Sybil Bauer

She was to be married in June. Most of her trousseau was ready. Her fiancé, Edward Sullivan, sports editor of the Macfadden New York Evening Graphic, was sitting at her bedside in a Chicago hospital. Flowers from Gertrude Ederle, Jack Dempsey, Tex Rickard and many another were brought in by her parents. She had been sick for 92 days. She, who had many times looked up from thrashing waters and laughed at the sun, grew pale, saw no sun. Sybil Bauer had ceased to live; her family, her fiance, sports lovers, bowed their heads. . . .

At 15, Miss Bauer first began to swim. She went to Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) ; broke a few world’s records for the I. A. C. She went to the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924; broke a few more. In five years she had shattered every women’s world record (23 of them) in the backstroke between 100 yards and a quarter mile.

Her records still stand.