Only four thousand people sat in the stands. It was a discouraging turnout, but the journalists assumed female track and field was still a novelty in Rhode Island, and the fact that it was a national holiday once again didn’t help. But those who attended were rewarded with Helen’s performance.
She ran the preliminary track in the pole lane in 12 seconds flat, two-tenths of a second better than all of the other women, then returned in the same lane in the semifinal, to better her time and equal Stella’s record of 11.8 seconds. During the final, Helen once again drew the lane next to the wall, to the delight of the rest of the competitors; that was considered the slowest lane, and they assumed she would be placed at a considerable disadvantage because of it. But it didn’t seem to matter to her; she ran through the course in 11.7 seconds, breaking the world record. While the crowd erupted loudly on learning that they had just witnessed history, to her it seemed like nothing but routine. Twice already she had unofficially broken the record at 11.6 seconds.
—
The following day, The Providence Sunday Journal ran several competing stories on its front pages, but by far the paper’s longest featured the women’s track-and-field race. A large photograph captured the last moments at the finish line with the headline “Helen Stephens Sets World Record for 100 Meters.” Helen had entered the limit of three events allowed by the AAU and won all of them, including the 100 meters, the discus, and the shot put.
In years past, Betty had assumed that by the 1936 trials she would be one of the coaches, if not the main coach, for the Olympics. Instead, the coach was Dee Boeckmann—her former cabinmate on the SS President Roosevelt on their way to Amsterdam—who had followed the career trajectory Betty had originally set for herself. After Amsterdam, Dee had competed in Los Angeles and become involved in the operational and administrative side of track and field, a lucrative job further adding to her wealth. She had then been chosen to coach the team to Berlin. This was life as it should have evolved; how ironic that Betty’s own dreams had been fulfilled by someone else. Did Dee know that she was living the life Betty had planned for herself?
It was up to Dee to select who would make up the team for Berlin, assisted by the chairman of the Women’s Track and Field Committee, Fred Steers, who had also been watching the races. Though Betty had performed well, she had not been spectacular, and they all knew it. But what she had going for her was not only her performances in Providence but also her history and her gold medal. It would not be easy to discard her background—or so she hoped.
“The group of qualifying athletes is the very finest we have ever had for our Olympic bid,” Dee told reporters, who were pestering her about her choice. She reiterated that her “only concern right now is that we will have enough funds to send over the three finishers in each event, and three extra girls for the 400 meters relay to be selected from the fourth, fifth, and sixth finishers in the 100 meters run. I hope that we can send a full team, for the leading contenders were all so good, that it would be almost a sacrifice to leave anyone of this list behind.”
Unlike administrators, coaches, in particular female ones, were never well paid, but this time there wouldn’t be any money for her at all—only the fame that went along with being the first female coach of a women’s team. Dee had decided to settle for the glory.
It was late in the afternoon, back in the hotel, that Betty received the news: she would be part of another Olympic team, after all. She had not heard from Dee directly, but word spread through the hallways. It did not really matter to her how she learned of it, for the outcome was the same. She had earned her spot on the team and would be going to Berlin.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PHENOMS
“Miss Robinson’s comeback is the most remarkable of all,” The New York Times wrote as Betty prepared to leave for her new transatlantic voyage. “Winner of the dash in 1928, she was so badly hurt in a subsequent airplane crash that it was feared she never would walk again, much less run.”
Her triumphant return, however, was already in jeopardy. The cry to boycott the Berlin Olympics had grown stronger, gaining ground daily, even from those who several months earlier had supported the United States’ participation in the games. And along with the outcry against Germany, there was also the question of economics that was still plaguing the country.
On July 13, 1936, the Brandon Daily Sun loudly declared, “Betty Robinson Unable to Go to Olympics Because of Cash Shortage.” It continued, “There will be a broken heart…unless a full United States team is sent to Germany, but the bitterest heartache will probably tug within the chest of a great and courageous girl whose dramatic comeback seems destined to be halted by cold money.” The paper rehashed her story; she knew it was trying to elicit sympathy for her, but at that point, she didn’t much care.
Following the trials, US Olympic officials had brutally crushed the hopes of the many Olympians who had qualified, including Betty’s: there was a deficit of almost $150,000, meaning that only four athletes would be fully financially supported in Berlin. The others would either have to be eliminated from the team or find a way to pay for the trips themselves. Such cuts were more significant on the women’s team than the men’s.
That fact did not go unnoticed, especially by Helen Stephens, who paid close attention to the way men and women were treated, or mistreated. “It is a terrible thing for the girls who qualified and now won’t be able to make the trip. There is disappointment in sports enough, without this. I feel terrible to think that some who qualified for the team won’t be able to go. It looks to me like a plain case of discrimination in favor of the men against the women in using the available money,” she said bluntly. “There’s been so much log-rolling that I’ll believe I’m in the Olympics when I actually take the mark in Berlin.”
Helen had not grown to be a retiring type, like her mother, and she had become even more outspoken in college. Exposed to new experiences and new people, to women who espoused fresh ideas, she was far more acutely aware of gender discrepancies, even within her own family, and she was not going to stand for them.
Due to backlash like Helen’s, the AOC agreed to send five women athletes, which it thought was fair, given that several months earlier it had considered not sending a women’s team at all. But it was still not enough of a concession. The women athletes were now waging public war, with such resilience and ferocity that eventually the AOC relented even further, announcing that it would back up—at least partly—all eighteen women athletes who had qualified, as long as they managed to come up with five hundred dollars each to augment their travel expenses to Berlin. That was the best it could do.
But few people possessed enough disposable income to support athletes sailing overseas in pursuit of their Olympic dream, despite the pride such wins would provide the country during the devastating economic slump. Female athletes, most especially, were not even fully supported by their families, let alone the AOC. Brundage made it clear that “unless we get money in the next 10 days, we can’t sail.” Helen Stephens, Annette Rogers, Anne Vrana, and Tidye Pickett would have their whole voyage paid for, but Betty Robinson—who had barely qualified—was not on the list. If she wanted to take part in the Games, she would have to come up with the five hundred dollars herself.
Betty did not know how she was going to scrape together that much money for the passage, but she knew she had to. After she had come perilously close to dying, her conviction had brought her to this point, allowing her to walk and to run again. She would not allow money to stand in her way, not now that she was so close to returning. She needed to go to Berlin. It was a visceral, urgent, persistent need, a demand she felt deep in her soul. Jim Rochfort, her brother-in-law, ever present to urge her forward, agreed that she had to finish what she had started, and the two of them began to solicit funds from anyone they could.
She scrounged up all she possessed and anything she could borrow from others; she sold Olympic pins and ribbons—even memorabilia that had see
med trivial when she originally collected it was now essential to her purpose.
—
Just days later, on July 15, 1936, tired but delighted, Betty Robinson stood on the deck of the SS Manhattan, along with more than 330 fellow Olympians, amid streamers and balloons, watching while the low-hanging clouds mingled with the soft plumes of smoke being exhaled by the ship as it slowly made its way out of Pier 60 toward Europe.
The Manhattan departed to the tune of blaring bands, accompanied by the encouraging shouts of spectators who had come to wish the athletes well. Nearly ten thousand of them had gathered to cheer the well-dressed athletes who were leaning over the rails, waving exuberantly back at their fans. Alongside Betty were two other former Olympians: Olive Hasenfus, who had been chosen again as an alternate for the track team (though for the second Olympics in a row, she would not get the chance to run), and Anne Vrana (now Anne Vrana O’Brien), who had given birth to a little girl and quickly found out that motherhood had a way of interfering with her training schedule.
The three veterans wistfully reminisced about the previous Games; they were no longer starry-eyed little girls on their maiden voyage. Life was different now. Hours that once had been happily dedicated to their training on the cinder track were now devoted to marriage, an unfulfilling day job, or a child who was left in the care of grandparents but who usually required full-time care. Their bodies were different as well. The realization was sobering and humbling.
—
That evening, the athletes assembled to recite the Olympic Oath and meet with Avery Brundage, who to Helen seemed to have an “almost dictatorial power” as he spoke to the crowd. Following the conference, they had a chance to assess one another before retiring to their cabins. The athletes had been given accommodations in steerage; the first-class compartments were reserved for reporters, AOC officials, and other dignitaries traveling to Berlin.
When Betty saw her cabin number, cabin 35 on deck 6, she had a shiver of déjà vu. It was the same cabin number she had had during her previous Olympic voyage to Europe. And one of Betty’s cabinmates, she soon learned, was Helen Stephens, the young woman from Missouri she had met during the tryouts in Providence.
—
Helen had awakened early that morning, taking the bus at 8 a.m. after saying good-bye to Coach Moore and his fiancée. As she readied to leave, she had felt something shift subtly in her coach’s hug: an ending and a beginning all at once. When she next saw him, she would no longer be the girl who had haphazardly run the 50-yard dash for her school physical education department; she would be an Olympian.
Arriving on the ship, Helen marveled at the sumptuous decorations and the ornate railings; the vessel was a virtual floating hotel. It thrilled her that she would be rooming with Betty. It didn’t take long for Helen to become dazzled by Betty. More mature than most of the athletes on the ship, Betty was the personification of everything Helen felt she was not and would never be: at twenty-four, Betty was more worldly and sophisticated than anyone Helen had ever known, including her college friends and the ones she had romantically been linked to. Although obviously tired by her new secretarial job, her personal circumstances, and the demands of training, Betty managed to display a casual elegance, particularly while sitting cross-legged on the promenade with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She was pretty and popular, and everywhere she went she caught people’s attention; everyone loved her low and beguiling laughter. Her jovial, amiable personality allowed her to get away with infractions others would have been punished for, including drinking and smoking. Helen found her captivating. She began to follow Betty everywhere, overwhelmed by her, hungering for her affection. But she never revealed then what she had been afraid to reveal to anyone yet: that she was attracted to women.
Although the term “lesbian” was not commonly used in popular culture until the time Helen was already a middle-aged woman, the reality was that she had become aware of her sexuality as a young child—though she had been unable to articulate those feelings at that age. She recalled times when her schoolmates had become curious about the boys who surrounded them, yet Helen had felt no curiosity whatsoever about the opposite sex. Instead, it was the schoolgirls themselves who piqued her interest. Later in life she admitted that even as a young girl of six and seven, she had a sense that there was something different about her, something even more singular than people had already noted.
When Helen was nine, and in the fourth grade at the local elementary school, a fourteen-year-old cousin of hers who had always been taken with her height had invited her to visit a loft in the schoolyard, away from prying eyes. He had asked her if she wanted to see something unusual, so she was interested. She had no idea what was about to happen, and even later in life she seemed to remember the episode in a daze, recalling the sweat dripping from her cousin’s body as he took her hand in his and led her to the loft, while outside recess continued undisturbed. Once there, he dropped his pants and underwear and proceeded to show Helen his penis.
She had been curious, to a certain extent, to watch as he fumbled in his own nakedness, until he instructed her to undo her underpants so that he could sneak a peek at her body, too. She had not been frightened by him or by his request, or even embarrassed; merely curious, a word she continued to use for decades. She had been privy to neighbors’ conversations and those of her other cousins when they spoke of such things, but she had never felt any interest. Now, as she saw the real thing, her curiosity dimmed even further, his puny naked body unappealing to her.
Her cousin did not feel the same way. He proceeded to fondle her that day and for days afterward, the fondling turning into sexual assault and rape. Helen never told anyone about what happened in the loft, and it was only when a teacher accidentally discovered them that her parents were informed. Her mother cried uncontrollably, while her father arrived at the school armed with a shotgun, ready to unload it on his nephew. He didn’t do it, but Helen was transferred to a nearby school, while her cousin remained where he was.
Two years later, she had another experience that further influenced her sexual awareness. A local teacher had begun to room at the Stephenses’ farm when her permanent lodgings had not been ready by the start of the school year. It was not unusual; when out-of-state teachers arrived and their residences were not ready, they boarded with local families who had the space to host them. The teacher, a lovely young woman in her midtwenties, slept in Helen’s room for several nights, and Helen distinctly recalled the woman’s tendency to go to bed stark naked, with only a sheet covering her. Helen awoke one night to the sighs of the teacher stroking herself, which did not stop, even when she noticed Helen watching her. If anything, the idea that her future pupil was staring at her seemed to thrill the young woman, and she invited Helen to place her own hand beneath the sheet, too, and to continue what she had been doing herself. Helen agreed and never looked back.
Years later, Helen could still recall the moans ensuing from the young woman and the pleasurable sensations they had brought her. The experience had allowed her to realize something very fundamental about herself, and though she never came out in public, everybody knew that she was a lesbian.
—
Those on board the Manhattan knew as well. Helen clung to Betty consistently, almost intimately, in the indiscreet manner she had been noted for when attaching herself to others in college. There she had found like-minded people who shared her tendencies, albeit quietly or even secretly, but it seemed to her that nothing romantic could occur on the ship, least of all with Betty. Betty did not overtly repudiate Helen’s advances, as some had done before, though she made it clear where her own interests and desires lay. Helen sometimes watched her as she sidled up next to men, coyly inclining her head and smiling just so before taking a drag on her cigarette. Betty seemed amused and flattered by Helen’s affections but was otherwise remote. Betty could have turned Helen away, mocked her, or even thought her some kind of a freak, as some had; instead she befrie
nded and respected her.
—
As Betty stood leaning against the rail of the Manhattan, watching the shifting colors of the day change while New York faded behind her, she learned of another former acquaintance who was also on the ship. The swimmer Eleanor Holm, also a gold medalist, who had been one of the youngest competitors in 1928, was also returning to the Games. She had captured the top spot in the 100-meter backstroke in Los Angeles and had further matured in the interim years, her strokes improving to such a degree that she hoped to repeat her feat in Berlin. Betty liked Eleanor; the two of them had been favorites of General MacArthur in 1928. Through the papers she had followed Eleanor’s rise in the world of swimming, knew of her accomplishments and of her private ordeals.
Now known as Eleanor Holm Jarrett, she had already reached the pinnacle of her success, both professionally and personally. For the past seven years she had been almost unbeatable in the pool and was now only one of a handful of women to be participating in her third Olympics. Like others, Betty was impressed. Eleanor had recently married Art Jarrett, the well-known singer and bandleader at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles, where she also performed on occasion. Now, at twenty-two, her marriage, money, and swimming accolades bestowed upon her a greater dose of self-confidence, and she felt superior to the rest of her teammates.
It was her beauty, she said, that had been the catalyst for her gradual drinking problems; men were always buying her drinks and chatting her up in the hope that it would lead to romance. Aside from her athletic abilities, soon after her win in 1932 she had entered the entertainment business. Hollywood had been irresistible, and she had consented to screen tests proposed by the movie studios. Unfortunately, drinking would be her downfall on the Manhattan.
Though liquor was not condoned for the athletes, first-class passengers were free to indulge in it. And although, financially, first-class and steerage passengers were worlds apart, in reality only a stairway and a corridor separated them on the ship. Booze traveled quickly from one compartment to the other, and athletes were often invited to parties hosted by reporters and rich guests heading off to Berlin. Frequenting those parties were also AOC officials, who gave free rein socially to the same behaviors they vilified in speeches and guidelines. Fun, gregarious Eleanor, stowed below with the rest of the Olympians, was frequently urged to make her way upstairs to sip champagne among the fashionable first-class crowd. Though she knew such mingling violated the Olympic code, she always greedily accepted the invitations. She was caught one night returning to her room; two officials were holding her by the armpits, and she was babbling uncontrollably, reeking of champagne.
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