Field Team. Temple spent time 'getting Earlene in shape' for the 1960 Games and Earlene then became one of Wilma Rudolph's closest friends. At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Brown won the bronze medal in the women's shot put. In the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Brown – who was short-sighted and wore heavy glasses as a consequence, except when throwing – was "beset by both wind and rain and lost her footing and a chance to get a toehold on the crown". In July 1964, Brown hosted her Russian shot-put counterparts, Galina Zybina, Tamara Press, and Yevgenia Kuznetsova, for an unsanctioned tour of Los Angeles, although she could not speak Russian. One stop they made was Sportsman's Bowlorama, a bowling alley where Brown was known to bet in winner-take-all bowling matches called "pot bowling", where she introduced the Russian athletes to the American sport. In 1965 she retired from shot put competition. The same year she became a skater. As a blocker for the New York Bombers Roller Derby team, she was dubbed the "Brown Bomber". In 1975, after retiring from all athletic endeavors, she returned to her practice as beautician. She died aged 47, on May 1, 1983 in Compton, California. Track and field career Brown was the first American woman to medal in the shot put, one of the only two United States women to place at Rome and the only shot-putter to compete in three consecutive Olympics. She was the only American woman to win a medal in the shot put until Michelle Carter won gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. She has been described by Nathan Aaseng as "the most unheralded U.S. athlete of all time". Her events of choice were the shot put and discus throwing. Brown finished in the top ten in the shot put and discus in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, setting American records in both events. Brown was an eight-time (1956–1962 and 1964) and three-time (1958, 1959 and 1961) national champion in the shot put and discus, respectively. In 1958 she received the #1 world ranking and became the first American to break the 50-foot barrier in the shot put. In 1959 she won gold medals in both the shot put and discus events at the Pan American Games. On December 1, 2005 Brown was posthumously inducted in the National Track and Field Hall of