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Inducted 1982   Growing
in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Diana began swimming seriously at age 10.
At Pine Crest Prep School, she became Florida state champion in the 100
and 200-meter freestyle events. She had dreams of making the 1968
Olympic team, but, unfortunately, she contracted viral endocarditis and
was never able to resume her former speed.
She entered Lake Forest College in 1970 and excelled at a number of activities. She played on an unbeaten varsity tennis team, earned election to Phi Beta Kappa and took drama lessons at Chicago's Goodman Theater. The recipient of the prize for outstanding senior woman, Diana was also selected as class speaker at commencement and earned a double major in French and English. She was also able to resume swimming and set the women's record in her first marathon event, the 10-mile Lake Ontario swim. It turned out to be only the first of many records Diana broke during her 10-year marathon-swimming career. In 1975 she won fame by swimming around Manhattan Island and established an international following. In 1979 she became the first person to swim 102.5 miles from an island in the Bahamas to the Florida coast, which took more than two days of nonstop swimming. She swam in nearly every large body of fresh or salt water in the world, including the Suez, the North Sea, the Nile, the Bay of Naples, the Barrier Reef, and made a courageous attempt to swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys. In the 1980s, Diana started her career in journalism. She made a quick rise in the journalism world, starting out as a sports commentator for ABC's "Wide World of Sports." She turned her efforts to advocacy television fighting sexual abuse as a correspondent for the NBC News show "The Crusaders."
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