Betty Cuthbert’s final thank you, to God

Betty Cuthbert’s best friend believes the Golden Girl was trying to say thank you to God before she passed away.

Betty Cuthbert, ever the runner.

She couldn’t say it in words. Before she fell unconscious after the first of several seizures she endured in the past three weeks, Betty Cuthbert was trying to voice something to her best friend, Rhonda Gillam, the woman called by God 26 years ago to become our ailing Golden Girl’s primary carer.

Rhonda is convinced she was trying to say “thank you”: to God, for blessing her with legs like steam-powered pistons; to her beloved country, that turned a gentle working-class Parramatta nursery owner’s daughter into a four-time Olympic gold medallist; to Rhonda, who nursed her 24-7 through the cruellest half of a 48-year battle with the debilitating multiple sclerosis she finally succumbed to on Sunday evening, aged 79.

“She was trying to say something but she couldn’t get it out,” said Rhonda, 80, yesterday between waves of weeping in her home in Mandurah, an hour south of Perth, a short drive from the Aegis Greenfield nursing home where Cuthbert spent her final years.

“It was just amazing because she wasn’t normally a demonstrative person,” she said. “I just said, ‘You’re my best friend, Betty, and I will look after you to eternity’, and she grabbed me with the only hand she could move on her whole body and she just took my hand and it was love in that moment. Love personified. She was passing me the relay baton. She wanted me to finish the last leg of the race for her.”

Cuthbert with best friend Rhonda Gillam. Picture: Claire Martin

Even today, Cuthbert’s athletic exploits half a century ago cannot be dimmed: her Olympics-winning time in the 400m would have got her into the semi-finals at the World Athletics Championships in London this morning, while her fastest time in the 200m would have won her the Australian championships this year, according to sports historian David Tarbotton.

But if you walked into Cuthbert’s nursing home room in her final hours, you wouldn’t have necessarily known from the surroundings that the warm-faced woman laying peacefully on the bed was the same Betty Cuthbert who set the 1956 Melbourne Olympics alight with a spell of track sprinting unlike any the world had seen; big-hearted Betty with the blistering open-mouthed running style like she fuelled her jet-powered feet by sucking in the very breath of her one true love, God.

There were no gold medals hanging above her nursing home bed for her 100, 200 and 4x100m relay triumphs at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and gold in the 400m in Tokyo in 1964. Just the odd pinned snapshot of family and old friends: her legendary coach June Ferguson, the great Dawn “Dawnie” Fraser; a favourite picture of another Australian legend from a different type of racing, Makybe Diva. No towering trophies or framed images from past glories. In an age of sporting brats and bad eggs, Betty Cuthbert gave us something we don’t see enough of these days.

“Humility,” Rhonda said. “More than anything she gave us, she gave us total humility.

“She was such a fighter but she had three more massive seizures last Thursday night and I just cried to God to remove her.”

It was God who brought Rhonda to Betty’s side. When Rhonda was vacuuming her floor in 1985, it was God who filled her with the ­notion of phoning the then largely reclusive Cuthbert, whom she had met through church, and selflessly offering her a life of care and support. Rhonda mopped Cuthbert’s floors, cooked her breakfast, lunch and dinner, massaged her aching muscles, showered her, lifted her into her wheelchair after dangerous falls, lifted her spirits.

“She suffered through so much, but never once she ever said, ‘Why me?’ She did not. Not even towards the end, she just went along with what God had for her. She wanted to go when she had that first rotten seizure that night. She would have given anything to have gone up. And the things I’ve seen her go through, I cannot believe one person had to suffer so much but still make such an imprint on people’s lives.”

Cuthbert sprinting to the 200m gold medal at the 1956 Olympics.

Rhonda and Betty’s GP — also a committed Christian — regularly prayed over her unconscious body. Betty and Rhonda were daily communicants.

“If only people could realise, Betty wasn’t about telling people to rush off to church or being a Bible basher,” Rhonda said. “She was about having a relationship with something greater than us.

“I sat with her most of the time by her bed. I sat with her until about half past midday on Sunday, then my daughter-in-law said, ‘Go home and have a break’, and I did. Then I came back about 4pm. And I just sat there talking to her and loving her and she was unconscious and something was telling me to go.” She sang Jesus Loves Me to her. Cuthbert would often sing that ditty to herself in bed. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so … Jesus loves me, loves me still, when I’m very weak and ill.” “I just kissed her on the side of her head and something was telling me to leave the room and so I went. I believe she went around then because a nurse found her shortly after that and they were shocked out of their wits.”

Betty Cuthbert’s glorious race was run. “I feel like my right hand has been cut off,” said Rhonda. “I fed her every night for eight-and-a-quarter years. ”

As the morning dragged out yesterday, Rhonda slowly dragged herself out of bed to head back to the nursing home to pack Betty’s belongings.

“Absent in the body, present with the Lord,” she said “You know what, she would be up there right now with the biggest crown on her head. Truly.

“I looked after her for 26½ years and now she’s gone and I can’t think of anything about it all that was hard. It all just feels like a blessing now.”

She clings now to one of her last lucid chats with Betty. They were discussing how she might like her funeral to go, whether she would want a state funeral recognising her wondrous life and achievements.

Betty said she didn’t need a big farewell. But if it makes people happy, she said, then by all means go ahead. “That was Betty personified,” Rhonda say. “She came as a servant. She came to make people happy.’’