| NAGWS is delighted to honor Babe Didrikson Zaharias as the 2002 Guiding Woman in Sport. Accepting this award and speaking at the luncheon is Susan E. Cayleff, professor and Chair of the Department of Women's Studies at San Diego State University. Cayleff is widely acknowledged as the premiere research authority on the life of Olympian, golfer, and medical humanitarian Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956). She is the author of four books, two in the history of women and healing, and two sports biographies. Her 1995 biography, Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Outstanding Book Award. Cayleff has been featured prominently on ESPN Top 50 Athletes of the 20th Century biographical series, consulting with numerous sports radio and television documentaries about Babe's life. She is currently pursuing the possibilities of a feature film.
Cayleff's Talk, "Babe Didrikson Zaharias: Reinventing Gender and Female Athletic Excellence" will trace Babe's phenomenal rise to multi-sport excellence amidst her working-class ethnic Texas roots. Propelled into the national spotlight with two gold medals and a controversial half-gold half-silver at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles in track and field, Babe became one of the most recognizable personalities of the first half of the 20th Century. She helped co-found the Ladies Professional Golf Association, was its leading money winner and President for several years, and put women's sports on the map economically. On a more personal note, she went public with cancer in the 1950s when this was rarely done and positioned as a self-help role model. She and her husband, former entertainer/wrestler/promoter George Zaharias engaged in much needed fund and consciousness raising for the cause. Amidst all of this, Babe zealously guarded her intimate relationship with a young golf protégée, Betty Dodd, from public knowledge-even though the three adults shared a residence for the last six years of Babe's life. ESPN, the Associated Press, and Sports Illustrated chose Babe as the Outstanding Female Athlete of the Twentieth Century. Her legacy is unsurpassed to this day: she bore the brunt of cultural ambivalence toward female athletic excellence while pioneering in unprecedented opportunities for female athletes.
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