Chapter 8: Stella Walsh

The Woman With the Man-Like Strides

Stella Walsh
1911-1980

Stella Walsh had just bought a bagful of streamers, when she started to walk to her car in a discount-store parking lot near the home she shared with her mother. In the darkness of the frosty December evening, a gunman approached the former Olympic track-and-field standout. The pair struggled for a moment before the blast of a .38-millimeter revolver rang out in the skies above Cleveland’s Slavic Village. Within seconds, Stella lie unconscious with a single gunshot wound to her abdomen. She died a little more than two hours later in the operating room of St. Alexis Hospital while her killer remained on the loose. “Our men have several good, investigative leads that we have developed over the last two days,” said Sgt. Harold Murphy of the Cleveland Police Homicide Unit nearly a week after the killing. “We are working on them around the clock.”

But no arrest ever materialized. To this day, Stella’s murder contains more mystery than an Agatha Christie whodunnit. If the store was filled with shoppers, as police reports indicate, why didn’t anybody hear the gunshot or see the attack? If money provided the motivation to kill, why didn’t the robber take nearly $300 that was stuffed in the pocket of Stella’s red jacket? And after the coroner released a revealing autopsy report, how long had she hidden her sexual deformities from fans who followed her awe-inspiring feats in stadiums around the world?

Stella’s brutal death capped off a life of celebrity, ceremony and secrets. Born Stanislawa Walasiewicz on April 3, 1911, in the tiny village of Wierzchownia in north-central Poland, she was the eldest of three daughters of Julius and Veronica Ucinski Walasiewicz. Fourteen months after her birth, her 20-year-old dad and 16-year-old mom emigrated with “Stasia” to Cleveland, where Julius found work as a roller in the steel mill. The family eventually settled in Slavic Village at 6630 Clement Ave., where Veronica later gave birth to Sophia in 1913 and Clara in 1918.

Stella helped her mother raise the two younger girls when she wasn’t discovering her athletic prowess at both Immaculate Heart of Mary School and South High School in the mid-‘20s. On the school’s oval track outside, she outran all her classmates. With jet-black hair trailing behind her, she captured a gold medal in the 50-yard dash in Cleveland’s 1927 Junior Olympics. But behind the scenes, she harbored a horrifying secret: She possessed male genitalia. The biological abnormality was so pronounced that an embarrassed Stella refused to change clothes in front of the other girls in the locker room. One day, she finally confided in her school chum Beverly Perret Conyers. “She asked me if God did this to her,” Perret told the "Plain Dealer" two months after Stella’s murder. “I said, ‘No, it was a mistake.’ I can’t figure it out. She was raised in dresses.”

Despite her genetic disfigurement, Stella’s fleet-footedness qualified her to compete in the U.S. Olympic trials in Newark, New Jersey, in 1928, only to learn that she couldn’t represent the country in the Amsterdam Games later that year because she had never become a naturalized American. But she continued training while working as a clerk in the Cleveland offices of the New York Central Railroad. And she planned to take her citizenship test in time to qualify for the Los Angeles Games in 1932.

Meanwhile, she started to break world records. In 1930, she eclipsed a previously-set mark in the 50-yard dash in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Back home, she frequented the track at Lakewood High School, where coach George Corneal gave her pointers on how to improve her dash starts to slash precious seconds off her sprint times. She even Anglicized her surname to Walsh to make it easier for supporters to follow her on the road to an Olympic gold medal.

But there was a major glitch. With the country in the throes of a depression, the railroad eliminated Stella’s job at the same time Julius was laid off from his position at the mill. A subsequent offer to work in Cleveland’s recreation department would have made her ineligible for the Olympics since the rules of the era automatically disqualified any athlete whose livelihood centered on physical education. Two days before she was going to take the oath of American citizenship in 1932, she accepted the Polish consulate’s proposal of a spot on her native land’s team. She would represent Poland in L.A.

For the first time, Stella’s performance at the ‘32 games called her sexuality into question, if only briefly, on an international scale. In the 100-meter finals, she edged out Canadian sprinter Hilde Strike by a half-yard to win the gold medal in 11.9 seconds and equal a two-month-old world record. A Canadian team official described Stella running with “long, man-like strides” in an Olympics in which automatic-timing devices and photo-finish cameras were introduced. Most fans brushed off the remark.

The Berlin Games four years later set up a showdown between Stella and her bitter rival, Helen Stephens. In 1935, the six-foot-tall Missouri farm girl stunned the track world by defeating Stella in the 50-yard dash in an American Athletic Union meet. With Adolf Hitler in the stands at the ‘36 Olympics, Stephens set a world record of 11.5 seconds in the 100-meter finals to clearly outpace Stella, who stood on the podium after the race to accept a silver medal for Poland. Ironically, a Polish news reporter charged Stephens with being a man. Olympic officials performed a sex test on her and reported that she was, in fact, a woman.

The runner-up spot in Berlin didn’t deter Stella. Throughout the rest of the ‘30s and all of the ‘40s, she competed around the world in events that also included the discus throw, long jump, hurdles and 4x200 team relay. In 1946 alone, during a European tour, she captured 49 gold medals in 15 meets before she returned home to Cleveland by ocean liner on December 2 and announced she was going to take a “nice, long rest.”

Stella’s appearances were spotty in 1947. In late January, she triumphed in the 50-yard dash at the Philadelphia Enquirer Invitational by posting a 6.4-second time and trouncing her closest competitor. A come-from-behind victory in the 200-meter race brought her another gold medal in June at the senior A.A.U. meet in San Antonio, despite her complaints of a pulled leg muscle before the race. By this time, she had filled three rooms of her parents’ home with a collection of more than 5,000 medals, trophies and ribbons.

The longest race of Stella’s career came to an end on December 12, when federal Judge Paul Jones administered the oath of citizenship to her, 15 years after the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service denied her application at the last minute because she had chosen to represent Poland in the L.A. Olympics. She called the ceremony “the finest Christmas present I ever received.” She then announced her retirement from competitive sports. “I’ve tried to become a citizen for so long a time,” she told reporters. “I may devote all my time to being an instructor in athletics. I’m not going to keep running until I get trimmed by the younger girls.”

Stella quickly changed her mind, though. In late January of 1948, at 36 years old, she declared that she was training for that summer’s London Olympics since World War II put the brakes on the 1940 and 1944 games. The rulebook again forbade her from competing for the U.S. because of her connection to Poland in two previous games. “Naturally, I would like to run for the United States this year but realize that is impossible,” she said. “It probably wouldn’t be considered patriotic to compete for Poland, but I would like one more opportunity to run in the Olympics. That would be a great way to finish my career.”

The aftermath of the war dashed her plans. By 1948, Poland was no more. Six million Poles -- half of them Jews -- had perished in either battle or the Holocaust. The country’s borders were redrawn, resulting in a Poland that was one-fifth smaller than its former self. And the Soviet Union imposed a Communist government that nationalized all of Poland’s natural resources and factories. The nation essentially had gone out of business, leaving Stella without a land to represent.

Nevertheless, her competitive spirit remained. In June, she ran off with first-place finishes in the 100- and 200-meter dashes at the national A.A.U. meet in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For good measure, she finished the day with a victory in the running long jump event. She was back in competition two months later in the Scottish Games at Pittsburgh’s Kennywood Park, where she lopped two-tenths of a second off the A.A.U. record in the 75-yard dash by crossing the finish line in 8.4 seconds.

By March of 1949, Stella was coaching and competing for the Polish Falcons girls’ and women’s track team, which practiced at Cuyahoga Heights High School. The program was innovative; there weren’t many of its kind in the country for female athletes, except those that were sponsored by small, ethnic clubs here and there. In May, 15-year-old Grace Butcher of Chardon joined the team. And one of the first tips she learned from Stella: Tie double knots in the laces of your running shoes so that neither one of your tennies will slip off during a race. “To have an Olympic champion and world record holder for my first coach was almost unheard of in this country,” Butcher wrote in her 1999 tribute to Stella that was published in the anthology, "Whatever It Takes: Women on Women’s Sports." “She wore real track shoes and real warm-up pants, and she was the greatest all-around woman athlete I have ever known.”

As Stella approached her 40th birthday, she vowed several times to retire from the cinder block to write her memoirs and take up a less strenuous sport like golf. But every time she announced her exit from track, she would be back in competition again. A sportswriters’ poll in 1950 may have fueled her desire to win more medals after it named her the greatest Polish-American athlete of the first half of the 20th century.

But Stella knew her days were numbered. Throughout 1950, she lost races as often as she won them. At the national A.A.U. meet in New York City on February 13, she placed second in both the 100-meter and 200-meter finals, outdistanced by runners less than half her age. She then came in third in the broad jump to end a disappointing day. On August 26 in Texas, she again took second place in her specialty event -- the 200 meters -- behind a college student from Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute. She then considered an offer to play on a women’s professional basketball squad in Chicago, only to squash the deal because she didn’t want to be stripped of her amateur status.

Stella caught a second wind in 1952. On May 26, at 42 years old, she set two meet records at the Pacific A.A.U. championships in Petaluma, California. She first broke a 13-year-old record in the 100-yard dash by sprinting to the finish line in 12.2 seconds. She then hurled a discus 113 feet to shatter a 14-year-old mark by nearly five feet. A month later, she pleaded with the athletic union to let her compete in the Olympic trials for a spot on the U.S. team in the 1952 Helsinki Games, but she was rejected again because of her participation on the Polish squads of 1932 and 1936. “I am an American citizen now. Poland is no longer a state but a satellite of Russia and an overrun country,” she argued to no avail.

The time had come to map out a plan for the second half of her life. By September, Stella had moved to Glendale, California, where she landed a job as an inspector in a plastics manufacturing plant. She coached the company’s baseball and basketball squads. She organized its intramural bowling league. And she played shortstop on Glendale’s Class A women’s softball team, for which she batted an .804 average and hit 19 home runs during her first season. In one game, she filled in for a pitcher who didn’t show up. Nobody was surprised, when she threw a no-hitter in which nobody on the opposing side reached first base. And as a member of the undefeated Glendale women’s basketball team, she scored 32 points in the championship game of the California Sunshine League.

But Stella also ran into the law. In late-September, she appeared in court on charges that she stole $1.44 worth of butter, cottage cheese and peach preserves from a mom-and-pop grocery store. She paid a small fine and was sent on her way.

Fast forward to 1956. Whether she plotted a scheme to run in the Olympics as an American or actually had fallen in love is in question. But 45-year-old Stella tied the knot with 33-year-old Californian Harry Olson before a justice of the peace in Las Vegas on August 15. She told reporters she met the aviation-company draftsman six years before in Cleveland and again two years later in L.A. The couple dated for more than a year before they walked down the aisle, she said. The marriage -- which ultimately ended in divorce two months later -- opened the door for Stella to try out for the 1956 U.S. Olympics team in Washington D.C. That’s because the games’ international governing committee ruled that an athlete who has competed for one country in a previous Olympics can represent another nation if the competitor is married to a citizen of that country.

Stella was off to the nation’s capital a couple of weeks later. Heartbreak soon flew after her. In a preliminary heat of the 200-meter race, she couldn’t catch up to either Tennessee State track star Lucinda Williams or Boston sprinter Elizabeth McDonnell to qualify for the finals. Her chance for an athletic swan song at the upcoming Melbourne Games evaporated. She walked off the track alone and, for the umpteenth time, said she was bowing out of track-and-field competition for good.

Her fans knew better. In December of 1957, the A.A.U. voted to sponsor 440- and 880-yard races for women. The sanctions gave Stella enough incentive to come out of retirement and compete in the A.A.U. women’s indoor meet in Akron’s Goodyear Gym on March 22, 1958. She finished third in the 880. But her participation secured her a spot on a team with 18 other female runners for a dual meet in Moscow in late July against the Soviet Union. “The Russians avoided me all during my prime,” she told reporters. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to run them off their feet.”

The U.S.-Soviet match-up signaled the end of Stella’s career in international competition. In its place, she concentrated on studying training techniques that women used behind the Iron Curtain, where runners notoriously outperformed their counterparts from outside Eastern Europe. She took notice of the weightlifting that dominated practice sessions. “Their method training is superior to ours,” she said in a 1962 interview. “When I get back home, I’m going to throw all my old training methods in the wastebasket and start all over again with strength training.”

Stella also focused on recruiting children into sports programs, including the one involving the team she coached at the San Fernando Valley Track Club in California. Her motivation to train youngsters stemmed from the races she won, when she was 14 years old at South High School. “We don’t have very many newcomers coming up, and our replacements for today’s name stars are just not there,” she said. “I feel we could make rapid strides if more opportunities would be available to school-age boys and girls.”

After 15 years in California, she moved back to her parents’ home in Slavic Village in July of 1964. Childhood friend Steve Lesiak hired her to take reservations from summer vacationers for the cottages he owned on Kelleys Island in Lake Erie. He also gave her a job tending bar at the Sunrise Café near the corner of East 71st Street and Harvard Avenue. Now a silver-haired 53-year-old, Stella served up sports trivia with pints of beer to her regular customers. “They come here with their sports arguments now,” she told "Plain Dealer" reporter Dan Coughlin at the time. “I’m the arbitrator in their discussions. Most of the people who come in here talk sports.”

In her spare time every day, Stella ran two miles and followed a one-hour calisthenics regimen. She also started to write both her memoirs and a “track bible for girls” in which she stressed the strength training she studied in Eastern Europe. She also traveled to Poland to deliver 50 speeches at the athletic clinics she conducted throughout the country. And she helped train record-breaking sprinters Irena Kirszenstein and Eva Klobukowska, both of whom would score medals in the Tokyo Olympics in October of that year.

After Stella’s father died on September 29, 1972, the sports and Polish communities showered her with accolades with enshrinements in seven halls of fame, including those for the U.S. Track & Field and International Polish-American associations. On August 29, 1978, she was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame. Cleveland’s recreation department also hired her as an instructor in May of 1979 at an annual salary of $10,400, the most money she had ever made in her life. And Polish Minister-Consul Kazimierz H. Cias presented her with the Silver Cross of Merit a year later at the old Chalet West restaurant in North Ridgeville. The award was one of the highest medals that the Polish government bestowed upon its native-born, who had achieved success in their chosen fields.

Then the fateful night of Thursday, December 4, 1980, rocked the fabric of Stella’s family, friends and fans. She had started a week of vacation time from work to plan a reception at Kent State University, where the Polish women’s Olympic basketball team was going to play an exhibition game a week later. Earlier in the day, she stopped at Cleveland City Hall at Mayor George Voinovich’s request to pick up a key to the city to present to a civic group. She then drove home to tell her 85-year-old mother that she was going to the nearby Uncle Bill’s department store at 6801 Broadway Ave. to buy packages of ribbon for the reception. On the way, she made a quick stop at the home of Polish-American community leader Casimir Bielen, presumably to hand over the key that she had retrieved downtown. She told him she was on her way to the store to purchase party supplies.

At 8:45 p.m., after buying the streamers, Stella -- in her trademark outfit of a red jacket, white blouse and slacks and navy-blue blazer to show her pride for the United States -- walked to her 1973 brown Oldsmobile Omega, which was parked about 400 feet from the store’s entrance. Suddenly, a gunman appeared in the darkness. The two fought over his .38-millimeter weapon. The gun fired, and Stella slumped next to her car with a bullet in her abdomen and $290 in her coat pocket.

Moments later, an unidentified male shopper alerted off-duty Cleveland patrolman Robert A. Moff, who found the track-and-field phenom unconscious but still breathing. He called the Cleveland Emergency Medical Service, whose paramedics took about a half-hour to respond to the scene. But nobody could wait that long. The police had to rush Stella to St. Alexis Hospital, where, on the operating table, she died at 11:11 p.m. “We think that someone went to rob her, and she put up a struggle,” homicide detective David Hicks told a Cleveland Press reporter afterward. “There was nitrate evidence on her hand, indicating she must have grabbed the gun.”

Stunned at the news of Stella’s death, her friends, co-workers and fellow athletes paid tribute to a woman, who, at her age, could still outrun competitors 50 years younger than she. Harrison Dillard -- a gold-medal hurdler in the 1952 Olympics and Press sports columnist -- called Stella “a superwoman.” Margaret Batcha, a recreation department typist, bemoaned the murder as a “horrible waste of life.” And Stella’s boss, 1964 Olympic silver-medal sprinter Paul Drayton, applauded her passion for athletics. “She really loved coaching,” he said. “It depressed her to see so much raw talent in this country go to waste.”

Stella’s murder triggered a series of events that reverberated as a testimonial to Cleveland’s love for its hometown Olympian. For starters, 14th Ward Councilman Joseph Kowalski blasted the city’s EMS department, whose leaders blamed the long response time on several ambulances with mechanical problems on a busy night. The "Cleveland Press" then posted a $5,000 reward for anyone who could identify the killer. The Slavic Village Association also set up the Stella Walsh Memorial Fund to upgrade equipment and expand training programs for the city’s young athletes. And WKYC-TV 3 finally dropped a bombshell with its evening-news report four days after the shooting: There was a possibility that Stella was actually a man.

On the morning of December 9, nearly 400 mourners streamed into the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church at 7007 Kazimier Ave. for Stella’s funeral as television videographers filmed them. A family friend gave the WKYC cameraman a piece of her mind about the news story that aired the night before. “Get out of here! Get out of here!“ she screamed. “You’ve got a lot of nerve after that garbage last night.“

Inside the church, the 12 members of the Polish women’s basketball team, clad in red sweatsuits with “Polska” embroidered on the back, walked into the 9:30 mass next to the casket and sat in the front row across from Stella’s mother and sisters, Clara Battiati and Sophia Dirosa. Father Raymond Bartnikowski made sports references in his sermon and compared Stella to a spiritual gold medalist. “There is a saying that no one remembers who came in second. Sometimes, no one remembers who came in first,” he said. “There is but one important event: eternal salvation. It is not measured by time clocks or tape measures, only by God himself.”

Cleveland’s Polish-American community established the “Olympian Stella Walsh Defense Fund” a week after the funeral to earmark money raised from the drive to haul WKYC into court for defaming Stella’s reputation in its report about her sexuality. Bielen, the prominent community leader, also led an effort to boycott any company that advertised with the television station. Attorney Gerald Broski, the former president of the Cleveland Society of Poles, filed the lawsuit. “What was common knowledge known by the family, friends, Polonia and the world for 69 years has been turned into an ugly, sensational disclosure smearing the Olympian reputation of Stella Walsh,” Bielen wrote in a typewritten statement to the media. “Over the lifetime of competitive sports, she was examined by hundreds of doctors and permitted to enter Olympic and other competitive events.”

Cuyahoga County Coroner Samuel Gerber would have the final say. More than two months passed after Stella’s murder before he announced the results of a comprehensive chromosomes test. On February 12, 1981, he read the verdict from his autopsy report: mosaicism. The rare condition in which a human body possesses a weird amalgam of male and female sex organs confirmed that Stella was the world’s most famous and decorated transgendered athlete.

Mosaicism is a complicated freak show. A normally developed fetus carries either XY sex chromosomes for boys or XX chromosomes for girls. But a mosaic embryo contains a mix of either both sets or just one set with no secondary cell. In Stella’s case, her chromosomes were predominantly XY, or male, with a small number of XO chromosomes that had no second X or single Y cell. Babies with similar genetic make-ups often develop facial hair and non-functioning penises as they reach puberty, even if they’re raised as girls. Undoubtedly, the rarity dumbfounded Polish physicians, when Stella was born in 1911. “She was probably identified immediately as an abnormality. The baby, I’m sure, surprised the doctors as this kind of case is so rare,” Gerber said after he released his findings. “As Stella Walsh grew older and it became more obvious that she possessed male sex organs, I am sure the child was traumatized. Yet, it would have meant undergoing additional trauma for anyone to attempt to alter her upbringing as a male and try to raise her as a female.”

Dr. Gerber’s findings shocked the community. Stella’s ex-husband, Harry Olson, was beside himself 25 years after their brief marriage. During those two months, he claimed they had sex a handful of times but only with the lights out. When the test results hit the news, his co-workers started to tease him. “I feel stupid as hell for marrying her,” he said. “I wish I could say I had a hot, passionate affair with her, but we never really did. Maybe I was too naïve to realize anything was wrong.”

Still, Olson joined Stella’s supporters in harpooning the media for turning her death into a carnival sideshow. “People in Cleveland seem torn between loving her and destroying her,” he said. “All this vicious energy should have been organized toward finding her murderer. Who is this helping anyway? There’s got to be a reason for it. Does it give somebody a morbid sense of satisfaction?”

On March 9, Cleveland detectives thought they had made a break in the case. They took into custody an out-of-work, 21-year-old Maple Heights man, who voluntarily showed up with a relative at the Fourth District Police Station at 9333 Kinsman Rd. They said he was known to frequent the Broadway and Union Avenue neighborhood near the Uncle Bill’s store. But the cops released him from jail the next day after he passed a lie-detector test.

With the killer still on the loose, the autopsy report continued its reeling effect on Stella’s family and friends. As a result, three lawmakers in the Ohio House of Representatives -- Ronald Suster of Euclid, Benny Bonanno of Cleveland and Frank Mahnic Jr. of Garfield Heights -- co-sponsored a bill in May of 1981 that would prohibit county coroners from releasing sensitive information in autopsy reports. Rather, the data could only end up in the hands of prosecutors, family members or anyone authorized by the family to see the report.

Stella’s memory lived on, not only at the statehouse, but in her beloved Cleveland. In October of 1981, the city’s public library system honored her by hanging a plaque in its Fleet Avenue branch in Slavic Village. The Sunday afternoon ceremony featured a speech by Bertha Modrzynski, the president of the Polish Falcons Nest 141 Club. Seven of the club members’ children sang “Peace on Earth” and “Kuku Polka” before they presented a basket of flowers to the library. And the club donated a variety of Polish-language books on sports to the system. A month later, Cleveland City Council approved legislation to rename South High School’s rec center after Stella, who launched her track-and-field career on the school’s oval track.

Sadly, the case of Stella’s murder remained cold on the eve of the first anniversary of the shooting. Police said they still received telephone calls from anonymous tipsters, but none of the clues ever panned out. “We have nothing,” detective David Hicks said on December 3. “We’re not sure about the motive. We just hope for calls, but we haven’t had anything concrete.”

Beverly Perret Conyers, the childhood friend in whom Stella confided about her sexual confusion, also expressed her frustration that nobody had ever been arrested for the killing. “I hope it unsettles the person who never got caught,” she said. “They’re sitting back enjoying themselves. I hope something is done to shake them up.”

To this day, Stella’s murder remains unsolved, but her legacy survives. A Polish transplant who always thought of Cleveland as home, she’s remembered for her shy demeanor, polite manners and innate quality to treat everyone equally, regardless of race, religion or creed. Her athletic accomplishments speak for themselves. Perhaps, "Plain Dealer" sports editor Hal Lebovitz, who first met her in the early ‘40s, summed it up best in a column he wrote two days after the attack. “In a sense, she lived in a shadow world, almost a sports oddity,” he wrote. “Yet, Stella was a nice person, always pleasant and accommodating and, in athletic prowess, a champion.”

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Stella Walsh was buried in Section 95, Lot 2003, Plot 1 of Calvary Cemetery, 10000 Miles Ave. in Cleveland. She was 69 years old.

Copyright 2010 Cris Glaser