Billie Jean King Biography - Against All Odds, Career Of Firsts, Chronology, Champions Women's Rights, Awards And Accomplishments - CONTACT INFORMATION
tennis sports five fame
1943-
American tennis player
Billie Jean King, more than anyone, revolutionized women's tennis. One of the greatest players ever, King was in the Top Ten five times between 1966 and 1972, and has won 20 Wimbledon championships. She founded charitable organizations as well as the Women's Tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation, which she established to ensure that females have equal access to participation and leadership opportunities in sports and fitness. King, involved with
Billie Jean King
the sport for more than five decades, has been most effective in addressing matters of financial equity and respect for women's tennis. Life magazine in 1990 named King one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the Twentieth Century," and Sports Illustrated in 1994 ranked her No. 5 in its list of top 40 athletes who have elevated their sport. King, honored frequently for athleticism and public service, is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the National Women's Hall of Fame.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Address: c/o Diane Stone, 960 Harlem Ave., Suite 983, Glenview, Ill 60025. Fax: 847-904-7362. Email: dstone@wtt.com.
Additional Topics
Billie Jean Moffitt was only a teenager when she took the international spotlight by winning, with Karen Hantze, the women's doubles tournament at Wimbledon in 1961. Her journey to the first of an amazing run of victories there began on the public tennis courts at Long Beach, California. The daughter of Betty Jerman Moffitt, who sold Avon and Tupperware products, and fireman Willis "…
Playing with the cheaper nylon instead of gut strings and enduring the snobbery of players groomed at elite country clubs, she won her first junior championship at age 14. She told her family of her intention to one day win Wimbledon, the world's most prestigious tourney. A year following her first big win, King received a coaching offer from tennis legend Alice Marble, the lone voice to st…
King took a stand on the red-hot issue of abortion, when in 1971 she admitted to having had one. Despite the highly personal revelation, she felt defensive about publicity regarding hers and her husband's private life.
In 1972 she won the French Open and Wimbledon singles, ending a three-year drought in the latter. She also won her third U.S. Open singles title, which awarded her $10,0…
Between 1961 and 1979, King collected six singles, ten doubles, and four mixed doubles championships at Wimbledon, and reached 27 final events. King, the only woman to win U.S. singles titles on all surfaces (grass, clay, indoor, hard), holds a singles title in every Grand Slam event. Even upon her 1983 retirement, King was still ranked 13th in the world. King and Rosemary Casals virtually dominat…
Tennis promoter Gladys Medalie Heldman grew up as an non-athletic, intellectual young woman. A 1942 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Heldman received her M.A. in medieval studies the following year from the University of California, Berkeley. Born May 13, 1922 in New York, Heldman took up tennis late, after her marriage in 1947 to Julius Heldman, the 1936 left-handed U.S. Junior cha…
(With Kim Chapin) Tennis to Win. New York: Harper, 1970. (With Joe Hyams) Billie Jean King's Secrets of Winning Tennis. New York: Holt, 1974. (With Kim Chapin) Billie Jean. New York: Harper, 1974. (With Greg Hoffman) Tennis Love: A Parents'Guide to the Sport. New York: Macmillan, 1978. How to Play Mixed Doubles. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980. (With Reginald Brace) Play Bett…
Though retired from competitive tennis, Billie Jean King can still be found on the courts, whether it's coaching the 2000 Olympic women's tennis team or teaching inner city kids the elements of a strong backhand. One of the tennis champion's most recent ventures has been Women's Sports Legends (WSL), of which King is a founding member. It arranges events featuring its &…
American Decades CD-ROM. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. The Bodywise Woman: Reliable Information about Physical Activity and Health (with a foreward by Billie Jean King). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1993. Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Contemporary Heroes and Heroines, Book III. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale Resea…
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User Comments
over 1 year ago
To Billie Jean
I sure hope you get this message, I have thought of you so often over the years. I moved Mom to Florida a few years ago so I could take care of her and she followed your most interesting life as I have and was always asking if I heard the latest about our little Billie Jean. Ha..She was so proud of your wonderful accomplishments as are we all. She would say that can you believe they named the whole US Tennis stadium after her? What a wonderful honor and so well deserved. Anyway, Billie, I was going thru some old papers and ran across a letter you sent to me on July 27, 1960 from the Germantown Cricket Club in PA. You and Darlene Hard had just won the Nat. Clay Court Doubles Championship and said you received transistor radios and a small silver tennis ball for the win. My, how times have changed and you, my dear, are very much responsible for all the strides and improvements for women everywhere and for the game of tennis. How proud your Mom must be. I heard she is stil living, I hope that is the case. My Mom was 91 last year when she passed and she was basically in good health and had lived a very interesting and well traveled life. She was married 4 times and had a boyfriend at the time of her death. Funny, she did love her men. Anyway, I have been married 3 times, darn, and to John Plum for 28 years. So, I guess I finally got it right. I have two children, you came to my baby shower for Layne and he was a ballboy at a tournament in Dallas years ago when he was about 12. My daughter, Belinda is 47 and I have 5 granddaughters. I am blessed with good health and play golf and tennis every week. We live at Hammock Beach, in Palm Coast Florida for the last 6 years. I could go on and on, but maybe I will see if you get this and I hope we can continue this conversation both ways and catch up on all that has happened in past 51 years. Can you believer it?? Do you think you can make the reunion? If not, maybe send us a video. I know everyone would be delighted to see you. I didn't make the last one because of 9/11. So, it has been awhile since I've see anyone except Becky Terpstra, Nancy Wolthausen and Anna Curns. We all regret losing touch, but maybe we can remedy that. Let me hear from you. with love, Nancy
almost 6 years ago
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Billie Jean you are underactive posterior pituitary. This causes excessive aldosterone which causes many cases of hypertension. There are recent studies on aldosterone inhibitors and hypertension. However you probably just need posterior pituitary which is an aldosterone inhibitor. I have taken this for over thirty years. R. Forbes D.M.D.