Helen Wainwright

Early life

Helen Wainwright was born on March 15, 1906, to John Wainwright, a bricklayer who emigrated from Lancaster, England to New York in 1888. She was a member of the Women's Swimming Association (WSA), a progressive organization founded by Charlotte Epstein in 1914 that advocated for women's participation in the AAU and Olympics. Her WSA coach, Louis de B. Handley, called her the world's fastest swimmer. She won 19 gold medals in U.S. national championships, 17 in swimming and two in diving.

1920, 24 Olympic medals

At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, at age 14, Wainwright won the silver medal in the women's 3-meter springboard diving event. Four years later in Paris, she earned a silver medal in the women's 400-meter freestyle with a time of 6:03.8, as American women swept the finals. On August 19, 1922, she set a world record in the women's 1500 meters freestyle that stood for over three years. She also held world records in the 50, 220, 440, and 880 yard freestyle events at various times, and was national diving champion from 1923 to 1925.

Post Olympic career

In 1925, the Women's Swimming Association chose Helen Wainwright to try to become the first woman to cross the English Channel, but she had to drop out after hurting her leg stepping off a New York trolley. Her teammate Gertrude Ederle took her place. While performing as a headliner in a 1927 vaudeville show in Dallas, Texas, Wainwright was engaged to Ben Owen but briefly married George Leonard Holland, an organist and former University of Pennsylvania athlete from Long Island.

She later said it was a spontaneous whim and got an annulment with his consent. During the 1930s, she coached swimming on cruise ships leaving New York. On February 1, 1933, at age 26, she married Lt. Howard Cree Stelling, a career military man from the 22nd Observation Squadron, in Shreveport, Louisiana, near the dedication of Barksdale Field. Stelling, who had played football for the University of Georgia, later became a colonel.

They had met in 1928 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Wainwright died at her home in Hampton Bays, Long Island, on October 8, 1965, after a long illness, and was buried at Long Island National Cemetery. She entered the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1972.