Lillian Copeland

Athlete

• Born: November 25, 1904
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: July 7, 1964
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Sport: Track and field (discus throw)

Early Life

Lillian Copeland was born November 25, 1904, in New York, New York, to Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her father died when Lillian was a child. Her mother, Minnie Drasnin, married Abraham Copeland, and the family soon relocated to Los Angeles, California. Lillian attended Los Angeles High School. A good, highly intelligent student, Lillian developed into a powerful athlete. Her compact frame and stocky build contributed to her success in track and field throwing events where objects—shot put, discus, and javelin—were hurled for distance. A confident competitor, she excelled in running, tennis, and basketball and was a star athlete by the time she graduated in 1923.

The Road to Excellence

After graduation, Lillian enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC), majoring in sociology and political science. She competed in a number of sports and quickly made an impact in collegiate athletics. Between 1925 and 1931, Lillian won nine Amateur Athletic Union championships. From 1925 to 1928 and in 1931, she finished first in the eight-pound shot-put event. She was also discus champion in 1926 and 1927 and first in javelin in 1926 and 1931.

Along the way, Lillian continued to establish new standards of excellence in her sports. In 1926, she set world records in the javelin, at 112 feet 5 1/2 inches, and discus, at 101 feet 1 inch. In 1927, she bested her own record in the javelin with a toss of 125 feet 8 1/2 inches. In 1928, she lengthened the world shot-put record to 40 feet 4 1/4 inches. Between 1925 and 1932, Lillian set six world records in each of her events—the shot put, javelin, and discus. She also ran the lead leg for the USC women’s 4 110-yard relay team that set a national record of 50 seconds in 1928.

Despite taking considerable time from her studies to train for athletic competition, Lillian graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1928. That year, she also primed for the Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the first time women’s track and field events were included in the world competition. Though Lillian’s best events, the shot put and javelin, were not included among women’s Olympic events at that time, she competed in the discus, setting a new world record of 115 feet 8 1/2 inches at the Olympic trials and winning a silver medal at the Amsterdam Games.

The Emerging Champion

Following the 1928 Olympics, Lillian was admitted to USC Law School. She continued to train and compete in preparation for the 1932 Olympic Games to be held in Los Angeles. At the Games, Lillian was nominated as team cocaptain, along with Babe Didrickson Zaharias, but withdrew in favor of Babe. Lillian won a gold medal in discus, setting a new world record with a throw of 133 feet 2 inches.

After 1932, Lillian withdrew from competition to concentrate on her law studies. In 1935, she came out of retirement to train for the second staging of the Maccabiah Games—an Olympic-style competition staged in Tel Aviv, Israel, for Jewish athletes—where she won gold medals in each of her specialties, shot put, discus, and javelin. She did not know it at the time, but the Maccabiah Games were her last international competition.

Lillian trained hard, intending to defend her 1932 discus championship at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. She was invited to participate in the 1936 Games. However, with the rise of the Nazis, and particularly in the wake of the German persecution of Jews, Lillian joined with a number of other Jewish athletes to boycott the Games as a form of protest.

Continuing the Story

With the 1936 Olympic Games no longer part of her plans, Lillian focused on her career. In 1936, she joined the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, specializing in juvenile offenders. She remained with the department, working primarily out of the Lennox Division, near Hawthorne, until her retirement in 1960. She died July 7, 1964, at the age of fifty-nine. In 1994, Lillian was inducted posthumously into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame. She was also enshrined in the Helms Athletic Foundation Collegiate Hall of Fame, the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and, in 2003, the USC Athletic Hall of Fame.

Summary

One of the first great American female track and field athletes, Lillian Copeland was a fierce competitor in both collegiate and international venues. A multiple winner in shot put, discus, and javelin during a ten-year athletic career, Lillian set numerous world and Olympic records for distance while winning silver and gold medals at successive games. Lillian demonstrated strong character by adhering to her principles and set an example for women athletes of a later generation to follow. At the height of her athletic prowess, rather than take another chance at glory, she chose to make a statement about human rights by refusing to participate at an Olympics competition hosted by a totalitarian government. For most of the remainder of her life, she rendered great service to Los Angeles by working with troubled youths.

Bibliography

Kirsch, George B., Othello Harris, and Claire Elaine Nolte. Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Magdalinski, Tara, and Timothy John Lindsay Chandler. With God on Their Side: Sport in the Service of Religion. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Pieroth, Doris Hinson. Their Day in the Sun: Women of the 1932 Olympics. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.

Rappaport Doreen, Cornelius Van Wright, and Ying-Hwa Hu. In the Promised Land: Lives of Jewish Americans. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

Siegman, Joseph M. Jewish Sports Legends: The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. 4th ed. Upperville, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005.

Slater, Robert. Great Jews in Sports. Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 2005.