faring. Helen knew that newspapers had a tendency toward the dramatic and hoped they were also exaggerating Betty’s accident. But as she watched her unconscious competitor, her head bandaged as well as her arm, her leg in a brace, stretched out in front of her, Helen felt certain Betty would never run again. Helen had seen athletes sidelined by injuries that were far less severe than the ones Betty was now suffering from and knew that they were impossible to overcome.

  On her way into and out of the hospital, Helen often encountered Bert Riel, whom Betty’s family had not known she had been dating but who had been by Betty’s side since hearing of the accident. Bert spoke tenderly to Betty, hoping she could hear him. Her gaiety and enthusiasm had always overwhelmed him; now she was unrecognizable. He often looked pained when he left the hospital, but others surmised that Betty would be even more pained when she woke up—if she woke up—when she learned that she would never run again, possibly not even walk.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SUMMER WOES

  While in Riverdale, immediately after the accident, doctors were focused on trying to get Betty to recover, roughly 350 miles east of Riverdale, in Cleveland, Stella Walsh prepared for her upcoming meets. Aside from the games, she had other considerations on her mind, which had nothing to do with sports. She had decided to heed the advice of her family, friends, and foes alike and
try to become—in their words—more feminine, more attractive to her male counterparts. In that pursuit she set out to win the title of “Miss Stadium,” or “Queen of Cleveland,” which was bestowed as part of Cleveland’s 135th anniversary celebrations, in conjunction with the opening of the new stadium on Lake Erie.

  She hoped that winning the competition would put a stop to the controversy that had arisen a few weeks earlier, following an incident at Pershing Stadium in New Jersey, on July 25. It had been an accident, but enough of an event to ruin her stay there. She had arrived at the competition as the nation’s best-known track star, but by the end of the meet her athletic power was not what the spectators would leave the stadium talking about.

  A few moments before the games were to begin, as Stella warmed up for her discus routine, she misjudged the distance between herself and center field, throwing too far and striking a twenty-eight-year-old spectator. He keeled over, unconscious, blood oozing from a fractured skull. Many feared that he had died on the spot; when the paramedics arrived, though, he was still alive, albeit in serious condition, and he was rushed to a nearby hospital.

  Back at the stadium, police officers planned on arresting Stella immediately but were persuaded to let her finish the events; she did so, even winning the 220-yard dash, despite her distressed condition. It was her only medal that day. Immediately afterward, she was handcuffed, led away from the arena, and taken to the police department, from which she was released several hours later, though the story was already circulating. Press reported on the accident, citing the unusual strength Stella had displayed in throwing the discus, something spectators had never before seen in a woman.

  She was hopeful that winning the “Queen of Cleveland” title and crown would help her move past the accident, “prove” her womanhood, and halt the ugly rumors swirling around her. In addition, she knew that the prize included a new car and a trip. She coveted both those things, as she couldn’t afford either of them. But in getting wind of Stella’s entry, reporters insinuated that she was out of her league, suggesting that although no one could deny the fact that she dominated on the track, the Miss Stadium competition was clearly a contest devoted in equal parts to beauty and popularity, neither of which she possessed.