The line of people hoping for autographs stretches 50 yards down one wing of Randhurst shopping mall, then bends back on itself. There is a kind of spontaneous organization here, a sense of order. Even the little children cooperate, waiting patiently half an hour or more to stand for 15 seconds in the limelight of a national hero.
That is, after all, what Mary Lou Retton is. In this crowd of 500 you can count the cynics on one hand. As person after person shuffles quietly toward the riser where Retton is sitting at a table signing copies of her
autobiography, you begin to understand the nature of celebrity.
Retton coauthored the book with her coach Bela Karolyi, the Romanian who also trained Nadia Comaneci. Karolyi couldn`t make it to the Chicago-area promotion. Big deal. Nobody cares.
These people came to see Retton, the Olympic wunderkind whose star hasn`t diminished so much as one candlepower in the 14 months since she became the first American to win a gold medal in women`s gymnastics. At a nearby bookstore, 300 of her faithful have forked over $16.95 apiece for her book, exhausting the supply long before the demand. Before this appearance is over Retton will be autographing cash register receipts for those who have ordered copies that will arrive a few days hence.
She must work furiously to accommodate her adoring public. Because she is only 4 feet 9 inches tall, a cardboard box has been shoved into the seat of her brown vinyl chair to boost her to a position where she can sign books, then lean comfortably forward toward her devotees, allowing parents to snap a picture of their kids with the champ.
”I have three photo albums full of her pictures and two big Wheaties posters on my wall,” said 16-year-old Kyle Hermanny, after he asked for and got a kiss from Retton.
Hundreds of men, women, boys and girls who didn`t buy her book stopped simply to gawk. Packed along a balcony on the mall`s upper level, several teenage girls screamed for her attention.
”Mary Lou, Mary Lou,” they called.
”Mary Lou, we love you.”
”Mary Lou, we love your car.”
Parents hoisted children in the air and held them there to catch a glance. Everywhere you turned little girls wore Mary Lou Retton warm-up suits, Mary Lou Retton leotards. There was also a 38-year-old woman in a Wheaties T- shirt, who came to invite Retton to tour General Mills` Chicago plant. Retton, you might remember, became the first cover girl for ”the breakfast of champions” and its chief television spokesperson.
None of this was lost on 2-year-old Christy Walter, perched atop her dad`s shoulders, staring raptly at Retton.
”Christy knows who Mary Lou Retton is,” insisted Tony Walter. ”She imitates what she does on TV.”
He looked up at his daughter.
”Can you say it?” he asked her. ”Can you say, `What the big boys eat?` ”
Retton, who is not much bigger than a healthy 5th grader, can eat whatever she wants. She doesn`t say how much she earns, but she endorses about a dozen products, including two lines of Mary Lou Retton clothes, Vidal Sassoon shampoo, Eveready Energizer batteries, Hasbro fitness wear, Pony sneakers, McDonald`s, Wheaties and the National Bowling Council. So it is safe to assume that at 17, she is a millionairess at least a couple of times over. All her money is funneled into a trust fund administered by the United States Gymnastics Federation so she can maintain her amateur status.
Gymnastics, once the source of her exposure, is fast becoming her refuge. She disclaims the persistent rumors that she will not compete in the `88 Olympics, saying she hasn`t decided one way or the other. And though she will skip the upcoming world championships in Montreal, she continues to work out daily and twice on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in Karolyi`s Houston gym, when she is in town. Furthermore, she entrusts her business management to an ex-gymnastics coach.
”All the companies that I work with know that gymnastics is my first priority,” Retton says. ”They`ll bring crews down to Houston so I can film commercials and also have my workouts. I`m pretty lucky.
”I`ve gotten like nine movie offers. I don`t think I`m ready for that. I`m not Mary Lou Retton the actress, I`m Mary Lou Retton the gymnast. That`s what I want people to know me as. Besides, I`ve never taken any acting lessons. I wouldn`t know how to act. I could play myself. That`s about all.” These days, that`s plenty. Retton`s life ceased to be normal before she won the gold medal. She left her home in Fairmont, W.Va., in January, 1983, to go to Houston and train with Karolyi. A few months before the Olympics she dropped out of high school to concentrate on gymnastics. She`s still pursuing her diploma through correspondence courses offered by the University of Missouri.
”They send me my homework through the mail,” she says. ”I do it and mail it back. When I have a test, I go to Northland Christian High School, where I used to go, and the principal gives me the test.
”I would love to go to regular school, but Texas only lets you miss eight days, and that`s it. I travel too much for that.”
Since she has become a fixture in TV ads, her private life has all but vanished. Outside of her Houston condominium, her parents` home in Fairmont, and a series of hotel rooms across the country, she must reckon with the awed and the curious.
More and more, she is resorting to disguises, but certain things are impossible to hide.
”I tried sunglasses,” she says. ”But I think I need something over my mouth. I swear I do. I`ll be out with my brother Ronnie, and I`ll have on sunglasses, even a hat sometimes. People will still stare. They`ll give me the double take. Then Ronnie, the wise guy, will crack a joke. I`ll smile, and people will say, `I knew it was you.` ”
Certainly the Retton Smile will outlive the ”vault without fault” that catapulted her to fame. It is a toothy, happy expression, completely natural and inviting. It is often followed by the Retton Giggle, which bubbles up spontaneously and charms. She is uninhibited and unabashed.
Ask her about the mandatory drug test that followed her winning the gold medal and she launches into a story about how she spent two hours drinking Cokes and sticking her hand under running warm water trying to draw a urine sample.
A couple of months ago she watched for the first time a videotape of her entire Olympic gymnastics performance.
”I had seen the vault clip many, many times, because people use that a lot,” she says ”but not the whole competition. It was intense. I can see how people got excited. Oh my God, I was standing up on the couch screaming for myself: `Come on, you can do this. You`ve done it before. Just go.` ”
This kind of directness, coupled with energy and emotion, are the things that endeared Retton to the media and resulted in the publicity that made her a celebrity.
”With Mary Lou what you see is what you get,” says a reporter who covered the Olympics, ”and Americans like their heroes simple.”
Retton is not complex. She grew up the youngest of five children, scrappy and tomboyish. ”In the 7th grade we had to take the President`s fitness tests,” she says. ”I did 75 sit-ups in a minute. I thought it was pretty cool because I beat all the boys.”
Whatever else Retton is today, she is still a 17-year-old high school senior, at times as vapid and superficial as anyone that age. She wears rhinestone bracelets and clothes that don`t seem terribly well matched. She is not particularly introspective or philosophical. Before the supermarket tabloids began fabricating stories about how arthritis was going to cripple her by 25, she used to ”read those papers and believe everything in them.”
She has a boyfriend, she says, named Shannon Kelly. She met him through a friend in Houston. He`s a freshman quarterback on the University of Texas football team.
Retton plans to go to college herself one of these days. She wants to study communications with an eye toward becoming a sports commentator. Then again she might coach gymnastics, but she isn`t sure she`ll have the time what with her other commitments. Eventually, she wants to get married and have kids.
For the time being, though, she is really only sure about one thing
–gymnastics. ”I love the sport, and I`m only 17,” she says. ”I want to keep going. What would I do if I didn`t do this?”
A good question. Retton began gymnastics workouts at age 8 and at 11 began to make them the focus of her existence. The sport has cheated her of a social life and given her pain as well as pleasure. She has broken her wrist, and six weeks before the Olympics she underwent arthroscopic surgery on her right knee.
”They said I`ll have to have major surgery on it eventually,” she says. ”Apparently they`re going to have to drill through the knee cap. They said I`ll be out for a long time. But my knee gives me no trouble whatsoever. So I`m not getting any surgery.”
Instead, she`ll continue to train, perform in exhibitions all over the world and ponder another shot at the Olympics. If she competes and loses,
”the media will just kill me,” she acknowledges.
”I`m going to know my limit; I`m going to know when to stop. And I`ll be the only one who will know. Bela will probably sense something. But I`m going to be the one to say I`m through.”
It remains to be seen when that will be and if she then will be haunted by the problems that beset her one-time idol Comaneci. Karolyi writes that in the wake of her superb performance at the 1976 Olympics, Comaneci gained 40 pounds, became despondent and eventually tried to commit suicide. Comaneci has since straightened out her life and now helps coach the Romanian national team.
But Karolyi cautions: ”It is the special mentality of the sports or entertainment star, it doesn`t matter which. When they are at the top they fly in a special but unreal dream world. They think they deserve everything and they are getting it–compliments, rewards, compensations, all of that. And as soon as the situation starts not to go that favorable, when there are not so many people around anymore, they get frustrated and disappointed and the problems start. Is just human nature. . . .”
Retton listens as the passage is read to her. The day before she needed four burly cops to escort her out of the Randhurst mall.
”When people start slacking off, I think I`m going to be ready,” she says. ”I`m not going to try to commit suicide or anything. I`ll be ready. Maybe even relieved.”
