Vallen Corbett looks through historic photos and newspaper clippings of her mother, Olympic gold medalist Martha Norelius, at her home on Saturday, August 3, 2024. Vallen Corbett speaks during an interview while surrounded by historic photos and newspaper clippings of her mother, Olympic gold medalist Martha Norelius, at her home on Saturday, August 3, 2024. Vallen Corbett poses for a picture with her mother’s 1928 Olympic gold medal at her home on Saturday, August 3, 2024.
Her newspaper clippings have yellowed. But because Vallen Corbett first dusted them off only recently, when she opened a box and spread them out on her dark wooden dining room table, their edges are still crisp, and their type still juts off the pages. The stories they tell are all about Corbett’s mother, Martha Norelius.
She has contemporaneous accounts of her record-setting swims. She has effusive profiles. And she even has a large cartoon, sketched into the New York Post in 1931.
The clippings stitch together the story of Norelius, who lived in three countries, married four husbands, birthed five children, won two Olympic gold medals and set a record that stood for 96 years — all squeezed into a life that ended when she was only 45. “Isn’t that amazing?” Corbett said, laughing. Norelius, Corbett’s mother, was the .
In the 1924 Paris Olympics and the 1928 Amsterdam Games, she won gold swimming the 400-meter freestyle, becoming the first woman to win the event in consecutive Olympics. No wom.