Janet Moreau Stone believes she can help U.S. athletes spiritually and mentally in Beijing.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

BARRINGTON — Thanks to a helping hand from her many friends, Janet Moreau Stone will be on hand to help America’s Olympic athletes in Beijing.

“I’m excited,” she said. “I didn’t want to go just to watch. I’d have had kind of a guilty conscience if that’s all I was doing. It’s costing a lot of money to send me. Now I’m going to be doing what I hoped to do, and that’s great.”

What she’ll be doing is acting as an interfaith chaplain to the U.S. team.

It’s hard to imagine anyone better suited for the role.

A former gold medal winner — for many years, she was Rhode Island’s only gold medal winner, after running the third leg of the 4 x 100 relay in Helsinki in 1952 — Mrs. Stone had a career teaching physical education at Barrington Middle School.

She also became a Eucharistic minister after studying at the Ministry Institute of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, and eventually took vows as a Third Order Dominican — a lay lifestyle that includes daily prayer and attendance at church services.

For 15 years, she volunteered as a chaplain at Roger Williams Hospital, where she spent most of her time with patients in the intensive-care unit. She had to stop after a hip replacement made it difficult for her to make her rounds. Instead, she began to visit the elderly in nursing homes.

“What I try to do,” she said, “is listen. The people I see are often very sick, and they’re groping for a relationship. They talk with me, tell me their feelings — things they can’t tell their families.

“When you go to people who are in that condition, you get so close to them. They appreciate so much what you do for them.”

What Mrs. Stone believes she can do for America’s Olympic athletes is help them prepare, spiritually and mentally, to compete at their optimum level, physically and emotionally, in the Games.

“I’m going to be introduced to our athletes in the Olympic Village on August 15,” she said. “Because I’m a former Olympian, and have a gold medal, I can relate to how they feel going into competition. I can understand the pressures they’re under. I certainly was a bunch of nerves before I ran. Every morning, I’ll report to the Olympic Village to see if anyone wants to talk.”

There was no Olympic Village when Janet Moreau, a recent graduate of Sargent College at Boston University, went to Finland for the XV Olympic Games.

“We stayed in a hotel in Helsinki,” she recalled. “We’d just walk out the front door and go shopping. Times certainly have changed. You can’t get near the Olympic Village now. I’ll have to give the security officials my passport every time I go in.”

In some ways, though, times have changed for the better.

Female athletes certainly get much support — and college scholarship aid — than they did when Janet was competing as a swimmer at what’s now Tolman High, in Pawtucket, and later, as a runner, at BU.

“Being an athlete was hard then,” she said, “because a lot of people didn’t think girls should be competing at that level. My mother didn’t understand what I was doing.”

Janet had hoped to become an Olympian as a swimmer, and won national junior titles in the freestyle. But she came to realize her best chance was in track, as a sprinter. She narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympic Games in London in ’48, but three years was part of the U.S. 400-meter relay team that won the Pan-American Games in Buenos Aires.

The following year, she went to Helsinki, where the American relay team upset the Australians, who dropped the baton on the third leg — the one Janet ran. The U.S. team won easily, setting a world record in the process.

“Most people think the highlight was winning the gold medal,” she said. “But, for me, it was walking into that stadium wearing the American uniform. It was such a wonderful feeling. I was very proud to represent my country.”

She’s as excited now about going to Beijing as she was about going to Helsinki more than a half-century ago. She twice has been to the Olympics since ‘52 — she and her late husband, Ray, went to the Games in Montreal in ’76 and Los Angeles in ’84 — but that was strictly as a spectator. Now, she’s once again — although unofficially — a part of the team.

That’s due in large part to the lobbying efforts of Brad Faxon, who first met Mrs. Stone when he was in middle school. Faxon is a friend of Peter Ueberroth, who’s currently the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee. It was Ueberroth who was the chief executive for the Los Angeles Olympic Games in ’84 — an effort which earned him recognition as Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1985. That also was the year he was named commissioner of Major League Baseball, a post he held until 1989.

“Between the two of them, they were able to get me in,” she said.

She wouldn’t have gotten to China had it not been for generous contributions from fellow parishioners at St. Luke — her parish in Barrington, and the many friends she has made over the years through teaching, athletics, and her ministerial work.

“Janet has spent her life selflessly serving others,” said Jim Gladney, a local businessman who is one of the thousands of Barrington kids who grew up admiring “Mrs. Stone” and headed the fundraising effort to send her to Beijing.

“Some of these kids are going to be nervous,” she said. “I’ll try to lift their spirits.”

jdonalds@projo.com