Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bissingen, Germany, he had worked on the Ederle family farm and inn, gaining both a wide variety of work experience and a strong work ethic.
    Soon after he arrived in New York, Ederle, who had always helped butcher the family livestock, found work as a delivery boy and apprentice butcher in a small butcher shop at no Amsterdam Avenue, between Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth streets on the Upper West Side, near the piers that delivered livestock to Manhattan. Instead of living in a German enclave like Kleindeutschland, Henry Ederle took a room nearby. In only a few years he was able to buy out the proprietor and open the store under his own name. After he sent letters back home describing the opportunity that awaited those who immigrated to America, a number of cousins, siblings, and other relatives joined him in New York, many on prepaid tickets purchased either by Ederle or by the growing Ederle clan in America, and went to work for him at the butcher shop.
    By the early 1900s Ederle was in business with his brother Johann, or John. Although the business began as a simple butcher shop, before long Ederle Brothers Meats was producing its own sausages and other specialty meats craved by new immigrants hungry for a taste of the old country.
    In 1903 Henry Ederle married twenty-year-old German immigrant Gertrud Haverstroh, from Königsberg, East Prussia, which is now a part of Russia. A short time later their first child, Helen, was born. Another daughter, Margaret, soon followed, and on October 23, 1905, a third daughter, Gertrude Caroline, was born.
    There was nothing remarkable about the young child, who almost everyone called Trudy, apart from the robust health that character ized most of the Ederles, many of whom traditionally lived into their eighties or nineties. But in 1910 when Trudy was only five years old, that all changed.
    An outbreak of measles swept the city and, in a crowded urban environment like New York, nearly reached epidemic stage, a problem local health officials blamed, in all likelihood erroneously, on the constant influx of new immigrants. No vaccines yet existed to control such ailments, and the mechanisms of viral diseases such as polio and measles were poorly understood. Trudy Ederle was one of the thousands of New York youngsters to contract the disease.
    At first, she didn't feel bad at all, for the measles virus strikes with little warning. But over the course of only a few hours Trudy was seized by a high fever accompanied by congestion, watery eyes, and a rash that began on her cheeks and spread over her entire body, causing her mother to put her to bed and try to keep her other children from getting the disease.
    Then, as now, once measles sets in there is little to be done. Trudy was feverish, and her mother placed cool towels on her forehead and wiped her arms and legs with cool water, praying for the fever to break. For most children afflicted with measles, the fever is by far the most hazardous symptom, as it can sometimes rise to dangerous levels. If a fever is not controlled, temperatures above 105 degrees for an extended period of time can cause irrevocable brain damage.
    After her mother spent a few sleepless nights caring for her, Trudy's fever broke and she appeared to recover, apparently none the worse. But over the next few weeks her family realized that Trudy had not emerged unscathed.
    They began to notice subtle changes in the way she acted and behaved. Street noise and the clatter of city life seemed to distract her. She sometimes "misheard" what was said and began to speak louder than normal. When everyone was talking at once—a common occurrence at family get-togethers when German and heavily accented English flew back and forth across the dinner table in overlapping conversations, Trudy seemed confused. It soon became apparent that she simply didn't hear very well anymore.
    As soon as her parents realized what was happening, they rushed their daughter to a doctor. She had an ear