"AMERICA'S BEST GIRL". . .

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Author: Masin, Herman L.

we become over some of the sublime things that have happened along the way and will never happen again.

Way up near the top of that list has to be those exhilarating 10 years between 1920 and 1930 that have been accepted as the Golden Age of Sport.

It had been an incubating period for the young and talented in literature, entertainment, and especially sport. How those glorious names used to shake down the thunder from the sky: Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, Johnny Weissmuller, Bill Tilden, Tommy Hitchcock, Sonja Henie, Charlie Paddock, Bobby Jones, and Paavo Nurmi.

Icons all, who would never be forgotten by anyone who had ever seen them perform or had just read about them. All of their records have been surpassed, but the memories linger on.

Still, we almost went into shock when on December 1, 2003 a headline jumped out and smote us right between the eyes: "Gertrude Ederle dies at 98!"

Gertrude Ederle, for God's sake! We thought she had vanished with all the other heroes and heroines of the Golden Age, but it appeared that she had lingered on, living the sad, lonely life of a forgotten icon.

There she was in the photo that accompanied the obituary: a smiling, 20-year-old swimmer, swabbed in heavy grease over a two-piece bathing suit, just moments before she was going to attempt the most grueling feat of her time -- swim the English Channel. Only five men had ever accomplished it.

On August 6, 1926, the modest young lady from New York City slipped into the Channel at Cape GrisNez, France, and set out for Kingsdown on the English coast. It was 21 miles away as the crow flies, but actually 36 miles away in the mean, choppy sea with unreadable tides.

Despite all the extra distance she had to travel, she managed to swim the Channel in world-record time.

The world went berserk. Gertrude Ederle came home to New York to a ticker-tape parade with two million people lining the sidewalks and stuffing the windows of all the skyscrapers, showering her with streamers and chanting, "Trudy! Trudy!"

The President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, invited her to the White House and called her "America's best girl."

Nothing of any great consequence ever happened to "America's best girl," who had clearly deserved a whole lot more out of life. But she had never asked for attention and never complained.

"I have no complaints about life," she would say. "I am not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars."

Every Golden Age must have a leading lady. Gertrude Ederle was the star of hers.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): "TRUDY, TRUDY!" Fifteen minutes before 20-year-old Gertrude Ederle stepped into the English Channel on August 6,1926 and made history by not only becoming the first woman to swim the 21-mile Channel but to surpass the timings of the five men who had done it before her?

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By Herman L. Masin