Grace Butcher

What I most wanted to be since even my pre-teen years was an Olympic champion. When I wrote as a teen and young adult in the early 1950's to my longest-time-friend-in-the-world, Eva, I signed my letters “FOS.” That meant Future Olympic Star. She signed hers “FSA” meaning Future Sports Announcer. I guess the plan was that she'd announce my incredible victories. That girls didn't even run track back in those days didn't seem relevant somehow.

I'd guess that not everyone reading this article would be aware that girls in the US were not allowed to run more than 200m prior to 1957. Despite the fact that European girls had been running longer events for many years, in this country it was one of the many “girls don't do that” kind of activities. But after a bloody battle with the AAU, we finally got the 440 yds/ 400m and 880 yds/800m added to the US program. That the IOC was adding the women's 800m to the 1960 Olympic program was no doubt an incentive for this decision.

From 1957, running the first Ohio exhibition 880 at the AAU District Championship, until the Olympic Trials in Texas in 1960, I was several times national champion and record holder. That was in the days before cell phones, internet, any of that. In such a new event it was almost impossible to know who else was running it, where, how fast—information traveled slowly by phone and letter. Newspapers barely mentioned women's track. I was aware only of the few 800m runners I'd competed against in a few races in the east and midwest. So traveling alone to Corpus Christi, Texas for the Nationals and on to Abilene for the Olympic Trials, leaving husband, two young sons, and coach behind, it seemed as if that long- time dream might come true.

Except for one thing. I had raced in Chicago the week before, winning the 880 there on a cold day with, surprisingly, several false starts, but also surprisingly, after the race I could barely walk. Something had happened to my right foot. Something awful. I went as soon as I got home to an orthopaedist for x-rays. Nothing showed up. “Must be a tendon,” he speculated. Back then we didn't have MRI's, bone scans, any of the tests we have now. I was devastated, in severe pain, and canceled my flight.

But everyone—coach, friends, family, and finally I myself—said, “You've got to go! You've trained three years for this!” And so I went. Why I thought I could run in Texas when I could barely walk in Ohio, I don't know. I guess I thought I could transcend the pain for the biggest meet of my life. But when I got to Corpus Christi, I could not run. The team trainer said to me, “Look. Don't run the Nationals. Don't defend your title. You go out and you walk ten miles a day, fast, and don't limp! And you won't lose conditioning and you'll be able to run in Abilene.” I cried, sitting in the bleachers while “my” race was being run without me.

On the day of the semi-finals in Abilene, the coach for the Hawaiian team, also an MD, went with me out of sight behind the bleachers where he put a shot in my foot—probably novocaine—taped it, hoped I could run, wished me well. I don't remember now how all that came about. No matter. I didn't make it. I was, I think, fourth in that heat. And as it turned out, had I made the team, I couldn't have gone anyhow. My foot was broken, as I learned after a sad trip back home. It had turned black and swollen after that race, and a later x-ray showed the stress fracture, an injury that didn't show up on the original x-rays. Once it started to heal and calcium formed around it, you could see where it was.

Given the qualifying standards for the 800, 2:12, we could send only the winner of the finals, Billie Pat Daniels, who ran 2:15. I doubt I could have beaten her. But I'll never know.

Grace Butcher 8/2/20