PARA PAR@ ` TEXT ` Zaharias, Mildred Ella Didrikson1914╨1956athleteBorn in Port Arthur, Texas, on June 26, 1914, Mildred Didrikson was the daughter of Norwegian immigrant parents. She grew up in Beaumont, Texas, where she starred on the girls╒ basketball team in high school. In high school and later as an employee of the Employers Casualty Company of Dallas, which fielded a championship amateur basketball team, she was chosen to the All-American teams in 1930, 1931, and 1932. In July 1932, at the women╒s national track and field tournament held by the Amateur Athletic Union in Evanston, Illinois, she entered eight of the ten events and won five of them: the 80-meter hurdles, the shotput, the broad jump, the baseball throw, and the javelin throw. Her personal score exceeded that of the second-place team. In the Olympic Games of 1932 at Los Angeles she won two gold medals, setting new world records of 143' 3╨11/16" in the javelin throw (bettering the old mark by nearly 11 feet) and 11.7 seconds in the 80-meter hurdles. Her record-breaking mark in the high jump was disallowed because of objections to her then-unorthodox western roll. Shortly after the Olympics she turned professional and began giving athletic exhibitions throughout the country. She excelled in swimming, baseball (she played an exhibition with the touring House of David team and pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals), and billiards. For a time she toured in vaudeville. In 1935 Didrikson took up golf and, regaining her status as an amateur, soon became the leading woman golfer in the United States. Her amateur status was revoked in 1936, and she toured as a pro for a time. In December 1938 she married wrestler George Zaharias and settled in Beverly Hills, California. In 1940 she won the Western and Texas Open golf tournaments. Her amateur status was restored in 1944, and that year she won the Western Open again. She became the first three-time winner of the Western in 1945. In 1946 she won the National Women╒s Amateur title. In that year she also became the first three-time winner of the Associated Press poll of woman athlete of the year (she had won in 1932 and 1945); she was to win again in 1947, 1950, and 1954. In 1947 she won 17 straight golf titles, including the British Women╒s Amateur, of which she was the first U.S. winner. She turned pro again in 1948 and won that year╒s U.S. Open and continued to win most of the tournaments in which she played. In 1950 she was voted in an Associated Press poll the outstanding woman athlete of the century. She won the U.S. Open again in 1950. She was the leading money-winner on the women╒s golf tour in 1948, 1949, 1950, and 1951. By 1952 it was obvious that she was very ill, and the next year she underwent an operation for cancer. She appeared to have recovered when she won the women╒s U.S. Open (for the third time) and the All-American Open in 1954. But she was operated on once again in 1956 and died that year in Galveston, Texas, on September 27. Her autobiography, This Life I╒ve Led, had appeared in 1955. ╓styl `
