Such a lottie to tell about Dottie!

Photo: Darren Robinson

Dorothy Shirley-Emerson today.

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Martyn Meets...the amazing woman who followed her Olympic dream
NORMALLY when I arrange these interviews I allocate 90 minutes and on occasion my little chats run over...

When I sat down for coffee with Dorothy Shirley-Emerson to talk about, I thought, her Olympic silver medal at the Rome Olympic Games in 1960, little did I know that, three and a half hours and a caffeine overdose later I would still be scribbling notes about one of the most remarkable women I have ever had to privilege to meet.

So many stories. So many anecdotes. So much to say . . . where to start?

To set the scene, Dorothy won an Olympic silver medal in the high jump at the Games in Rome in 1960. This Oldham girl had no formal athletics training and was denied training at Salford University by the educational elite, but represented her country all over the world and was an ambassador for all that is Great in the Great Britain.

She remains an ambassador to this day, living life to the full and currently planning a trip to Jamaica with the Oddfellows Society (how utterly apt, I found myself musing), next summer.

The Independent Order of Oddfellows is a 200-year-old society, a mutual friendly society dedicated to helping forge and maintain friendships.

I was not in the least surprised to learn that Dorothy — Dottie to her friends had thrown herself body and soul into the organisation and is almost an honorary officer.

The interview started conventionally. I pulled my pen and asked the first question: “What’s your full-name?”

“Dorothy Shirley-Emerson . . . but my very close friends call me Dottie. Because I am a bit, well, you know, dotty. Oh dear, I’ve got my silly hat on today, haven’t I?”

And so began one of the most entertaining interviews of my life; a riveting, revealing, rumbustious ride through the life and times of a woman for all seasons.

Born in North Manchester Hospital, the youngest daughter of Malcolm and Dorothy Shirley, she moved from Blackley to Failsworth at four, when her parents bought a newsagents — Shirley’s Newspapers — and from the age of seven this effervescent bundle of suppressed energy was a paper girl. She probably would be today if she could find a round...

“No one ever thought anything of it in those days, the fact I was only seven. I would skip along with the papers and jump over all the garden walls and gates, just for fun and because I could.

“The highest was 14 Kingston Avenue. It had a high gate and a high wall and it always an early ambition to jump that wall.”

Her early education was at the British School in Woodhouses (“Well, there’s a story to that...”) when her father turned right instead of left to the Woodhouses Village School where Dottie was intended to attend.

Failing her 11-plus, Dottie attended New Moston Secondary School and it turned out to be serendipitous.

For this was an athletics school — unlike her intended destination, Fairfield High, where the girls played netball and hockey. Her interest in athletics had been kindled by a magazine, World Sports, which she delivered each month to customer Keith Moores.

“I read it from cover to cover before I pushed it through his letterbox!”

Inspired by the heroics of Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Cohen, the young Dottie ran everywhere and Mr Davey, the maths teacher at New Moston who also organised athletics, recognised her abilities. She ran away with titles at the Manchester schools athletics: a star was born, and she was from Oldham.

As Manchester champion she was selected to represent Lancashire in a meet at St Helens and she won again, naturally. Her athletics career was well and truly launched and her natural ability needed nurturing in the environment of a club. The nearest was Salford Harriers, who had a grass track, and within the bosom of this organisation her stature rose and Dottie’s talents blossomed.

These were the days of bus travel — she would get the No 7 to training sessions — and to meetings. One such was in Chorley and the entire team was to meet at the bus station in Manchester.

“But no one else turned up. I was the only one there, so I went on my own, entered every event and won them all. I would have won the relay too, but I didn’t have three more for the team.”

Soon she was being pressed for international recognition. In 1958 she was chosen to represent England at the Empire Games in Cardiff and had to collect her uniform from Simpson’s in Piccadilly, London.

“What a treat. My mum came with me,” she enthused.

The high jump itself was a disappointment to the ultra-competitive Dottie, but she learned a valuable lesson that day: “I finished fourth, on countback, even though I jumped the same height as the girl who took the bronze medal. I made the mistake of coming in too late, and it wasn’t a mistake I ever repeated throughout my career.”

An intensity, a stillness came over her, a startling departure from the happy-go-lucky woman who had been my coffee companion for the previous hour. It was a revealing glimpse of the core of steel that made her an international athlete.

At 74, the fervour, dedication and determination that propelled the impish Failsworth lass to the very pinnacle of world athletics, was smouldering still. But in a flash it was gone.

My charming new friend was back, all beaming smile and beguiling glances, with a raised eyebrow here and dropped lip there as another facet of a fascinating life unfolded.

By now she was an established international athlete, representing Great Britain against the Commonwealth; then travelling to Sweden - her first aeroplane journey, and her first trip abroad - to win a bronze medal at the European championships in Stockholm.

Her education was now coming to an end — at 13 she won one of only 60 scholarships and found herself at the College of Commerce in Manchester, then eventually to St John’s College, near Quay, which led to Dottie gaining the five O Levels which, eventually, would change her life forever.

But there is so much more to tell, her Olympic triumph, the horrific ordeals of early sex tests for women athletes. her career after athletics, her marriage to her soul-mate Jack Emerson and, most revealing of all, in the very last sentence of our conversation, what she was doing on the coming Saturday at Poynton Show.

“Well, there’s a story to that...”

You’ll have to buy next week’s Chronicle to find out what...