Magic of Believing

“My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.“  Wilma Rudolph. 

I had never heard of her before today.  Her story is one we should not forget.

She was born in 1940, in the back woods of Tennessee,  in a shack to her very poor parents.  She was the 20th child out of 22.   When she was four years old, she discovered she had polio, and that her left leg was paralyzed and useless.  As a result, she had to wear an iron brace and was told by a doctor that she would never walk normally.  Fortunately for little Wilma, she had a mother who told her otherwise, but she had to have faith and believe.

When she was nine, Wilma took away the brace and learned to walk again.  In four years time, she had developed a stride.  The doctors were amazed.  Then, Wilma got the notion - this impossible notion - that she would like to be

the world’s greatest woman runner.  Impossible?  How?  She once had a paralyzed leg.  She had polio.  But she believed.

So, at 13, in high school, she entered a race. She came in last.  But she continued to enter every race they had.  One day, she came in next to last. And there came a day when she won the race, and from then on, she won every race that she ran. She then became a basketball star, following in the footsteps of her older sister. It was here that she was discovered by Coach Ed Temple. Temple was impressed and invited Wilma to train with Tennessee State’s summer camp.

As a result of her time with the summer camp, she got a scholarship to the university. She also won inclusion to be part of the USA Olympic team for the 1956 Olympic’s in Melbourne at the age of 16. That year she won an Olympic bronze as part in the 4×100m relay USA team.

In 1960 she returned to the Olympic Games in Rome where she won three gold medals for the 100m, 200m and 4×100m relay. As a result of these amazing accomplishments she won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States of America.

How did she do it?  She wanted to.  And she believed.  “Nothing is impossible, if you have faith.”