On January 31, 1927, Sybil Bauer, an initiate of the Gamma Phi Beta chapter at Northwestern University, died. She was 23.
Bauer was also a gold medal Olympian who, at the age of 22 held 23 swimming records in the women’s backstroke. She was the first woman to break a man’s swimming record.
Her family, immigrants from Norway, had a summer home at Loon Lake and she learned to swim early. She began swimming at the Illinois Athletic Club. Her training partner was Johnny Weissmuller, of Tarzan fame.
She broke high school records. Bauer began her studies at Northwestern University in 1922. That October she broke by four seconds the 440-yard backstroke record for men held by Stubby Krueger. Because the meet was unsanctioned, her time was never officially recognized.
At the 1924 Paris Olympics, she broke her own world in 100 meter backstroke with a time of 1:23:2. A month before the event, a few Gamma Phi friends saw her off as she and her teammates sailed to Europe on The America. In an article in the September 1924 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta, her sorority sisters felt they had a hand in her gold medal:
On the day of the meet, according to Sybil’s own story, she had a wretched cold and was feeling decidedly blue and homesick. The mail arrived that very day, bringing her many letters and a writing case from the girls at convention. Immediately the blues took leave and she knew that everyone in Gamma Phi was behind her. She went in with a vengeance and won – so we feel as it we had a little part in her victory.
After the Olympics, she competed in Brussels and England and then went on a family visit to Norway, where she won first place in an exhibition.
Her Gamma Phi sisters were proud of her and an article in The Crescent reported that although she had:
received prizes and medals without number – and still she is modest and retiring. It seems remarkable that a girl can do so much and remain unchanged and unspoiled through it all. She is not only a swimmer but an all-around athlete, for she has made hockey, basketball, baseball and golf teams at college, in addition to being head of the swimming for the coming year.
In February of 1926, she competed for the last time. There are reports that she felt dizzy at that meet in in St. Augustine, Florida. Medical attention was sought and surgery was performed in late 1926. It appears to have been intestinal cancer.
Tacoma Daily Register, January 17
Newspapers reported that she fought valiantly for 92 days while in Michael Reese Hospital. The Northwestern senior was getting ready to graduate and her fiancé was Edward Sullivan, a New York newspaper man who became smitten with her when he was covering the 1924 Paris Olympics. Years later the world would know him as Ed Sullivan, host of a Sunday evening television show. They were to be married that June. One report stated, “her sorority sisters have been visiting her in the hospital and assisting in the gathering of her hope chest.” Sullivan, along with her family, were at her bedside when she died. Weissmuller and other local swimmers served as pallbearers.
The International Swimming Hall of Fame honored Bauer with inclusion in 1967. In 1984, when Northwestern University created its Athletics Hall of Fame in 1984 she was a charter member.
