Eleonora Randolph Sears
Boston, 1881 - 1968, Palm Beach, Florida
"I began exercising the first time I fell out of my crib," Sears recalled (quoted in New York Times, 27 Mar. 1968). As a child she acquired her father's habit of daily brisk walks and sometimes accompanied him on 22-mile jaunts from their Beacon Street home to their summer residence in Pride's Crossing, Massachusetts. At the latter place she gained a fascination with horses, which led to a lifetime average of four hours on horseback daily and a devotion to equestrian sports. As an adult she was slender, agile, strong, and possessed of exceptional coordination, restless energy, stamina, and natural ability to quickly perceive and master the skills various sports required.
Sears's first notable athletic achievements occurred in Newport, Rhode Island, where she won lawn tennis club tournaments and, in 1904, swam 4½ miles against a strong current, from Bailey's Beach to Newport Beach. Her firsts or near firsts for women included driving an automobile and being ticketed for speeding; being taken underseas as a submarine passenger; and, in 1910, being an airplane passenger, aloft for eleven minutes with British pilot Claude Grahame-White during an air show. Pre-World War I journalists linked her romantically with several society gentlemen, particularly Harold Sterling Vanderbilt, but she never married.
Sears featured an aggressive, right-handed, hard-hitting, all-court style of tennis. She first drew notice in tennis at a 1905 Newport invitation tournament by defeating former U.S. champion Marion Jones Farquhar before losing in the final round to Maud Barger-Wallach, a future champion. On the grass courts of the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pennsylvania, Sears won the Pennsylvania and Eastern States women's singles championships in 1908, 1909, 1910, and 1918. In addition, she won the U.S. women's doubles titles in 1911 and 1915 with Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman and in 1916 and 1917 with Molla Bjurstedt (Molla Bjurstedt Mallory). In U.S. singles play at Haverford and Forest Hills, New York, Sears competed fifteen times, from 1911 through 1929, and became an all-comers finalist in 1911, 1912, and 1916; a semifinalist in 1917; and a quarterfinalist in 1915 and 1918. After women's national rankings began in 1913, she placed sixth for 1914, tenth for 1915, ninth for 1916, and twelfth for 1918. At age fifty-seven, in 1939, with Sylvia Henrotin, she won the U.S. women's veterans championship (for players age forty-five and older). A frequent traveler abroad, Sears played in the 1922, 1923, and 1924 Championships in Wimbledon, London, England. While in Great Britain, she became acquainted with the Prince of Wales, the future king Edward VIII. When Edward visited America in 1924, Sears was his favorite dance partner.
Sears eventually turned from tennis to another racket sport, squash racquets. In 1918 she invaded the all-male Harvard Club and successfully demanded the right to play squash there. She also captured the first U.S. women's squash championship in 1928. Later she became president of the U.S. Women's Squash Racquets Association and captained a U.S. Wolfe-Noel Cup team that opposed a British team in England. At age fifty-eight she still reached the semifinals of the nationals and, at age seventy-two, still competed in the 1954 U.S. veterans' squash racquets championship.
Sears undertook several publicly noticed marathon walks, some to win wagers. Often she was paced by athletic males and usually was trailed by her automobile and watchful chauffeur. In March 1912 she walked 109? miles in 41½ hours, from Burlingame to Delmonte, California, before collapsing at the finish. In December 1925 she covered 47 miles in 10½ hours, from Providence, Rhode Island, to Boston; and the following year she traversed the same route in 9? hours. In April 1928 Sears marched 74 miles through rain in 16 hours, from the Newport Casino to her Beacon Street home, and two months later she went 42½ miles in 8½ hours, from Fontainbleau, France, to Paris. "It was fun," she said, "the traffic made it very exciting."
Some considered Sears eccentric for riding horses astride in men's breeches, or demanding entry into a men's polo game in 1909, or driving a four-in-hand coach down New York City's Fifth Avenue in 1912 in order to win a bet. However, she was a serious, dedicated horsewoman who rode, bred, trained, and owned hunters, jumpers, steeplechasers, standardbreds, and thoroughbreds. The stables at Pride's Crossing were her greatest joy. Her horses, sometimes with Sears herself riding, won numerous blue ribbons at the National Horse Show in Madison Square Garden, New York City. She did not enter flat racing as an owner until 1954 when she purchased a bay yearling colt from the Aga Khan.
Other sports in which Sears engaged were many and varied. She raced speedboats and canoes and skippered a yacht that beat Alfred Vanderbilt's Walthra. A crack shot with rifle and pistol, she was a fine trapshooter. She also participated in baseball on Boston Common, field hockey, ice hockey, skating, boxing, and football with other girls, and even backgammon. A fine golfer, she once played forty-five holes in a day, but she found golf rounds too slow paced for her liking. Reputedly she won 240 trophies in all her various athletic endeavors. In addition, generous donations provided vital support to several sports, including the U.S. Olympic equestrian teams and the National Horse Show. After a 1961 air crash killed almost the entire U.S. figure skating team, her monetary gifts helped to rebuild a new team. Her voice and gifts of horses and money kept the Boston mounted police division from being abolished.
Sears lived her last five years in Palm Beach, Florida, where she died. She was posthumously elected to the National Lawn (later International) Tennis Hall of Fame in 1968, the Horseman's Hall of Fame in 1877, the International Women's Hall of Fame in 1984, the Show Jumping Hall of Fame in 1992, and the National Horse Show Foundation Hall of Fame.
Bibliography
For insight on Sears's life and activities, see Cleveland Amory, "Bostonian Unique--Miss Sears," Vogue, 15 Feb. 1963, pp. 80-83, and Amory, The Proper Bostonians (1947), pp. 348-49. Brad Herzog, The Sports 100: The One Hundred Most Important People in American Sports History (1995), pp. 396-98, is also useful. Other references are Ralph Hickok, A Who's Who of Sports Champions (1995), pp. 709-10, and Frank G. Menke, The Encyclopedia of Sports, 3d rev. ed. (1963), pp. 1008-9. The New York Times published many news articles about Sears; consult the New York Times Index to Proper Names. Obituaries are in the Boston Globe and the New York Times, both 27 Mar. 1968.
Frank V. Phelps
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Frank V. Phelps. "Sears, Eleonora Randolph";
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