Over the past three months, 8,319 donors have given Olympic great Mary Lou Retton nearly half a million dollars — $459,324 to be exact — after her daughter went on social media to announce that Retton was “fighting for her life” with “a very rare form of pneumonia” and was not insured.
Also over those past three months, USA TODAY Sports has been in contact with Retton, her daughter McKenna Kelley and two friends of the family via numerous text messages and phone calls, trying to get answers to questions that, as of Monday afternoon, remain unaddressed.
Asked in several text messages and a voicemail on Monday about her lack of health insurance until recently, her financial situation and why she refuses to divulge where she was hospitalized or the name of her doctor(s) more than two months after she left the hospital, Retton, 55, declined to reply.
Retton’s unwillingness to answer the most basic questions about her health care is receiving increased scrutiny for one simple reason: the decision by Kelley and her three sisters to seek public donations for their mother on the crowdsourcing site spotfund.com. Had they not done that, Retton’s illness likely would have remained a private matter, never bursting into public view and enticing so many strangers to send money.
While still refusing to talk to USA TODAY Sports, Retton did agree to an interview with NBC’s “Today Show” Monday morning. She appeared with an oxygen tube in her nose, describing a harrowing,…
