Mary Lou Retton’s daughter says the Olympics gymnastics champion remains in an intensive care unit but is doing much better.
“Mom’s progress is truly remarkable,” her daughters McKenna Kelley and Shayla Kelley Schrepfer wrote in Instagram posts. “Prayers have been felt and are being answered.
“Although she remains in ICU, her path to recovery is steadily progressing. Her fighting spirit is truly shining. Her breathing is becoming stronger, and her reliance on machines is diminishing.” Her daughters added, “She’s responding so well to treatments.”
Kelley wrote earlier this week in an Instagram story and an accompanying fundraising post that Retton has a very rare form of pneumonia and is fighting for her life in the intensive care unit, unable to breathe on her own.
That post indicated Retton is uninsured. So far, according to the fundraising post, more than $420,000 has been raised.
Retton, 55, is a native of Fairmont, Marion County. She made history as the first American woman to win the all-around gold medal in Olympic gymnastics.
Her gold medal heroics in the individual all-around competition during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles were punctuated with a perfect 10 on vault. She also took two silver medals and two bronze medals, making her the single biggest American winner.
Pride in Retton’s achievements continues to run deep in West Virginia. Mary Lou Retton Drive and Mary Lou Retton Youth Park each carry her name.
Her father, Ronnie Retton, was captain of the 1958-59 WVU basketball team that lost the national championship by one point. Ronnie Retton, who owned a company that repaired coal mining cable, died in 2021.
Retton moved back to Fairmont in 2009 when her then husband, Shannon Kelley, was hired as director of the Fairmont State Athletic Association, the fundraising unit of the university’s athletic department. The family moved back to Houston in 2012. Retton and Kelley, who have four daughters, divorced in 2018.
Retton has been inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.
“My prayers and all of my prayers and my best wishes go out to her and her family,” Senator Joe Manchin, also a Marion County native, said last week. “Anybody that can help in any way possible and pray for Mary Lou and help in a financial way please do so.”