Bob and Buck were mentioned in a book review:
America’s Girl, Tim Dahlberg. St. Martin’s Press, NY, NY, 2009. 294 pp. $30 US. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-312-38265-0
Reviewed by Dave Barney, Albuquerque Academy, NM
Much has been written over time about the legendary Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to successfully swim the English Channel, but Tim Dahlberg’s book, America’s Girl, written almost a decade ago in collaboration with Ederle’s surviving niece, Mary Ederle Ward, is by far the deepest and most precise illumination of one of the most celebrated moments in 20th Century sport. Dahlberg’s deliberations come to us courtesy of Mary Ederle Ward’s willingness to share with Dahlberg not only her famous aunt’s extensive archive of more than 1500 newspaper and magazine clippings, but a lengthy, unfinished autobiography written by “Trudy” Ederle herself. Underscoring all this is the matter of oral history, the many hours of conversation that passed between Ward and the primary author of this in-depth look at the woman whose American Moment became a Global Moment in the middle of the decade of the “Roaring Twenties.
The fanfare of Ederle’s swim and subsequent triumph over the stormy and treacherous waters of the English Channel in August of 1926, provides us with much more than merely a conquest of mind over matter. Dahlberg’s narrative focuses on the idea of gender, a motif that piques our curiosity initially about the possibilities of a woman’s physical capabilities and then, ultimately, endows us with a renewed sense of respect for women and what they were able to achieve in an age of male-dominated sport, a culture enthroned by the glamor of “The Lone Eagle” Lindbergh, The Manassas Mauler, Jack Dempsey, and the “Sultan of Swat,” Babe Ruth. The birth of that “Roaring Twenties” awareness of a woman’s capability, ignited by Ederle’s wondrous swim, serves us as a genesis for the current-day respect most of the world holds for women athletes everywhere.
Much of the first half of America’s Girl is given over to Ederle’s preparation for and then the historic swim itself, as well as the massive media coverage of the event. These moments are the most captivating in the entire book, but they lose some of their drama by being repeatedly interrupted by a multitude of narrative detours pertaining to just about anything and everything that transpired during the early days of American women’s swimming in general as well as the evolution of Ederle’s competitive career with the WSA (Women’s Swim Association) in particular. To Dahlberg’s credit, he does shed some light on two of the few failures in Ederle’s competitive life, her disappointing performance in the “Chariots of Fire” Olympics in Paris in 1924, where she only won two bronze and a gold medal instead of a predicted cinch three gold medals and, of course, her failed initial attempt to swim the Channel in 1925. Other sidebars examine the emergence and role of women in American sport in general during the 1920’s and how this particular part of our history was influenced by Ederle’s astonishing achievement.
The second half of the book describes in detail the aftermath of Ederle’s conquest of the Channel and how she became Great Britain’s Girl and then Germany’s Girl before she finally sailed home and became America’s Girl. The hype following the swim was extraordinary. People everywhere simply could not get enough of the shy but charming “Trudy.” Financial offers and tokens of appreciation poured in from around the world, including the prize of a 1926 Buick Red Roadster (see book cover above) given to her by her primary sponsor, the NY Daily News. The city of New York’s “Welcome Home” celebration for “Trudy,” featuring a ticker-tape motorcade through the “Canyon of Heroes” in lower Manhattan, became the standard for future NYC ticker-tape parades and was surpassed only by the city’s welcome for Charles Lindbergh following his successful solo flight from NY to Paris in 1927.
When the cheering eventually stopped, and the money dried up from an exhausting two years of personal appearances and swimming exhibitions in big cities and small towns from coast to coast America and abroad, Gertrude Ederle retired to a quiet, unmarried life of teaching swimming while trying to come to terms with her increasing deafness. She remained relatively shy and uncomplaining throughout her lifetime, which was considerable as she lived to see the new century even though she could not hear any of it.
Among the last interviews she ever granted comes to us compliments of two old friends of NISCA itself, Bob Duenkel and Buck Dawson from the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, where “Trudy” had been an absentee honoree of the Hall’s inaugural class of inductees in 1965. Dawson and Duenkel, who had never met Ederle, came to her apartment in Queens on the day following her 89th birthday with a tape recorder in hand to listen “to a gray-haired old women,” who in one moment of her life had been the planet’s brightest star, a young girl who came of age in an era in which anything it seemed then was possible. “Trudy” Ederle epitomized that era of the “Roaring Twenties,” but it was inevitable that its heroes, including “Trudy,” would eventually fade from the nation’s consciousness and Americans would go about the business of more pressing challenges . . . like dealing with the consequences of the Great Depression followed closely by the ordeal of a world at war.
America’s Champion Swimmer: Voyager Books, NY, NY, 2005. 30pp. $7.00 US. Softcover. ISBN 978-0-15-205251-5
America’s Girl is an important book., but if NISCA coaches wish to introduce young swimmers to the saga of Gertrude Ederle, they would be best advised to consider a companion reader to “Trudy’s” astonishing story: America’s Champion Swimmer is an illustrated text presented especially for young people by Voyager Books, a subsidiary of Harcourt Books. For the most part, Terry Widener’s illustrations far outweigh David Adler’s text. Regardless, the important message that each of these books convey is that with courage and determination anyone can become a champion.
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