Do It

CHAPTER 4The Blamer

MEET WILMA RUDOLPH

Stairs. Wilma hated stairs. Almost as much as she hated her leg. Just the one. The other was fine. It was nothing special, but at least it did what it was meant to do. But not her left leg. Nope. The left one, Wilma loathed. No one else in her family had to wear a clunky brace or be carried up the stairs. Nothing about her siblings garnered unwanted looks everywhere they went. Two working legs. Was that so much to ask?

“Get this off of me!” seven‐year‐old Wilma screamed from the bedroom she shared with two of her sisters.

“You can't get it off! You won't be able to go with us if you do,” her older sister responded as if Wilma was crazy.

“I'm not going to the movie theater. I hate my leg!” Wilma sobbed laying on her bed.

The movie theater meant stairs. And lots of them. A bumpy terrain her unstable frame failed to conquer on its own time and time again. She had no interest facing that humiliating dragon ever again.

Good fortune was not a term one would associate with Wilma Rudolph. Born prematurely on June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, Wilma weighed a frail 4½ pounds. She was the 20th of 22 children. But fighting for the attention of her parents was the least of her worries. As a young child, she fought through measles, mumps, and chicken pox. When she was four years old, she nearly died after contracting double pneumonia and scarlet fever simultaneously. By six years old, she was a survivor of polio. But the virus left her leg ...