Gertrude Ederle Research Paper

Gertrude Ederle was born in New York City on October 23, 1905. She was one of five children of Henry and Anna Ederle, German immigrants who owned a butcher shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side. From a young age she was passionate about swimming, which she learned at the local public pool and at the New Jersey beach where her family spent summers. As a kid she left school to practice as an athletic swimmer. Later she joined the Women’s Swimming Association. She had her first win at the age of 16, between 1921 and 1925 holding 29 records. Ederle swam at the Olympic Games in Paris, where her freestyle team won three straight medals. In 1925, she began training to swim across live television. Twenty-one miles of water between England and the European mainland. Other men swimmers had already crossed the channel but she was trying to be the first woman to ever achieve the goal.

Ederle was greeted by crowds when she came back home in New York.

Excited admirers welcomed her at the dock, through the streets and mobbed her upon her arrival at the city hall. Where Mayor Jimmy Walker congratulated her and the president Calvin Coolidge had named her "America's Best Girl" as he invited her to the white house. For years to come, America's "Queen of the Waves" became a sports star and cultural sensation. Until 1950 her Ederle record was unbroken. Later in life she had suffered a severe back injury in 1933, where she wouldn't be able to compete again. Her life was quiet; she had achieved her one ambition by being on national television. She taught swimming classes to children in schools. She was never married but she lived with several female friends in New York City. In 2003 Gertrude Ederle died in New Jersey, at the age of 98. The Gertrude Ederle Recreation center bears her name on the west side of Manhattan, not far from where she grew up and first learned how to

swim