The New Yorker:

By Lurton Blassingame
August 20, 1926

The Mayor’s Reception Committee has been enlisted; there have even been conferences in Albany with Governor Smith. Motion picture producers, theatrical agents, and swimming-club owners have been running around with contracts; New Yorkers have been waiting to cheer. For Gertrude Ederle is coming home and, at the age of nineteen, is one of the most famous persons of the moment. And certainly no tourist, returning from a trip abroad, will receive this fall such a welcome as will she.

It was in the summer of 1915 that Gertrude Ederle’s father, Henry Ederle, decided that he had made enough money in the Ederle Brothers Meat Market to afford a summer cottage at the Highlands in New Jersey. And it was from the porch of this little two-room bungalow that Gertrude received her first swimming lessons. Dangling from the end of a rope held by her father as she learned the dog paddle, she would look up and smile; never has she shown the slightest fear of the water—or lack of self-confidence in it.

Three years later Katherine Brown, of the Women’s Swimming Association, gave an exhibition at the Highlands. Mrs. Ederle and all the little Ederles saw it. The youngsters wanted to learn to swim like the expert representative, and Mrs. Ederle thought it would be fine for them. That fall the three oldest—Margaret, Helen, and Gertrude—joined the Association. The big forward step had been taken.

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