Helen Stephens

Runner

• Born: February 3, 1918
• Birthplace: Fulton, Missouri
• Died: January 17, 1994
• Place of death: St. Louis, Missouri

Sport: Track and field

Early Life

Helen Herring Stephens was born on February 3, 1918, in Fulton, Missouri, and reared in the rural farm country of Calloway County. She loved to run, and by mid-adolescence she was well-built and nearly six feet tall. At Fulton High School, one of the standard physical education tests was a timed run of 50 yards. Helen sprinted the distance and recorded a time of 5.8 seconds. A startled but excited Burton Moore, the track and field coach at Fulton High School, pointed out to Helen that this time, although unofficial, tied the then-world record.

The Road to Excellence

Most often it is gifted and talented athletes with high levels of natural ability who become the best as a result of sustained training. Helen was no exception. She ran with rare form and excellent acceleration and trained hard. Barry Hugman and Peter Arnold, in The Olympic Games (1988), quote Helen’s reply to a question about how and why she ran as well as she did: “I guess it came from chasing jackrabbits on dad’s farm.”

In the history of American women’s track and field, much attention has been paid to the exploits of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who took the 80-meter hurdles and javelin gold medals at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. In fact, despite having a short career, Helen’s athletic achievements were just as impressive as Didrikson’s.

The United States has been described as a wonderful melting pot where various immigrant groups settle and then intermingle. Helen’s family fit this mold. Her father’s name was Anglo-German and her mother’s name was Pennsylvania Dutch; on her grandfather’s side of the family, there was a Cherokee Indian.

The Emerging Champion

In Tales of Gold (1987), by Lewis Carlson and John Fogarty, Helen described how she learned to put the shot on her father’s farm:

I couldn’t afford $2.50 for a shot put, but my dad had broken a 16-pound anvil pounding something or other on it. So I started throwing one of the pieces. My brother and I spent a couple of years readying me for my shot-put debut. He always says that he should get some credit for this because he was my retriever.

In the 1930’s, opportunities for female athletes were virtually nonexistent. In March of 1935, Helen’s coach, Moore, who had been training her in running and throwing, found out about an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) meet in St. Louis. Helen and Moore traveled to the competition in spite of the superintendent of schools, who hoped that they would get “this foolishness out of [their] systems.” At this meet, Helen won AAU titles in the 50-yard dash, the standing broad jump, and the shot put. The most sensational victory was her gold medal in the 50-yard dash: she defeated Stella Walsh, the 1932 Olympic champion in the 100 meters.

Helen was a virtually unknown seventeen-year-old high school senior who defeated the American and Olympic champion. Not only did Helen take the AAU title, but she also equaled the official world record. In Tales of Gold, Helen laughingly recalls that a Post Dispatch profile of her, following the AAU successes, had a photograph of her looking rustic (shotgun in hand and hunting dog at her heels) with the caption, “From farm to fame in 6.6 seconds.”

One year later, Helen and Walsh resumed their rivalry. In 1935 and 1936, Helen continued to train enthusiastically. Training partners were frequently male college athletes, and she often ran repetition runs at 400 and 800 meters. Helen’s ability to hold her form and run through and beyond the finishing line was developed as a result of these stamina-building activities.

At the Berlin Olympics, Helen won her first-round heat and the semifinals of the 100-meter dash. In the finals, she beat Walsh by 2 yards and set an unofficial, wind-aided world record of 11.5 seconds. A second gold medal followed in the 4 100-meter relay, but here Helen was lucky. The German women had a lead of 8 meters, but on their final lap, the baton was dropped.

Continuing the Story

Helen was much more than the world’s best 100-meter runner. She won AAU titles in events as varied as the 200 meters and the shot put. At the 1936 Olympics, she finished in tenth place in the women’s javelin.

During her amateur career—two and a half years—Helen was never beaten in a sprint race. Following her amateur track and field career, Helen toured the United States with a women’s basketball team known as the All-American Redheads. After that, she formed another women’s basketball team called the Helen Stephens Olympic Co-Eds.

With Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Helen became one of the first female athletes to find recognition in the world of professional sports and entertainment. She endorsed Quaker Oats, ran handicap professional races against Jesse Owens, and, in 1952, when she weighed 195 pounds, she tossed the shot nearly 55 feet—the women’s world record was about 50 feet.

Summary

Known as the “Fulton Flash,” Helen Stephens is remembered for her startling feats as a schoolgirl and for her victory and world record at the 1936 Olympics in the 100 meters. During the 1930’s, a period of little opportunity for women in sports, she hit the headlines and showed that women could succeed in international sports. She served as a marine in World War II and continued to stay active in the Senior Olympics. She worked for many years for the Defense Mapping Agency Aerospace Center in St. Louis.

Bibliography

Carlson, Lewis H., and John J. Fogarty, eds. Tales of Gold: An Oral History of the Summer Olympic Games Told by American Gold Medal Winners. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1987.

Collins, Douglas. Olympic Dreams: One Hundred Years of Excellence. New York: Universe, 1996.

Kinney-Hanson, Sharon. The Life of Helen Stephens: The Fulton Flash. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.

Tricard, Louise M. American Women’s Track and Field: A History, 1895 Through 1980. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996.