Wilma Rudolph Parents
August 29th, 2008
Wilma Rudolph was born to loving parents by the names of Ed and Blanche Rudolph. She was the sixteenth child out of nineteen, though not all of them had the same mother - her father Ed had been married before.
Her father Ed was a porter on railroad cars. It was usually his job to assist the travelers, taking their luggage and putting it on the train and then removing it and giving it back when the trip was complete. He would also do odd jobs around Clarksville to make extra money when he could. He died in 1961.
Blanche Rudolph, her mother, was a maid. She traveled the town each day cleaning houses for her clients. She was also probably the more involved of the two in her daughter’s life; after a long day of cleaning Blanche would massage her daughter’s polio-stricken legs well into the evening, always telling Wilma that she would walk one day without braces. She also died in 1961.