Katy Rawls: Fort Lauderdale Olympian, WWII pilot

 

Rawls in 1935

By Jane Feehan

Once a Fort Lauderdale resident, Katherine Rawls (1917-1982) swam and dove her way to celebrity at the  1936 Olympics in Berlin bringing home bronze and silver medals.

She brought world-wide attention to Fort Lauderdale, helping to underscore the relationship of the city to competition swimming. 

Rawls had already established herself before the Olympics of 1932 and 1936, breaking a few world records at national and international championship events, including one, when she was 14, for the 300 meter individual medley. Young Katy had aspired to one day swim and dive in the Olympics after seeing Olympian Johnny Weissmuller train in Coral Gables in 1928. (Rawls, born in Tennessee, had lived in St. Augustine, Coral Gables and Hollywood before Fort Lauderdale.)

Her aspiration turned into a reality when Rawls was the first woman Floridian to join an Olympic team. She won more than 30 national titles for swimming and diving throughout her career. In 1937, the Associated Press tapped Rawls as the “Number One Athlete of the Year” among female competitors.

A swimmer - and swimming instructor - throughout her life, Rawls also achieved distinction during World War II as a pilot. She was one of the original 25 women pilots selected for the U.S. Squadron of Women's Army Ferry Service, shuttling planes into combat zones.

Rawls joined the festivities when the International Swimming Hall of Fame opened in 1965 in Fort Lauderdale and was among its first inductees.

Sources:

City of Fort Lauderdale

Roots Web Ancestry

Weidling, Philip J. , Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

Fort Lauderdale News, April 13, 1936

Florida State University

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale swimmers, Fort Lauderdale swimming, Katy Rawls, Katherine Rawls, women's history, Florida Olympians

Prohibition: Daring women of the rum-running empire

 

Miami liquor raid 1925
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Women played a part (or tried to) in rum-running from the Bahamas to South Florida during Prohibition (1920-1933).

Gloria de Cesares, 29, reportedly born in Argentina and educated in England, founded the Gloria Steamship Company to run her illicit enterprise. An accomplished navigator, she bought a British five-masted schooner, the General Serret, and loaded it with liquor for a trip to the Bahamas.  She didn’t get far. The cargo of the General Serret was discovered, perhaps by a tip from its unhappy captain, before the ship left port, ending de Cesares’ rum-running career.

“Spanish Marie” Waites was far more successful; she headed up a “rum-running empire” after her husband was killed during one murky mission. Some say he was shot, others say he drowned after Marie pushed him overboard.

The tall, darkly attractive woman “strutted with a revolver strapped to her waist, a big knife stuck in her belt and a red bandana tied round her head.”  Spanish Marie commanded a fleet of 15 to 20 radio-equipped speed boats that outran U.S. Coast Guard vessels for years. She delivered rum from the Florida Keys to Palm Beach. In 1928 she was caught unloading liquor with the help of her crew in Coconut Grove. A $500 bail was posted then raised to $3,000 when she failed to appear in court. She disappeared leaving no other traces to history.

By Oscar E Cesare, Puck Magazine 1915
Criticizing alliance of women's suffragettes 
and Prohibition advocates

Gertrude Lythgoe, a Californian who went to New York and then worked for a London liquor distributor, became known as the “Bahama Queen” for her efforts. At the behest of her employer, she set up shop in Nassau where she became the only woman to hold a wholesale liquor license.  Lythgoe’s reputation as a comely, well-read, tough (she threatened to shoot one of her critics), liquor distributor grew. She later wrote about her exploits in Bahama Queen: the Autobiography of Gertrude “Cleo” Lythgoe. Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Tags: Prohibition, women's history, Florida history

Sources:

Behr, Edward. Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996.

Ling, Sally J. Run the Rum In: South Florida During Prohibition. Charleston: History Press, 2007

Willoughby, Malcom F. Rum War at Sea. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964.