Driving west on I-10 through Beaumont, you will see on the right a round building. It stands out, you can’t miss it. It is the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum. She was the greatest female athlete of the 20th Century. Grantland Rice described her as the most inspiring person he ever met. She died at 45, tragically young, of colon cancer. She won two gold medals and a silver in track and field at the ’32 Summer Olympics. She was an All-American in basketball. She holds the world record for the baseball throw – 296 feet – a record that will always stand because the event was discontinued around 1960.
At the suggestion of Grantland Rice, she finally settled on golf as her primary sport. Bobby Jones declared Babe to be one of the top 10 golfers – male or female – of all time. She qualified for a PGA event in 1938, the first woman ever to do so. Ben Hogan – one of the greatest golfers – said there would never be another woman like her. There literally was almost nothing she could not do. Two times she pitched major league baseball games – and held her own.
When she learned she had colon cancer, she never let it unnerve her. Ben Hogan said of her, “She fought cancer as though she were fighting an opponent in a game, retreating only inch by inch, fighting for every half-inch.”
Babe said, “I have put everything in the hands of God, and it is all right.” The amazing Babe Didrikson Zaharias continues to be remembered not only as an athlete but as a person who faithfully rose above the crisis.
It’s always rough when we receive bad news about our own health. We expect simply to keep living. Sometimes crisis in the form of illness stretches out for a long time. It is then we most need our faith. Faith supplies the power to be sustained in the struggle. So keep the faith – and let us know so we can pray for you.
Keep The Faith