Female gold medalist from 1932 Olympics turns 100
"Got a good rub down in morning and had steak. Went to stadium, warmed up, another hot rub. Ran second in the relay. We got 1st place and broke Olympic and World Record 46 9/10."
And so reads the diary entry of America's oldest and possibly its humblest Gold Medal winning Olympic athlete, Evelyn Furtsch (now Ojeda) on the day she and three other runners, dazzled the 1932 Los Angeles crowd with a record setting 4/100 relay in only the second Olympics women were welcome to participate in. The games became a launching pad for the indelible Babe Didrikson, put Los Angeles on the international map, and provided a major shot in the arm for American morale during the heart of the Great Depression. Yet, the games will probably be forever associated with the female athletes who finally had their shining moment to showcase their talents in front of boisterous crowds. They took that chance and ran wild with it, stamping their imprimatur on every event they could enter. Evelyn Ojeda, a small but "certainly not frail" 18 year old brunette, was one of the remarkable young ladies who carried the mantle for women's sports on her shoulders and succeeded with flying golden colors.
She is set to turn 100 this week, and a small throng of 42 friends and close relatives are planning to gather to fete her in Tustin, California, on her centennial birthday. She figures "they are only coming for the free food."
Growing up in Tustin, California, Ojeda always knew that she was fast. She won every race she competed in by leaps and bounds but her desire to win wasn't borne out of an inherently competitive nature. Instead, Ojeda ran because she reveled in the exhilaration she felt while flying down a track. It took until her 16th birthday, for her talents to be recognized. Vincent Humeston, the Tustin High track coach, who was himself training two boys for the upcoming Olympics, was captivated by her speed, and immediately saw her fit to train and race with the other two boys. Evelyn had never raced boys before and wondered how she'd fare. To her surprise, she didn't just hold her own, she wiped the floor with them. Ojeda was so far ahead in her initial attempt, that she feared that something had happened to the other boys, or figured the coach hadn't properly started the race. The coach had in fact said go and the other two were perfectly fine, but in the course of their dismantling, their egos had taken a shark bite sized hit. Ojeda didn't gloat about her victory. That wasn't her style. The running wasn't about silencing the doubters or sending a message. This was about her absolute love for the sport and her eagerness to see how far her size five and a half feet would carry her.
After initial smashing successes, Ojeda's race to the Gold hit a snag when she realized she was way short of the necessary funds to travel to Chicago for the trials. Going door to door, and with help from the Tustin Chamber of Commerce, she accrued enough to cover the gas fees for she, her coach and the other boys to travel across country. After a few nearly fatal crashes, flat tires galore and a spate of problems on the road, she arrived in Chicago, only to trip on the tape at the finish line and see her Olympics hopes dashed—or at least that's what she feared.
After a similarly treacherous journey home, Ojeda arrived home to the news that her skills had been noticed, and that though she wasn't picked to compete individually for the 100 meters, she had been tapped to join forces with three other female sprinters to race in the relay. With only a week to train, the girls arrived late to Los Angeles and bunked in the Chapman Hotel. The sparkling new Olympic Village, the brainchild of William May Garland and the first of its kind, wasn't welcome to girls. Hired Cowboys guarded the place to ensure no visitors snuck in. But, despite Prohibition and the planner's best efforts, the games were still a bacchanalian affair. Hollywood stars popped up everywhere, throwing glamorous parties for athletes, and Los Angeles crowds flocked to the events to take in the excitement. Ojeda dined one evening at the Coconut Grove with teammates, and was stirred when Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr., the 1930s power couple version of Brad and Angelina, paid them a visit to wish them luck. Ojeda mostly shied away from the saturnalia though, understanding that she had business to attend to. The girls, all strangers to each other, quickly jelled, learning how to pass and receive a baton on the fly.
The day of the race, the American team was expected to fall short of the battle tested Canadian team, comprised of a group of girls quite familiar with each other and the event. With Ojeda running the second leg, the America team pushed past the Canadians on the way to a record setting race—a time that held for another 16 years. After a Closing Ceremony, complete with doves soaring into the ether, Ojeda returned home and enrolled in Santa Ana College.
The class's first assignment was to write on the blackboard what they did over the summer, Ojeda refused to write anything, resulting in a below passing grade. "I feared that I would embarrass the other students by showing off," she said. Ojeda remained tight-lipped about her achievements, only telling her close family and friends, until they were cobbling together the gold medalists from the 1932 Olympics to honor in the 1984 Olympic return to Los Angeles and somehow her humility had resulted in the Olympic Committee forgetting to invite her. Her friends insisted that the situation be rectified and luckily it was, with Ojeda participating in a parade in an open-air vehicle through Los Angeles
"The difference between the 1984 and the 1932 Olympics was huge. When I participated, you could walk up, pay a little bit of money and get tickets. Many of the events were virtually empty. For the 1984 Olympics, the excitement was palpable."
Since Ojeda dropped the bombshell in 1984 that she was in fact an Olympian, and a gold medalist to boot, the mail has been flooding in. Almost every day she receives a letter, with requests for an autograph from her adoring fans. Oddly enough, most of the fan mail comes pouring in from Germany, and not surprisingly much of it pops up on eBay. For Ojeda, the only rule is, it better have a return address. "If they can't bother to include that, then I can't bother to sign it for them."
Unlike, one of her teammates who participated in the 1936, Nazi Olympics, Ojeda did not win a second Gold. She decided to skip the Berlin Olympics to raise her infant daughter. She kept running, although not competitively and with World War 2 casting its massive shadow over the globe, the next two Olympics were canceled, meaning that Ojeda's window had closed. She jokingly blames her daughter, who accompanies her to the interview, but says she doesn't have one iota of regret. "It's true," she laments "that winning the Olympics is really the high point of any Olympians life," at least for her.. She has gifted the world, three more generations of Ojeda's, had a successful career in real estate, played competitive tennis for most of her life, and took up golf at the age of 90.
She is one of only two living participants from the 1932 Olympic Team, Helen Johns Carroll, a swimmer who was a member of the 4X 100 relay team and resides in South Carolina, is the other. Ojeda, now closing in on 100, is as sharp as ever, and she still moves gracefully. She credits her longevity to a variety of factors. "When I was young, I was always very active and got a lot of exercise and I think that is one of the reasons I have good health today. That, and maybe also that I never drank or smoked." She currently resides with her granddaughter, Danielle Squyres, a percussionist who Ojeda adores listening to, whether it is practicing in the house or when she's lucky enough to attend one of her concerts.
Ojeda's achievements opened doors for women in athletics, that Billie Jean King, Mia Hamm, Danika Patrick, Serena Williams and others eventually came barreling through. ""I didn't feel at the time that I was a pioneer for woman, because I was just running for the fun of it. But as I look back, I would like to think I inspired some women."
With a steak in her stomach, and only the rush of the impending race on her mind, Ojeda did something that even modern pioneers like Facebook COO Cheryl Sandburg might envy. With the world watching, she didn't just lean in, she raced on by.