Sports
Babe Didrikson Zaharias
Port Arthur-born Babe Didrikson Zaharias became a 1932 Olympic champion, basketball star, pioneering professional golfer and LPGA co-founder whose career repeatedly challenged the boundaries placed on women in American sport.
- Roster rank
- #111
- Category
- Sports
- Subject type
- Person
- Profile source
- Published Texas Icons profile
Texas story
Life and career
Mildred Ella Didrikson was born in Port Arthur in 1911 and grew up in Beaumont. She played semiprofessional basketball for the Dallas-based Golden Cyclones and dominated track and field before winning Olympic gold in the 80-meter hurdles and javelin plus silver in the high jump at the 1932 Los Angeles Games.
Golf became the longest chapter of her public career. Zaharias won three U.S. Women's Opens, helped found the LPGA in 1950, and returned to championship golf after cancer surgery in 1953, winning the 1954 U.S. Women's Open. Her final medical treatment took place at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston before her death in 1956.
Defining work
What to know
- 1932 Olympic hurdles gold
- 1932 Olympic javelin gold
- LPGA co-founder
- three U.S. Women's Opens
Timeline
Key milestones
- 1911Born in Port Arthur, Texas, before her family moved to Beaumont.
- 1932Wins two Olympic gold medals and one silver medal in Los Angeles.
- 1950Helps establish the Ladies Professional Golf Association as one of its founders.
- 1954Wins the U.S. Women's Open after returning from cancer surgery.
- 1956Dies at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston at age 45.
Texas connections
Places in the story
Port Arthur
Jefferson County birthplace where Zaharias was born in 1911 before the family relocated.
Beaumont
Childhood home, later museum site and burial place, anchoring her strongest lifelong Texas identity.
Dallas
Base for her Golden Cyclones basketball and early track career with Employers Casualty.
Galveston
Site of her later cancer treatment at John Sealy Hospital and her death in 1956.
Legacy
Why the story lasts
Zaharias's range across basketball, track, baseball exhibitions and golf makes her one of the clearest examples of a genuinely multi-sport Texas icon.
Her championship comeback after cancer surgery and her role in building a durable professional tour gave women's golf an audience and institutional structure that outlasted her career.
Sources
Research trail
Cross-linked profiles