Finding aid for the Stella Walsh Papers

Biography of Stella Walsh

Stella Walsh (April 3, 1911-December 4, 1980) was born Stanislawa Walasiewicz in Poland. She immigrated to the United States with her parents before she was two years old and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where her father worked in a steel mill. Walsh made her track and field debut at the 1927 Cleveland Press Junior Olympics after receiving athletic training at the Polish Falcon Club Nest 141. In 1928 she won the all-around track and field championship at the Syracuse, New York Zlot, and the following year she wan the all-around track title at the Sokol World Zlot held in Poznan, Poland. She was voted the World's Greatest Woman Athlete in the Women's World Olympiad held in Czechoslovakia in 1930. She broke her first world's record in 1930 when she ran the 50 yard dash in 6.1 seconds. Because she was not a United States citizen at the time, Walsh competed in the 1932 Olympics held in Los Angles, California, as a member of the Polish team. She won two gold medals at the 1932 games, including her world-record setting run in the 100 meter dash. Walsh competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, for the Polish team, winning the silver medal in the 100 meter sprint. Walsh received the Polish Silver and Gold Crosses of Merit for her athletic achievements, and she was voted Poland's number one athlete three times before World War II. During her athletic career, she held sixty-five world and national records and won over 5,000 awards, trophies, medals, diplomas, and citations. Stella Walsh competed in amateur athletic competitions through 1977. That year she won the 60 meter dash gold medal in the masters division of the World Polish Olympics at Krakow, Poland. In 1978 Walsh was inducted into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame and the Ohio Women's Sports Hall of Fame. She was inducted into the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame in 1979. In addition to her accomplishments in track and field, Walsh played basketball locally with the Polish Olympics and on the Rochester, New York world champion Filaret women's team. She also played softball for the world champion Flemming team in 1929.

Walsh attended Cleveland's Immaculate Heart of Mary School, South Junior High School, Notre Dame Academy, and the Spencerian School of Commerce. She also studied physical education in Warsaw, Poland. In 1947, Walsh became a naturalized American citizen. In 1956, she married Neil "Harry" Olson in Las Vegas, Nevada, but the couple separated amicably after a few months although they did not divorce. Walsh lived in California for fifteen years where she coached and played women's basketball in the Sunshine League and shortstop for Glendale's women's softball team. She returned to Cleveland in 1964 and worked as a youth coach in the Cleveland Polish Falcon Club Nest 141 and as a supervisor for the Cleveland Division of Recreation. Her work included management of the Junior Olympics and physical fitness and gymnastics programs for sixty City of Cleveland playgrounds. She was also the sports editor of the Nationality Newspapers Services in Cleveland.

In December 1980, Stella Walsh was murdered in the parking lot of Uncle Bill's Discount Department Store in her Broadway neighborhood while two armed men robbed her. She was shot in the abdomen and died at Cleveland's St. Alexis Hospital. The day before Walsh was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Cleveland, local television news stations reported the preliminary results of Walsh's autopsy that was performed by Cuyahoga County coroner Sam Gerber. Tests and examinations revealed that Walsh's gender was ambiguous, and rumors quickly spread throughout the United States and the world that Stella Walsh was actually a man. The television news coverage outraged the Polish American community in Cleveland and its membership, and leaders quickly came to Walsh's defense. It was common knowledge in Cleveland's Polish community that Walsh suffered from birth defects, and leaders in the Polish community insisted that Walsh was examined by hundreds of physicians throughout her sporting career and was allowed to compete as a woman. Subsequent genetic tests concluded that Walsh had an extremely rare genetic abnormality called mosaicism that caused her to carry both male and female sex chromosomes. Case Western Reserve University geneticist Angus Muir, who conducted the genetic testing on Walsh, explained that a person's chromosomes do not dictate sexual identity and that when Walsh was born in 1911 she probably appeared to be outwardly female and did not develop male characteristics until the onset of puberty, long after she had been raised as a girl. Both Muir and Gerber agreed that Walsh was not a man, and Gerber publicly stated his opinion that Walsh was female. An investigation by the International Olympic Committee concluded that Stella Walsh would retain all of her medals, and all of her national and world record-setting race times remain credited to her as a female athlete. She remains the favorite daughter of Cleveland's Polish immigrant community, and a local library and recreation center were named in her honor after her death.

Click here to view the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History entry for Stella Walsh

Scope and Content

The Stella Walsh Papers, 1966-1984 and undated, consist of biographies, correspondence, flyers, membership cards, newspaper clippings, notes, programs, reports. Much of the collection consists of photocopies of original documents.

This collection is of value to researchers studying the history of Cleveland, Ohio, and women who were active in amateur sports. Researchers interested in the track and field career of Stella Walsh and her rivalry with Helen Stephens will find this collection useful. This collection documents Walsh's activities at the 1932 and 1936 Olympics as an athlete on the Polish team, her world record-breaking races, and her efforts to gain United States citizenship. Walsh's 1980 murder and the ensuing controversy surrounding her gender and athletic eligibility are documented in this collection. Those studying the Polish-American Community in Cleveland will find this collection useful. Additionally, researchers will find documentation of the efforts of Casimir Bielen to bestow honors on Walsh during her lifetime and protect her public image after her death.

Statement of Arrangement

Restrictions on Access

None.

All photographs have been removed to the WRHS Portrait File Collection.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

Subjects:

Preferred Citation

[Container ___, Folder ___] MS 4999 Stella Walsh Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio

Acquisition Information

Gift of Casimir Bielen in 1988.

Processing Information

Processed by Margaret Burzynski-Bays in 2008.

Detailed Description of The Collection