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Babe Didrickson Zaharias
Born June 26, 1914
Died September 27, 1956
Inducted 2008
Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias was the quintessential
athlete whose performance in multiple sports made her a cultural
icon and a sports legend. The Associated Press named her Female
Athlete of the Year six times from 1932 to 1954 and Female Athlete
of the Half Century in 1950. No other woman has performed in so
many different sports so well. Babe, nicknamed because of her home-run-hitting
prowess as a youngster, was a pioneer who struggled to break down
stereotypes of women in professional sports. She not only insisted
on a sports career but also played in sports that were traditionally
considered to be the male’s domain and refused to conform
to the ladylike image required of female athletes.
Babe Didrikson grew up as a tomboy whose main focus
in life was athletics. In her high school, she was outstanding
in volleyball, tennis, baseball, basketball, and swimming. Her
best sport was basketball, for which she was recruited out of high
school to play for a women’s team, where she was a three-time
All-American. Her interests turned to softball and then track and
field. Between 1930 and 1932, Didrikson held American, Olympic,
or world records in five different track-and-field events. In the
1932 Olympics, she won two gold medals and a silver medal, set
a world’s record, and was co-holder of two other records.
Her interests turned increasingly to golf. She played her first
golf tournament in 1934 and won the Texas Women’s Amateur
Championship in 1935.
In 1938, Didrikson married professional wrestler George Zaharias,
from Pueblo, Colorado. He coached her to win two golf tournaments
in 1940. The couple moved to Denver in 1943, where Babe became
a special consultant to Judge Philip B. Gilliam of the Denver Juvenile
court, working with disadvantaged children. Babe Zaharias played
for Park Hill Country Club and during the 1946-47 seasons, she
won 17 straight tournaments, including the British Women’s
Amateur tournament, the first American to do so. She returned from
that win to a hero’s welcome as Denver’s home-town
girl on July 4, 1947. Zaharias was one of the founders of the LPGA
in 1950. She had 35 career victories in golf, ten of them majors,
including three U.S. Opens. She won the third U.S. Open championship
14 weeks after she underwent major cancer surgery in 1954. The
disease claimed her life in 1956. Zaharias was inducted into the
Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1974 and the National Women’s
Hall of Fame in 1976.
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