Tri-City Olympic torchbearer and lifelong women’s sports advocate still feisty at 100
A champion of women’s athletics who inspired countless when she ran the Olympic Torch through the Tri-Cities in 2002 turns 100 this week.
Kennewick resident Margaret Racy celebrates her birthday Friday and will earn the prestigious title of centenarian. The sports icon was born June 26, 1926, in Snohomish.
“A hundred? That’s old,” Racy said, tucked into her recliner with a turquoise blanket. Her daughters and granddaughters let out some laughter.
“Who wants to have anything to talk about with an old person?” she asked.
Very many, it turns out, evident by the flood of birthday cards displayed on her coffee table and near the home’s television.
For decades, Racy was a proud and vocal advocate for women’s equality in sports in the Tri-Cities.
Never one to shy away from a “good fight,” the multi-sport coach spoke up at a time when women were increasingly demanding to be treated fairly and have access to equal opportunities in sports, education and the job market.
Her push for equality even preceded the 1975 adoption of Title IX, the landmark law that prohibited sex discrimination at institutions that received federal aid.
Racy was foundational in establishing some of Washington state’s first women’s collegiate teams at Columbia Basin College in Pasco.
In 1957, she began working part-time as a physical education teacher at CBC, where she also coached and encouraged athletes to participate in non-sanctioned sport. Though she dedicated many long hours and bus rides, Racy wouldn’t earn a coaching paycheck until 1975.
“The first time I got a check for it, I went home and put it on the sideboard between the kitchen and the living room. I wanted everybody to see it — this was the first time I had gotten paid for anything I’d ever done,” she told the Herald.
The check was only for $10. But to Racy it was priceless — proof of a hard-won fight.
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Cheryl Holden, CBC’s current vice president for student services, who oversees college athletics, said Racy has been a “powerful advocate for women’s athletics.” Her legacy continues to inspire, she said.
Racy was inducted into the Northwest Athletic Conference Hall of Fame in 1989, and later into the Columbia Basin College’s athletic Hall of Fame in 2009. She coached many sports including basketball, volleyball and tennis.
“Because of her tenacity, our women’s programs have grown into highly competitive teams that consistently strive for excellence across five sports,” Holden said in a statement.
“Her dedication reminds us that progress is built over time, and we remain committed to carrying forward the vision she established for future generations of student-athletes,” she said.
Lynda Meyers, CBC’s athletic director from 1984 to 1994, and Racy’s longtime colleague and friend, recounted establishing the college’s volleyball team in 1973.
Racy was so dedicated to giving young women a fighting chance to compete that she started her own classes at CBC to teach Tri-City residents how to officiate the sport. Those gigs officiating volleyball helped some college students pay their way through school.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though. Meyers said their efforts got some pushback from college presidents in the league.
“We were rascals, that’s for sure. And we demanded equal pay,” Meyers said. “And we got it.”
Life of ‘love, sacrifice and care’
Things are slower these days for Racy, who lives in rural Benton County with daughter Linda Rambone and son-in-law Patrick Rambone. Their hillside home next to a cherry orchard is picturesque with sprawling views of Burbank and the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers.
Racy spends time enjoying life’s simpler pleasures, such as visiting with her family. As the family matriarch, Racy rules from a plush recliner alongside 7-year-old German Shepherd-Rottweiler Fendi.
Racy sips all day on coffee — her favorite being a hot latte, no cream and no syrup, from Starbucks — and is quick to tell a story. While her hearing has dulled, she still sports a gleeful smile, strong sense of humor and an ability to charm anyone who enters the room.
The Tri-City coach shares a birth month and birth year with Marilyn Monroe, the legendary actress and model who would have been 100 on June 1.
Asked her secrets to a long and healthy life, Racy responds emphatically: “That’s because I like to drink wine and I have parties. That’s the only way to go.”
Her advice to the next generation is to “get a decent education,” she said.
“Everybody should go to college. All the college they can possibly get into,” she said with a smile. “People were afraid to think. I think I’ve thought more than I should have.”
Linda Rambone, 78, said her mother has lived a life of “love, sacrifice and care.”
She’s been a tireless force for her family and the many people whose lives she’s touched. She’s a giver of life lessons — all those “little things in life.” Racy is beloved by her two children, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
“She sacrificed for us in countless ways while also building a brilliant career, showing us what strength, dedication and love look like in action,” Rambone said.
Rambone and her husband moved to the Tri-Cities from Colorado after Racy’s husband’s health declined. Mikell Racy died 10 years ago at the age of 90.
“We feel blessed to share this part of mom’s life with her. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to give her the best life possible, and I am equally grateful for my husband. He brought us here and has cared for mom with the same love and devotion he would give his own mother,” Rambone said.
Three generations of the family watched on and chimed in as Racy spoke to the Herald this week.
Toward the end of the conversation, great-granddaughter Meredith Margaret Thompson, 22, a volleyball coach for the Kamiakin Braves, left for practice.
She departed with a hug and kiss from Racy, and some strong words of encouragement: “Give ‘em hell, Meredith.”
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Going for Olympic Glory
Twenty years into retirement, Racy was selected at the spry age of 75 to be a torchbearer during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
The 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Winter Games’ torch relay began Nov. 19, 2001, in Greece and concluded Feb. 8, 2022, at Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah. More than 12,000 international torchbearers took part.
The Tri-Cities relay on Jan. 25, 2002, on the stretch between Spokane and Baker City, Ore., was a community effort.
Racy and some two dozen other Mid-Columbia residents carried the torch 10 miles from Pasco High School to Westgate Elementary School in Kennewick.
She ran the final leg of the Tri-Cities relay along 4th Avenue in Kennewick — it was a lifetime achievement to represent the community she loves on the world stage.
“I thought it was an honor beyond belief,” she recounted.
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And she took her role seriously, too. She told the Herald in 2002 that she practiced lifting a can of pork and beans in lead up to the event.
She was nominated by her granddaughters, Rea Culwell and Michelle Thompson, to participate.
Racy’s family still has the torch.
“That was an amazing time for her,” said Meyers, who remembers cheering Racy on as she passed red, white and blue-decorated sidewalks.
The games were the first to take place following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and took place amid a tender backdrop for the U.S. and Tri-Cities region. The opening ceremony began with the entrance of a tattered American flag recovered from the World Trade Center.
Racy said life is full of “hills and gullies.”
Tears swelled in her eyes as she recounted walking the beaches of Normandy, France, after the D-Day operation. Her husband Mikell served in World War II as a Navy Seabee, and they learned through family about the challenges the British people lived through in those days.
But Racy still counts her blessings. She recounted one story of traveling to see the 1981 Wimbledon tennis tournament in London, and how supportive Mikell was that she get to see the professionals play the sport she’d loved all her life.
“I never had so much fun in all my life. By myself, with no group, I could watch whatever matches I wanted, stay up as late — drink as much as I wanted, there was a lot of drinking,” she said.
She was known around the tournament as “The Yank,” but eventually convinced them to brew some strong coffee instead of the watered-down tea.
Loves in life, and of sport
Racy’s first foray into sports advocacy came at 14 when she raised money at to build tennis courts for the Grand Coulee High School, according to Herald archives. She picked up her love of tennis from her mother, a teacher who played at UC Berkeley.
She made a deal with her father that if she raised the money to build the courts, he would buy her a tennis racket. Racy still has that wooden racket today.
In high school, Racy played doubles and met the love of her life, Mikell, who would go on to support and cheer her on the rest of his life. He was a “big star" athlete at 6-foot-2. Mikell taught in the Pasco School District from 1953 to 1981.
“I thought he was hot stuff, and then he took me out. That was exciting,” Racy recounted. “I was madly in love with him the first time I saw him... He asked me to go to a Mason City Senior Prom. Wow — and that was it.”
Racy later participated in intramural sports at Washington State University, where she graduated with a degree in physical education.
Her passion transcended her age. Meyers said even after Racy retired, she convinced her to come back to CBC to coach tennis later on.
“Then she complained about her husband being able to go to opening day fishing, but really it was Margaret who wanted to do opening day fishing. Margaret liked to do fishing a lot,” Meyers said.
Meyers recounted a particularly perilous trip with the CBC basketball team around 1976. Traveling back to the Tri-Cities from La Grande, Ore., their van slipped and slid through foggy and icy conditions.
“We were sliding down into Pendleton, and there were truckers in the ditches and everything. But we made it. We always had an angel on our shoulders when we would drive those 15-passenger vans with our precious athletes,” she said.
Racy says she fought for years to increase CBC’s budgets for women’s sports. Football facilities, coaching and travel was always “No. 1” on the expenditures list, while women’s tennis was “No. 99.”
She’d be chased out of offices for trying to talk about budgets, but she was persistent and a constant thorn in the side of those in power. She always found an Achilles heel — even administrators had daughters, she thought, and could be convinced.
“I had so much fun because the people sometimes didn’t give me a good enough argument. I could have given them some arguments that they could have used,” she said. “They were lazy.”
Members of the public wishing to send birthday cards and well-wishes can do so by emailing Culwell at reaculwell@gmail.com.
