Tim Dahlberg - Americas Girl: The Incredible Story of How Swimmer Gertrude Ederle Changed the Nation

Americas Girl

Tim Dahlberg
with Mary Ederle Ward and
Brenda Greene

The Incredible Story of

How Swimmer Gertrude Ederle

Changed the Nation

St. Martins Press New York

Title-page photograph: Gertrude Ederle basks in the adulation of some
of the 2 million people who welcomed her home with the biggest
ticker-tape parade given an athlete in New York City.
(Gertrude Ederle personal collection)

AMERICAS GIRL . Copyright 2009 by Tim Dahlberg with Mary Ederle Ward and Brenda Greene. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Book design by Kathryn Parise

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Dahlberg, Tim.

Americas girl : the incredible story of how swimmer Gertrude Ederle changed the nation / Tim Dahlberg with Mary Ederle Ward and Brenda Greene. 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-38265-0

ISBN-10: 0-312-38265-0

1. Ederle, Gertrude, 19062003. 2. SwimmersUnited StatesBiography. 3. Women swimmersUnited StatesBiography. I. Ward, Mary Ederle. II. Greene, Brenda M., 1950 III. Title.

GV838.E34D34 2009

797.21092dc22

[B]

2008046034

First Edition: August 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of my aunts Helen, Margaret, Trudy,
and my father, Henry, with love and gratitude

Mary Ederle Ward

T he authors would like to acknowledge the following for their contributions to the book:

Robert Ederle, who supplied Gertrude Ederles diary, personal memoir, and many of the pictures used in the book, and who gave constant support and encouragement for it.

Bob Duenkel, executive director and curator of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for the tape recording of his conversation with Gertrude Ederle and his continued support of the book project.

George Schneider, who gave invaluable knowledge of the Ederle family history.

Richard and Stephen Ederle for their continued encouragement, and Mary Ederle Wards husband, Martin, and children, Eileen, Brendan, and Erin, for helping take care of Aunt Trudy in her later years and sharing the excitement over a book about her life.

Leroy Sweeney of Ace Reprographics in Paterson, New Jersey, for his copying of Gertrude Ederles archives.

The Hawthorne, New Jersey, library staff for locating out-of-print books and assisting in research.

August 1925, Cape Gris-Nez, France

T he grease was the worst. Inside the engine room of the tug La Morinie bobbing up and down just off the coast of France, Gertrude Ederle was having it slathered on anyway, one layer at a time. She would need all the protection she could get, even though it was mid-August and the always-chilly English Channel was as warm as it had been in two years.

The sharks were another thing. There wasnt much protection against them, just the hope that the commotion of a tug carrying an odd assortment of journalists, musicians, trainers, friends, and the simply curious would keep them at bay as Ederle swam alongside. Two nights earlier, fishermen had caught two six-footers seven miles off the French coast, giving the young swimmer one more thing to worry about as she excitedly got ready for the adventure of her life. Ederles camp tried to keep the news about the sharks from her, but it was hard to keep a secret when the offending sharks were hung up in front of the central post office in the nearby town of Boulogne.

Trying to swim the Channel was difficult enough without troubling thoughts to weigh on a young girls mind. It was only twenty-one miles from the rocky outcropping of Cape Gris-Nez to the English shore, but veterans knew the swim was at least half again that because of the tide from the Atlantic Ocean, which continually moved in and back out.

From the French side, the white cliffs of Dover looked tantalizingly close on a clear day, but the punishing waves, tricky currents, frigid waters, and assorted marine life combined to beat back almost everyone who dared challenge this stretch of water. Scores had tried over the years, but only a handful had succeeded, and all had been men.

The Channel was an uneasy beast to master. If the cold wasnt enough, the waves, which seemed to rise from nowhere, could stop any would-be conqueror. Every day it was a battle zone of sorts, with the North Sea forcing itself through the Strait of Dover into the narrow opening, only to be pushed back by currents from the Atlantic. Add to that the biting jellyfish, Portuguese men-of-war, sunken ships, and even the occasional shark waiting in the water, none of them particularly happy about sharing their environment with a foreigner, and the swim was treacherous indeed.

The body of water had stretched the imagination of those who had stood on its shores for centuries. Julius Caesar had prepared his long-beaked ships to cross it half a century before the beginning of the Christian era, and William the Conqueror had tried it with a great fleet of flat-bottomed boats eleven centuries later. Napolon had eyed it longingly, certain that it held the key to his domination of Europe, and assembled a fleet of specially prepared ships at Boulogne for an invasion that never occurred.