07-26 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Grueling Practice Makes a Champion,
Not Just Talent
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES from
Newsweek; anon.
Grueling Practice Makes a Champion,
Not Just Talent
Two Olympic champions - two women who exemplify
the fruit of hard work and devotion to an ideal - Micki King born
07-26-1944 and Dorothy Hamill born 07-26-1956.
Micki King, after years of sacrifice and a daily
grind that would been impossible for most people, was leading for the diving
gold medal in the 1968 Olympics when she struck the board on her last dive
and broke her arm.
She made the dive anyway but fell to fourth from a
clear lead.
Instead of cursing the fates or luck, she the almost
inhuman training of several hundred dives a week so that at the extraordinarily
old age of 28 (for Olympic participation) she won the gold in the 1972
Olympics.
MK went on to coach at the U.S. Military Academy
with a rank of captain in the Air Force. She had enlisted in 1966 and competed
in the Olympics while in the military. She was the first woman to ever
coach men in the service.
In world-wide military competition against men, she
finished third and fourth in various diving events when she was the only
woman competitor. Dorothy Hamill, the U.S. gold-medal-winning-ice-skater
of the 1976 Olympics, was a surprise win. She astounded everyone with perfect
marks in several of the short programs and an almost perfect final artistic
burst. It was one of the most impressive exhibitions in ice skating history.
Her bubbly personality made her a popular celebrity
and her wedge-cut hair became the rage.
She became the country's biggest draw as a professional
skater with the Ice Capades, a show that she bought in 1993 and nursed
back to financial health.
Hamill's schedule shows the kind of devotion one has
to make to a sport (or really to any endeavor) to succeed: she quit regular
school at 14 (replaced by tutors) and practiced seven hours a day, six
days a week for six years.
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07-26 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
DIED 07-26-1659, Moll Cutpurse - Britain's most notorious 17th century
woman outlaw. Both as a pickpocket or "cutpurse" and as a
highwayman dressed in male clothing, she was a failure. She was arrested
time and time again.
Seeing the error of her
ways, she got out of the active trade and became a noteworthy seller of
stolen goods. She even opened an outlet on Fleet Street in her own version
of Robin Hood: buying low from thieves and selling high to the rich. She
lived to be 74 which in those days was a very, very old age and legend
has it she was active and happy to the end.
B. 07-26-1818, Lucy N. Colman - U.S. social activist. The railway
company gave LNC's husband-employee a big catered funeral that entertained
more than two thousand "mourners" but it refused his wife and
child any financial assistance.
She became a school teacher
and in the usual way of the times, she received less than half of what
paid to a male teacher. She was so poor she limited herself to one meal
a day and no heat.
She became a women's
rights advocate. In later years as a freethinker, she actively opposed
Anthony Comstock's censorship.
B. 07-26-1822, Mary Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer - U.S. author.
She produced a dozen interesting and well- researched histories. She began
to write before her marriage but stopped for 20 years until her children
were of age.
B. 07-26-1858, Ella Alexander Boole - U.S. temperance leader
who was the first to personally lobby legislators instead of just handing
them petitions.
EAB served as national
WCTU president 1925-33 and was head of the World WCTU 1931-1946.
B. 07-26-1902 (1896), Gracie Allen - U.S. comic. GA was the Allen
of the highly popular comedy team of Burns and Allen. Gracie took no part
in the writing or promotion of the comedy, preferring her home and children.
Her comedic delivery was impeccable, and the duo retained high popularity,
but she got tired of the airhead with the twisted logic that she was forced
to portray - although she continued to do it so very well. It was totally
different from her own personality.
Her right arm had been
badly scalded when she was a child, and she always wore long sleeves.
B. 07-26-1935, Charlotte Beers - U.S. advertising executive.
CB was CEO and then chair of Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency that
in her day was one of the world's largest with 275 offices in 64 countries
and billings in excess of $8 billion. Her successor as CEO was Shelly Lazarus.
B. 07-26-1945/46(?), Helen Mirren - British-American classical actor
who won acclaim for her Shakespearean work, and had a notable career in
film.
Contrary to the experience
of most women actors, HM gained popularity as she got older with a stellar
role on TV. Her breakthrough was her portrayal of Detective Chief Inspector
Jane Tennison in the TV series Prime Suspect (and its sequels that
we all eagerly await). The series became the most popular PBS series ever
and is shown in more than 50 countries.
Possessing a magnificent
body, HM usually had a scene in every movie where she bared her breats.
Event 07-26-1961: Anne X. Alpern was the first woman in Pennsylvania's
history to sit on its Supreme Court. She had been the state's attorney
general.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
ANON:
"Some
of you may wonder if you're smart enough to hold elective office. Listen.
Go up to the State House and sit in the visitors' gallery. Watch what goes
on. Watch those men. Then come back here and tell me if you're smart enough
to join them."
-- A woman office holder in the
Massachusetts state government speaking to women new to feminist and political
activism, as reported in the Oct. 21, 1991, issue of Newsweek.
ANON :
"They want to
be all-American yet do not want all Americans."
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