WILMA RUDOLPH Track Star Born in 1940 - Died in 1994 Enter your search terms Submit search form   Web gardenofpraise.com

When Wilma Rudolph was four years old, she had a disease called polio * which causes people to be crippled and unable to walk. To make matters worse, her family was poor and could not afford good medical care. She was from a large family. She was the 20th child of 22 children. Her father was a railroad porter * and her mother was a maid.

Her mother decided she would do everything she could to help Wilma to walk again. The doctors had said she would not be able to walk. She took her every week on a long bus trip to a hospital to receive therapy * . It didn't help, but the doctors said she needed to give Wilma a massage * every day by rubbing her legs. She taught the brothers and sisters how to do it, and they also rubbed her legs four times a day.

By the time she was 8, she could walk with a leg brace. After that, she used a high-topped shoe to support her foot. She played basketball with her brothers every day.

Three years later, her mother came home to find her playing basketball by herself bare-footed. She didn't even have to use the special shoe.

A track coach encouraged her to start running. She ran so well that during her senior year in high school, she qualified for the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. She won a bronze medal in the women's 400-meter relay.

In 1959, she qualified for the 1960 Olympic Games * in Rome by setting a world's record in the 200-meter race. At the Olympics that year she won two gold medals; one for the 100-meter race and one for the 200-meter race.

Then she sprained her ankle, but she ignored the pain and helped her team to win another gold medal for the 400-meter relay! In the picture above you see the three gold medals she won at the Rome Olympics.

She retired from running when she was 22 years old, but she went on to coach women's track teams and encourage young people.

She died of brain cancer in 1994. Even though she is no longer alive, her influence still lives on in the lives of many young people who look up to her.

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Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman By Kathleen Krull / Harcourt Brace The dramtic and inspiring true story of runner Wilma Rudolph, who overcame incredible odds to become one of the worlds finest athletes. Before Wilma was 5 yrs old, polio had paralyzed her left leg. Everyone said she would never walk again. But Wilma refused to believe it. Not only would she walk again, she vowed, she'd run. It was hard work, but at last she did run- all the way to the Olympics, where she became the first American woman to earn 3 gold medals in a single Olympics.

African American Awareness for Young Children: A Curriculum By Evia Davis / Good Year Books Here are four, exciting teaching units you can incorporate easily into your existing early childhood curriculum as either supplemental or core material. These special units expose children to literature that helps develop an appreciation of the African American culture and provides role models with whom they can identify. By recognizing the importance of cultural awareness in the development of a child's self-concept, these cultural experiences benefit all the children in the class! Includes complete lesson plans with poems, songs, and book suggestions, hands-on activities, pages to color and take home, and a classroom reproducible excerpt from the "I Have a Dream" speech. Grades PreK-1.

From Word Central's Student Dictionary
by Merriam - Webster
(Pronunciation note: the schwa sound is shown by ə)

polio (poliomyelitis)
Pronunciation: "pO-lE-"O-"mI-ə-'lIt-əs
Function: noun
: an infectious virus disease marked by inflammation of nerve cells in the spinal cord accompanied by fever and often paralysis and wasting of muscles -- called also infantile paralysis

porter
Pronunciation: 'pOrt-ər
Function: noun
1 : a person who carries baggage (as at a hotel)
2 : a railroad employee who waits on passengers....

therapy
Pronunciation: 'ther-ə-pE
Function: noun
: the treatment of disease especially by massage, exercise, water, or heat

massage
Pronunciation: mə-'säzh, -'säj
Function: noun
: treatment (as of the body) by rubbing, stroking, kneading, or tapping

Olympic Games
Function: noun plural
: a series of international athletic contests held in a different country once every four years

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Presidents of the United States	George Washington	John Adams	Thomas Jefferson	James Madison	James Monroe	Andrew Jackson
	Abraham Lincoln	Theodore Roosevelt	Franklin D. Roosevelt	John F. Kennedy	Ronald Reagan	Barack Obama
American Patriots	Benjamin Franklin	Francis Scott Key	Deborah Sampson
World Leaders	Constantine	Alexander the Great	Winston Churchill
Inventors	Alexander Graham Bell	Johann Gutenberg	Cyrus McCormick	The Wright Brothers	Henry Ford	Thomas A. Edison
	Sequoyah	Nikola Tesla
Explorers	Christopher Columbus	Meriwether Lewis	Robert Peary	John Muir	Matthew Henson	Sir Edmund Hillary
	Kit Carson	"Johnny Appleseed"
Women who made a difference	Clara Barton	Helen Keller	Florence Nightingale	Joan of Arc	Amelia Earhart	Annie Oakley
	Susan B. Anthony	Elizabeth Keckly	Harriet Tubman	Anne Frank	Eleanor Roosevelt
Scientists	George Washington Carver	Sir Isaac Newton	Marie Curie	Louis Pasteur	Albert Einstein	Galileo
	Lise Meitner
Educators	Noah Webster	Booker T. Washington	Aristotle
Physicians	Hippocrates	Walter Reed	Albert Schweitzer
Religious Leaders	Increase Mather
Athletes	Lou Gehrig	Wilma Rudolph	Tiger Woods	Michael Phelps
Civil Rights Leaders	Martin Luther King	Rosa Parks	Sojourner Truth	Frederick Douglass	Mary Ann Shadd Cary	James Forten
	Gandhi	César Chávez
Composers	Beethoven
Artists	John James Audubon	Gutzon Borglum	Ansel Adams

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