Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton has been battling severe pneumonia in a hospital intensive care unit, daughters of the famed American gymnast said.
A Tuesday post on a crowd-funding page by Retton’s daughter, McKenna Kelley, characterized the Hall of Fame gymnast as being critically ill. Another daughter confirmed the illness to NBC News.
On the crowd-funding site, McKenna Kelley wrote: “My amazing mom, Mary Lou, has a very rare form of pneumonia and is fighting for her life. She is not able to breathe on her own. She’s been in the ICU for over a week now.”
I used to watch Mary-Lou’s Flip-Flop Shop every Saturday morning as a kid. Apparently it was locally produced in Houston, where I lived, so I wonder if it was even known about elsewhere? Basically she had a Saturday morning kids’ show that ran for one season, and it aired at like 6:30am. For some reason I was obsessed with it (despite being slightly older than the target demographic by the time it was airing) and I would wake up ungodly early on Saturdays to watch Mary Lou do somersaults and tell jokes.