Gertrude Ederle

Hello there. My name is Gertrude Ederle, but my friends and family always called me Trudy. I want to tell you my story, which begins in New York City, where I was born on October 23, 1905. The city was a bustling, noisy place, full of horse-drawn carriages and the world’s first skyscrapers. My father, Henry, was a butcher with a shop on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. He was a kind, hardworking German immigrant who believed his children could do anything. We weren’t wealthy, but our home was full of love and encouragement. Every summer, my family would escape the city heat and go to our cottage in Highlands, New Jersey. It was there, in the Shrewsbury River, that my father taught me how to swim. He didn’t use any fancy methods; he simply tied a rope around my waist, tossed me in, and told me to paddle. I wasn’t scared at all. I loved the water from the very first moment.

Something happened when I was about five years old that changed my life forever. I came down with a terrible case of the measles, and the illness left my hearing permanently damaged. Doctors told my parents I should avoid swimming, warning that the water could make my hearing even worse and might even make me completely deaf. But the water was my sanctuary. With my hearing impaired, the world often sounded jumbled and loud, but when I slipped beneath the surface of the river, everything became peaceful and quiet. It was my own silent, beautiful world where I felt strong and free. My love for swimming was more powerful than any doctor’s warning, and I refused to give it up. This challenge, this obstacle, didn't stop me; it only made me more determined to find my strength in the place where I felt most at home.

As I grew older, my simple love for swimming turned into a powerful passion for racing. When I was fifteen, in 1921, I joined the Women's Swimming Association in New York. It was a place where girls like me could train seriously, and I quickly realized I had a gift. I spent countless hours in the pool, pushing myself harder and harder. My coach saw my potential and helped me perfect my stroke, the American crawl, which was faster and more efficient than what most swimmers used at the time. Between 1921 and 1925, I swam in races all over the country and set 29 national and world amateur records. I was fast, and I was just getting started. All that hard work led to one of my proudest moments: competing for the United States in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, France. Imagine a girl from Manhattan, the daughter of a butcher, standing on a world stage. The excitement was overwhelming. I swam my heart out and came home with a gold medal as part of the 4x100-meter freestyle relay team, and two individual bronze medals in the 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle events. Standing on that podium, I felt an incredible sense of accomplishment, but that Olympic success planted an even bigger, more daring dream in my mind.

After the Olympics, I needed a new challenge, the biggest one I could imagine: swimming the English Channel. At that time, only five men had ever successfully made the treacherous 35-mile swim from France to England. No woman had ever done it. I wanted to be the first. My first attempt was in August of 1925, sponsored by the Women’s Swimming Association. They hired a coach for me named Jabez Wolffe. He had attempted to swim the Channel himself over twenty times and had never succeeded. Looking back, I don't think he truly believed a woman could do what he couldn’t. The swim was difficult. The water was cold and the currents were strong, but I was making good progress. After nearly nine hours in the water, I was resting, floating on my back, when my coach suddenly ordered another swimmer to touch me and pull me from the water. I was disqualified immediately. He claimed I was struggling and on the verge of drowning, but I wasn't. I was furious and heartbroken. I felt he had robbed me of my chance. That failure was a painful lesson, but it filled me with an unshakeable resolve. I knew in my heart I could do it, and I decided right then that I would return the following year, this time on my own terms.

On the morning of August 6, 1926, I stood on the shore of Cape Gris-Nez in France, ready for my second chance. This time, I had a new coach, Bill Burgess, a man who had successfully swum the Channel himself. The weather was awful. The sky was gray, the wind was howling, and the waves were crashing violently. Everyone, including the boat captains, told me it was madness to even try. But a fire was burning inside me, and I trusted my own strength. I dove into the icy, churning water at 7:08 a.m. The swim was more grueling than anything I had ever experienced. The waves were like mountains, tossing me around relentlessly. The freezing salt water stung my eyes, and I was stung by jellyfish. But I wasn't alone. In the boat beside me were my father and my sister, Margaret. They shouted encouragement, sang songs, and held up signs to keep my spirits high. I thought of all the girls who would be watching and hoping, and I knew I couldn't give up. After 14 hours and 34 minutes, I felt sand beneath my feet. I had reached Kingsdown, England. I had not only become the first woman to swim the English Channel, but I had beaten the men's record by nearly two hours. When I returned home, New York City threw me the most incredible ticker-tape parade. Two million people lined the streets, cheering for 'Trudy, Queen of the Waves.' I hope my journey showed the world that with courage and determination, a girl could do anything she set her mind to. I proved that our dreams are never impossible, as long as we are brave enough to swim against the tide.