Wilma
By: Jack Wyman
As the sun set over the beautiful Tennessee countryside, a tiny voice cried out.
A baby girl, Wilma, premature and weighing only four and a half pounds, became the 20th child born to Ed and Blanche Rudolph, the result of Ed’s two marriages. Two more children would come later.
Life wasn’t easy for a struggling African American family in rural Tennessee in the 1940s. Wilma faced childhood sickness, including pneumonia and scarlet fever. At the age of five, she contracted infantile paralysis.
While she recovered from the polio, she lost strength in her left leg and foot. She wore a leg brace and an orthopedic shoe. It was a sad and difficult time. Wilma, a beautiful little girl, wondered if she would ever be normal and able play with the other kids. There wasn’t much medical care available for Black families.
Wilma’s mom refused to give up. She continued to pray for God’s help and guidance in the healing of her daughter.
Blanche and Ed contacted the historic Meharry Medical College in Nashville, seeking help for Wilma. The College was 50 miles from where they lived in Clarksville. For two years Blanche took Wilma on the bus each week to Nashville for treatment on her leg. At home, the family helped with massage treatments four times a day. Wilma continued to wear the leg brace and special shoe.
She persevered. So did her family.
By the time she was 12, Wilma had gained sufficient strength in her leg and foot to be able to walk without the brace and shoe. The treatments had worked. God had answered their prayers.
Wilma endured those treatments, as painful as they were. The paralysis was gone. Wilma’s healing was the result of God’s grace, excellent medical care, a family that loved and supported her, and a spirit of determination that refused to surrender.
Wilma Rudolph would walk.
Years later, Wilma said. “My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.
How are you facing this year? Are you hopeful? Are you confident? Are you determined? Are you committed to serve and honor Jesus Christ, no matter the cost? Will you persevere? Are you trusting God or dreading and fearing the future?
The Apostle Paul told the Christians living in Philippi that only through perseverance could they triumph. He shared with them his supreme goal in life. No, Paul said, he had not achieved perfection. He recognized that. Paul was a very self-aware person.
“No, dear brothers and sisters,” he told them, “I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (Philippians 3:13-14, emphasis added).
Paul wanted to break the tape. Preacher Vance Havner once observed that Paul had a one-track mind, “but you can go a long way on one track if it’s the right one.”
In that beautiful passage found in the majestic letter to the Hebrews, the unknown author writes:
“And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. . .” I envision a runner preparing himself carefully and staring down the course that is in front of him. He’s in position. He’s waiting for the gun to go off. “We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12: 1-2).
Are you ready? Are you enlisted in the great race of the Christian life? Have you “set aside” every distraction, every weight upon your heart and mind? Are you looking unto Jesus and him alone?
Paul tells the Corinthians to “run to win!” Run “with purpose in every step” (I Corinthians 9:24-26). Run so that when the race is done, you and I may also say, along with the great apostle, “ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith” (II Timothy 4:7). Is there anything more urgent for the American evangelical Church in this critical and historic time—and for every follower of Jesus Christ?
Gird up the loins of your heart and mind—and run! Run every single day of 2026. By the grace and power of God, mamy you and I never give up, never give in, and never give out.
Yes, Wilma Rudolph would walk.
Unshackled from the illnesses that had held her back, Wilma returned to school excited and confident. She took a keen interest in sports at Burt High School, the center of Clarksville’s African American community.
Following her sister onto the basketball court, Wilma set a new record in high school girls’ basketball, scoring 803 points. She was strong, poised, graceful, and five feet eleven inches tall.
Tennessee State’s track and field coach Ed Temple took note of Wilma’s gifted and natural athleticism and recruited her to the track team. As a high school sophomore, Wilma competed at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute in her first major track event.
Wilma lost that first race, but she persevered with a determination to win. She attended Ed Temple’s summer training program and won all nine events she entered at the Amateur Athletic Union track meet in Philadelphia.
Wilma Rudolph went on to win a bronze medal at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia at the age of 16. She was the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team.
Four years later, at the Summer Olympics in Rome, Wilma won three gold medals, the first American woman to achieve that feat.
The little girl from Clarksville, Tennessee who successfully fought polio wearing a leg brace was universally hailed in 1960 as the fastest woman on earth.
Don’t ever give up. Press on! Run!
Wilma Rudolph did. So can you.
To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.
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