Maribel Vinson is a revered name in American figure skating. She was a three-time Olympian, a bronze medalist behind the gold medalist Sonja Henie and an exacting coach who trained hundreds of young talents before dying in a plane crash in the 1960s.
But she had another distinction that is almost forgotten: Maribel Vinson was the first female sportswriter at The New York Times.
Vinson was already a magna cum laude Radcliffe graduate and a bronze medalist when she reported to work at The Times in 1934 at age 22. The Times was a different place then, a nearly all-male preserve.