One of the most notable athletes of the 1930s was Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
Who was Babe?
What sports did she become famous for?
Babe Didrikson’s real name was Mildred, but almost everyone remembers her as “Babe”
(a lifelong nickname).
Her parents were Norwegian immigrants, and she had six brothers and sisters.
When she was four years old, her family moved to Beaumont, Texas where she would grow up.
She wasn’t a great student and even dropped out for a brief period before finishing high
school.
Fortunately for Babe, she was an extremely talented athlete.
When she was 21, she gained worldwide attention at the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Championships
in July of 1932.
In less than three hours, she competed in eight different events, winning five and tying
for first in a sixth.
She set three world records that day, including the javelin, 80m hurdles, baseball throw (which
she threw 272 feet), and the high jump.
Later that month, she competed in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
She won two gold medals (the hurdles and javelin throw) and a silver for the high jump.
After the Olympics, she began a career in golf.
Throughout the late 1930s and 1940s, Babe Didrikson was the dominant name in women’s
golf.
She was unquestionably America’s first female golf superstar.
She accomplished many feats throughout her career, including being the first American
to win the British Ladies Amateur.
At one point she won as many as thirteen tournaments in a row!
In 1938, she married a professional wrestler named George Zaharias, becoming Babe Didrikson
Zaharias.
The two met while at a charity golf event and wed less than a year later.
The couple remained married for the rest of Babe’s life.
Aside from being a gifted track athlete and golfer, Babe Zaharias experienced success
in other sports as well.
She played baseball and softball, was a skilled diver, a talented basketball player, and could
also bowl, box, play ice hockey, and even roller skate.
She also found time to be an excellent seamstress, sewing all of her own golf outfits.
She could even play the harmonica and sing (she recorded songs for Mercury Records!).
In 1953, Babe was diagnosed with colon cancer.
She battled the illness for two years before finally losing the struggle in 1955.
She died at the age of 45, but managed to continue playing golf right up to the end
of her life.
At the time of her death, she was still the #1 ranked female golfer in the world.
In her lifetime, she won the Associated Press “Female Athlete of the Year” six times.
In 1999, the Associated Press named her the “Greatest Female Athlete of the 20th Century”.
However, her impact goes far beyond her exploits in sports.
She was one of many females throughout the 1930s and ‘40s that changed the public’s
expectation of women.
In a society where many believed that women should be, in the words of one sports writer
of the day, “getting themselves prettied up and waiting for the phone to ring,” Babe
Didrikson Zaharias was proving that women not only had a place in society but a place
in sports as well.