Coral Gables Historical Archive
The Coral Gables Times
Thursday, June 7, 1962, page 57 (of 64)
The page
The text of this pageRead by computer from the scan, so some words may be wrong. The page picture is the original.
The Great Outdoorsman
Continued from page 31 because that was about the only thing I hadn't tried, but the very first day I strained something in my back trying to open my locker. It really wasn't my fault. The door of the locker was so rusty that the coach of the gym team couldn't open it himself. Anyway, the doctor said the gym team would have to get on without me. That made me pretty blue, of course, knowing how my family was going to feel, and then the next thing I knew I made Phi Beta Kappa. That was the crowning blow. Mother took it very hard. My brothers did everything they could to comfort her. John told her it was just hard luck, and if I didn't wear the key people wouldn't know about it. Mother died that summer, just after winning the Women's Open Golf Tournament of Upper Nassasoit Lake. Everyone said what a wonderful way to go. At the funeral the minister said she was one of the healthiest women he had ever buried. When the estate was settled, I found that I had enough money to live in reasonable comfort, so I decided to devote my life seeking some outdoor sport in which I would be good enough not to disgrace the name of Bottomly. I ruled out tennis and golf because I had already tried them, and they didn't seem suited to me. It wasn't so much a matter of hitting the ball—I could do that quite regularly and briskly. My difficulty was that I never knew where it was going. This was particularly bad in the case of tennis because it gave my opponents very little chance to participate in the game, as a result of which I found it more and more difficult to find anybody to play with. In the case of golf it was the expense which eventually caused me to drop the game. The caddies never knew in which direction to look, and we lost a ball on almost every shot unless I was lucky enough to miss it entirely. I WAS GETTING discouraged. I had been a miserable failure in everything I had tried to date. I used to spend my summers at various watering places on the south shore of Long Island, and it occurred to me that swimming might be an excellent sport on which to concentrate. It required only a few simple movements of the arms and legs. Once I had really mastered those I could enter swimming meets all over the country with an eye on the Olympics as my ultimate goal. I found swimming difficult, so I employed the lifeguard to teach me the fine points. I don't believe he was a very good instructor, however, for although I finally learned to swim quite well I was never able to make any progress through the water, which is, of course, a very basic thing in swimming. I did discover an unusual technique, however, which enabled me to walk on the bottom by expelling all the breath from my body. It was quite sensational to see me calmly enter the ocean and disappear, at least it would have been if the lifeguard had not insisted on plunging after me and dragging me out each time. So I gave the whole thing up and took to floating. I was good at floating. I seemed to be more buoyant than most people. On calm days I could clasp my hands behind my head and pretend that I was sleeping, which Continued on page 34
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