Published: May 04, 2008 11:56 pm            

COLUMN: Mary Lou exhibits eternal youth

MORGANTOWN — She is a cool breeze in a climate of global warming, a ray of sunshine in an era of gloom and darkness.

Mary Lou Retton may have just turned 40, but she is eternal youth.

It may be almost a quarter of a century since this tiny package of non-stop energy won over our hearts as America’s Sweetheart by achieving perfection in the 1984 Olympics, but she remains Peter Pan in a red, white and blue leotard, her back arched, her smile bigger than the state of Oklahoma and feet placed firmly on the ground.

In as jaded, dishonest and immoral a world as we live today, a world scarred by steroids and scandal, by greed and avarice, she is a beacon of light left over from a more innocent time in an era that has been polluted by the e-coli of selfish athletes and a win-at-all-costs environment.

If she has changed at all, it was barely noticeable as this woman who once was the most famous female athlete in the world, waltzed into the Lakeview Resort with her four adorable daughters as her entourage to accept her place in the West Virginia Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame.

She walked up to the desk and put forth her tickets and said, as if she were Tessie Trumble from Buckhannon, “Mary Lou Retton. Where do we sit?”

No airs. No pretenses.

She was 40, going on 16, still a ball of energy, the same playful kid who admitted that as a teen, while traveling through China for a dual gymnastics meet, she did cartwheels down the Great Wall of China.

Cold war?

She was writing history, not studying it.

You have to understand where Mary Lou Retton came from, what she was all about and the time she emerged out of the shadows to score a perfect 10 on her floor exercise and vault to become the first American gymnast to win a Gold medal ever at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

She came out of Ron Retton’s house in Fairmont, along with four siblings, petite and competitive, dedicated to the sport that would make her an American hero.

“My parents were simple people. We come from simple backgrounds. They always told us you can achieve anything, anything if you are willing to work hard,” she said.

And work hard she did, giving up what one would consider the normal teenaged life for a shot at history.

Did she miss being a normal child, going to the prom, hanging out on the corner with the kids?

“Yes, absolutely,” she answered. “Am I regretful? No! I was traveling the world at age 12, walking on the Great Wall of China. I’ve been all through Europe, all through Asia, competing for Team USA.

“Do I have a corsage from the prom that’s all dried up in my bedroom? No. But that’s all I knew. I didn’t know I was missing out, if that makes sense. I was barefoot, in a leotard, training my whole life. That’s where I wanted to be. I loved gymnastics. I had a passion for it and that’s what it takes, that kind of dedication.”

In many ways she was as normal as any other kids. If she had a bad meet, she’d throw out the leotard. When she dressed, it was always right shoe on first, same for the right wristband.

Her focus was on her sport in an age when sport was king, not as it is today.

“People ask me, ‘Did you have an agent going into ’84.’ What? A travel agent? We needed someone to get us tickets to L.A. But no one had an agent then,” she said. “Kids now have agents even before they make an Olympic team. They’re getting paid for medals now. It’s different.”

Different, not necessarily better, not necessarily worse.

“I have mixed feelings for it. I look at my family, a family of five. It was a big financial toll on them. I had to move to Texas when I was 14. I had to pay room and board, pay for equipment, for Bela Karolyi training. Had I been given financial help, I would have taken it in an instant to help my family out,” she said.

“But there’s a part of innocence that came with it. When you saw me on that medal stand with that medal around my neck and the American flag rising, that was truly for the USA. It was truly for the love of the sport, not thinking I was going to be on the Wheaties box, which I didn’t know was going to happen to me. I was totally innocent to that whole commercial side of it, which may be why it happened for me.”

Once she had the Gold everything changed, though.

“A friend of mine — I hate to drop names, but it was Michael Jordan. I was able to spend some time with him during a Wheaties conference. You know, I was on the box first; then they put him on. They were about to unveil his box. I was emceeing the press conference,” she said.

“We were in the green room, having this great talk and discussing this whole fame thing. He said to me, ‘You know, Mary Lou, fame doesn’t change you. It changes everyone around you.’ It’s so true. Winning it at 16, living on that Cloud 9, it was truly a chaotic three, four, five years. My kids laugh at me. They don’t believe me, but there was a level of fame I had at one time. I couldn’t leave my house without my team of security and all that crazy, crazy stuff that comes along with fame. It was a very odd time for me.”

Time, though, has helped erase all that. She feels free enough to take her Olympic medals out from under her bed, where they resided in a bread bag for six years, and display them on a plaque her husband had made for her in the family’s award room.

Her life is not normal, but it isn’t insane, either. Her daughters are front and center, three of them now gymnasts.

She won’t push them to Olympians, saying the system is “brutal,” but if Linda Burdette wants to offer a scholarship for her gymnastics team at WVU, she might go for that.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.