Local Girl Makes Good: 1956 Olympics
She attended Thomas Jefferson Junior High and graduated from Washington-Lee High School in 1955.
Shelley Man moved to Arlington as a preschooler with her parents, Hamilton and Isabel Mann. She started swimming at age 11 when her parents enrolled her at summer camp to get her involved with other children. Shelley excelled and enjoyed it so much she joined the swim club at Walter Reed Hospital, where Hamilton Mann was stationed.
While at Walter Reed, the team won American Athletic Union indoor and outdoor championships from 1953 to 1956. The AAU was a national network of sports teams that produced dozens of Olympic athletes during the middle of the twentieth century.
She moved to Arlington as a preschooler with her parents, Hamilton and Isabel Mann. She started swimming at age 11 when her parents enrolled her at summer camp to get her involved with other children. Shelley excelled and enjoyed it so much she joined the swim club at Walter Reed Hospital, where Hamilton Mann was stationed. While at Walter Reed, the team won American Athletic Union indoor and outdoor championships from 1953 to 1956. The AAU was a national network of sports teams that produced dozens of Olympic athletes during the middle of the twentieth century.
Though training for several hours a day, Shelley was still an ordinary, though popular, teenager. She attended Thomas Jefferson Junior High and graduated from Washington-Lee High School in 1955.
While a student, Shelley sang in the choir, was a member of the social group the Sub Deb Club, and attended dances, football, and basketball games, and went out to eat with her friends. However, as Shelley's trophies and awards mounted, she became a local celebrity.
In the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, Shelley Mann won the gold medal in the 100-meter butterfly, the first year the butterfly stroke was part of the Olympic program. She was also part of the silver medal-winning 4x100 meter freestyle relay team. Her gold was the only one brought home by an American woman, and one of only two gold medals won by the entire US swim team.
Once Shelley returned to the US, she was a national sensation and claimed as Arlington's own. On December 17, 1956, only home for a few days, Shelley received the key to Washington, DC, and was feted at Washington-Lee High School by Arlington's county board and citizens.
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