Mabel Landry Staton, 1952 U.S. Olympic long jumper and trailblazing South Jersey teacher, has died at 92

Mabel Landry Staton, 92, of Voorhees, the only U.S. female long jumper at the 1952 Summer Olympic Games, a nine-time national Amateur Athletic Union jumping and sprinting champion, celebrated New Jersey high school track and field meet official, the first Black teacher at Paulsboro High School, volunteer, and mentor, died Thursday, Feb. 20, of multiple myeloma at Virtua Voorhees Hospital.

In 1952, Ms. Staton, then 19, was the only American woman to qualify in the long jump for the Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. She jumped a personal-best 19 feet, 3½ inches in an early round, held the Olympic record for about 13 minutes, and finally finished seventh among 160 entrants.

“Being on the Olympic team was not about winning,” she told CBS News Philadelphia in a recent TV interview. “It was about taking part.”

Ms. Staton won national AAU long jump titles in 1949, ’50, ’52, ’53, and ’54, and outdoor 50- and indoor 60-yard dash championships in 1953 and ’54. At the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City, she anchored the winning U.S. 4x100-meter relay team and finished third in the 60-meter dash.

She began running seriously, she said, at 13 after her father encouraged her to challenge some local Chicago girls in a neighborhood race. “I ended up beating everybody,” she told CBS News Philadelphia.

Ms. Staton represented a local Catholic Youth Organization as an individual competitor in college because DePaul University in Chicago did not field a women’s track team in the 1950s. Her national victories and American long jump record were featured in newspapers across the country, including The Inquirer, and the Courier-Post and Chicago Tribune later published full-page articles on her life and career.

“Her legacy reminds us that success isn’t just about winning. It’s about breaking barriers and inspiring the next generation.”

“Competing is the epitome of athletics. … I think it’s important to keep on going until you succeed,” she told the Courier-Post in 2004. “It’s hard work, but it does pay off in the end.”

She officiated the long jump and other events at hundreds of South Jersey high school track meets over 40 years, and earned a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 from the New Jersey Track and Field Officials Association.

Her daughter Paula told the Courier-Post in 2008: “I had a mother that showed anything is possible if you put your mind to it and work hard.”

Ms. Staton was inducted into the Los Angeles-based Helms Hall of Fame, Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame, and DePaul University Hall of Fame. Colleagues and friends called her a “track and field legend” and “a tremendous athlete and example” in Facebook tributes.

“She embodies the principle that there’s always more to learn and achieve.”

One friend said: “Thanks for breaking barriers for every young woman who came after you.”

She was a physical education and special education teacher, and mentor to thousands of South Jersey students from the late 1950s to her retirement in 2005. She taught at schools in Paulsboro, Pennsauken, Pine Hill, Cherry Hill, Lindenwold, and Voorhees, and a former student at Overbrook High School called her “reassuring” and “my anchor” in a tribute.

She earned an academic scholarship and a bachelor’s degree in education at DePaul in 1954, and a master’s degree in special education in 1987 at what is now Rowan University. She coached a middle school cheerleading squad, retired from full-time teaching in 1995, and worked as a substitute for 10 years.

She earned the NAACP’s Visionary Award, a Camden County Senior Woman of Distinction Award, and the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity’s 2008 Rosa Parks Award. A story on the DePaul website called her “arguably the greatest athlete to ever attend DePaul,” and her image is displayed in a life-size mural on campus.

“She had that kind of smile that just lit up a room.”

She was a lay eucharistic minister at St. Thomas More Church in Cherry Hill, a longtime member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and on boards for the Cherry Hill chapter of the AARP and Black Catholic Ministry of the Camden Diocese.

She told the Courier-Post in 2008 that she was one of only five Black women among 519 female U.S. Olympic athletes in 1952. She faced prejudice and racial discrimination, and her CYO track team in Chicago won a civil rights case in her name in the 1950s that helped her and others establish one of the first interracial teams in the country.

“She has a heart of gold and has always been there for her family and friends,” her daughter Patricia said in a tribute.

Mabel Marie Landry was born Nov. 20, 1932, in Chicago. She met Rodman Staton at a USO event in Chicago, and they married in 1955 and had daughters Patricia, Pamela, and Paula, and a son, Rodman Jr.

She left Chicago for Woodbury, Gloucester County, in the late 1950s and lived later in Pennsauken, Cherry Hill, and Voorhees. Her husband died in 2000.

Ms. Staton attended many Olympic Games and traveled to all seven continents. Her father called her Dolly, so everyone else did, too.

She doted on her children, enjoyed playing cards, and won several bowling league championships. She was especially proud, her daughter Pamela said, that she could still outsprint some of the local high school boys in her 70s.

“She knew what being great was,” her son told the Courier-Post in 2008. Her daughter Pamela said recently: “She had the best life of anyone I know.”

In addition to her children, Ms. Staton is survived by a brother and other relatives. A brother and sister died earlier.

A celebration of her life was held Feb. 26.