“It’s almost like they don’t even want us girls here,” Caroline fumed. “Couldn’t they prepare proper uniforms for us?”
After a few minutes, the seamstress arrived and the women swarmed her, asking for waistbands to be taken in, armholes cinched, and tops hemmed. After an hour most of the women had left to prepare for practice with their tailored uniforms in hand, but Louise and Tidye noticed their shorts and tops kept being put aside even though they had been among the first to speak with the seamstress.
“We’re running out of time,” Louise whispered to Tidye, pointing to a clock hanging on the wall. “Do you think she’s forgotten about us?”
Tidye frowned and shot Louise an impatient look. “No, I think we’re the lowest on her priority list, and I think I know why.”
Louise felt the same wave of stomachache that she had experienced in the Brown Palace Hotel. “Let’s leave. I’m not great with sewing, but if we take our uniforms now, I can make the adjustments in our room. My mother made sure I brought a sewing kit with me for emergencies.”
Tidye nodded and grabbed their uniforms, shooting the seamstress a dirty look on her way out the door.
Louise pressed down her frustration and got to work. She hemmed their shorts by cutting them and stitched the shoulder seams to make the armholes smaller, but still, the uniforms didn’t fit properly. When she ran a warm-up lap around the track later that morning, she slowed to roll up the waistband of her shorts to make them a bit shorter.
Tidye slowed alongside her. “Look! Who’s she?” she whispered, pointing to a young woman in track clothes approaching Coach Vreeland. They completed their warm-up lap and returned to where their coach awaited them with the new woman by his side.
“Ladies, remember Eve Furtsch from Chicago?” Coach Vreeland asked. Eve beamed at the group, adjusting the red bow in her hair. “She’s joining the pool of sprinters available for the relay. So, now that you’ve all warmed up, we’re going to work on starts. Line up into groups of four over on that line.” When he finished speaking, the women headed toward where he’d toed positioning marks into the cinder.
Tidye whispered, “Isn’t she the girl who fell at the finish of my semifinal heat back in Chicago? She was eliminated and didn’t even race in the finals.”
“What’s she doing here?” Louise shot back. “Why do they keep adding more and more women to the relay reserve?”
Tidye’s brows knitted together. “Apparently she must know someone important. I don’t like this at all.”
Louise took her spot in one of the lines of women and then crouched into starting position when it was her turn, but her mind was spinning. What exactly were the coaches doing?
IN THE EVENING, when Louise returned from dinner with her teammates, exhausted from the thrill of parading into the Coliseum and watching the fanfare of the Opening Ceremonies, she perked up to find a surprise waiting for her in the hotel’s lobby. Uncle Freddie. Louise ran to him and he enveloped her in a tight embrace. Something had changed in him since he’d arrived in California. Louise tilted her head, taking in the glow of his skin. “Life in the West agrees with you.”
“It sure does. Your mama sent me a letter telling me you were on your way to Chicago, so I started following the newspapers, trying to figure out if you had made it onto the team. Sure enough, the Los Angeles Times ran an article listing you as a member of the relay team, and I started making plans to see you. How were the Opening Ceremonies?”
“Thrilling! When we marched into the stadium surrounded by cheering fans, I got goose pimples. I’ve never felt anything like it. To be here representing our country is amazing. It’s an honor that words can’t even begin to describe. A few unfortunate things have happened, but today’s ceremony made all of that fade away.”
“Unfortunate? What do you mean?”
The troubled expression on Uncle Freddie’s face made Louise wish she hadn’t brought the subject up, and she didn’t even know where to start with an explanation. The constant adding of girls to the relay pool? The Brown Palace Hotel? The uniforms? No, she didn’t want to focus on any of that—the important thing was to look ahead. “Oh, nothing worth dwelling on. I need to focus on running my best now. I’m so happy you encouraged me to pursue this, and I’m even happier to see you here,” she said as they walked into the garden and took one of the paths to lead them through the white stucco bungalows surrounding the hotel. “So what are you doing in Los Angeles now?”
“I’m working for my friend from the war. He’s started an aviation company, Bessie Coleman Aero, and I work in the factory.”
“Building airplanes?”
“I have a hand in them, yeah. Say, I saw that you’ll be running the relay. Anything else? Didn’t you hold the national broad jump title at one point?”
“Good memory.”
“It’s not everyone who has a niece with a national title.”
“The broad jump isn’t an Olympic event, so I’m only sprinting.”
He let out a low whistle. “I’ll have to tell everyone at work, see who can come with me to watch you. I’ll bet your parents wish they could be here. Can you believe that you made it?”
But had she? Louise thought about the eight women vying for four relay spots and suddenly wasn’t sure how to answer that, but she fixed a grin on her face again. “It’s a dream come true.”
LOS ANGELES MORNING SUN
August 3, 1932
“Walsh Wins Gold”
Los Angeles—Stella Walsh, the Cleveland girl who now races for Poland, set a new world record and won the 100-meter dash in a mere 11.9 seconds. Her manlike stride was enough to beat Canada’s fresh-faced Hilda Strike, who finished a close second. San Francisco’s Wilhelmina “Billie” von Bremen represented the United States honorably by coming in third.
With the individual sprint settled, competition is heating up for the women’s relay. The United States has a veritable treasure trove of fast and feisty lady sprinters, and rumors about who to expect on the relay roster are flying around the Coliseum. Canada possesses four formidable racers so Coach Vreeland must pick wisely.
So, who will he choose?
When asked if he is worried about competition from our gentle neighbors to the north, he chuckled and shook his head confidently. “We have a strong field of sprinters. In Chicago, their times were bunched close together, so I have a lot of options. I plan to announce a shake-up in our relay team within the next few days.”
With all of this confidence in the air, we can’t help but wonder if turncoat Stella Walsh regrets her decision to abandon her adopted country. After all, what girl doesn’t want to wear as much gold as she possibly can?
WHEN LOUISE READ what Coach Vreeland said in the newspaper, she felt like she had taken a punch to the gut. A shake-up?
Overnight, the tenor of the team shifted.
The next morning, she was on her way to the front desk to check for mail when a group of her teammates filed through the lobby, all in uniform.
Louise stopped Caroline, “What’s happening? Did I miss something?”
Caroline’s eyes widened. “We just took a team photo in the garden. I asked where you and Tidye were, but someone said you both weren’t feeling well.”