In the spring of 1945, Mabel Landry and her father, Paul, were walking near the family’s apartment in the Ida B. Well Homes, a vast housing project on the South Side of Chicago, when they spotted a few teenagers running sprints across the lawn. Paul turned to Mabel and said, “Dolly, I think you might be faster than them,” recalls Paula Staton, Mabel’s daughter. “That was what he called her, by the way — Dolly. Never Mabel. She was his only girl. His little doll.” Thirteen-year-old Mabel agreed to take up the challenge and, as her father had predicted, easily won.
Mabel Landry Staton
