Alexa Stirling

I V | A L E X A S T I R L I NG

Alexa Stirling was not silver; she was a multi-faceted gemstone. She began playing the violin at age six and took it to the level of performing on stage at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium with the symphony orchestra of her day. She was a good enough driver and mechanic to become a certified ambulance driver on the home front during WWI. She was responsible for maintaining the engine and brakes and responding to disasters. During the Great Fire of Atlanta in 1917, she transported the injured to hospitals. It took so much attention, she called her ambulance her War Baby. She was an expert carpenter throughout her life. In 1921 she even worked in finance (Barclay 2001). After becoming a golf champion, she described how her golf was enhanced by her other interests. In 1917, when she was the twenty-year-old U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, she had also become a writer. A short

autobiography requested by Golf Illustrated had an unusual opening. The editor now comes insisting I write about myself — some sort of an autobiography. I was very much flattered. If others do not care for the subject, that is the editor’s fault, and his magazine’s misfortune … He wants me to detail some of the things which influenced my golf … As a manufacturer of boxes, fiddles, etc., I was productive if not profitable. My hands still bear the saw marks of bygone days. Out of the mechanical triumphs in my boyish days came something which was to influence all my life, even my golf. From a cigar box, a stick, and some string, I manufactured a fiddle, an instrument I had seen a little neighbor play … My pleasing performances (they were inaudible) upon this cigar box attracted the attention of my fond parents, who were prevented from forgetting them by my continual demands for a real fiddle … my parents thought one should be available for one dollar, but the clerk was a good salesman and prevailed upon them that I was no doubt a genius in the bud and seven dollars would be cheap for a first class little second-hand instrument. I made my debut when still only six years old. That fiddle got me accustomed to appearing before people, and at each performance I seemed to lose more and more of my nervousness … being watched by a gallery never disturbed my equilibrium … I give the violin great credit for what strength I have. But the power won by golf has helped my violin more than my violin has helped my golf. And in 1920, in “Glorious Golfing Girl,” an interview in Canadian Golfer :

I have never had any particular trouble with my iron shots, and this is due largely to the fact that even when I was a tiny tot I did not play with dolls as most girls do. I played instead with hammer and nails, and I still have scars on my hands where the hammer hit me instead of the nail. I like to do carpentry and plumbing jobs around the house. Of course I do not have to do this, but I do it because I like it and get a lot of fun out of it. I cut the lawn, tinker around my automobile, and do a lot of things that men usually do. I play the violin quite a bit, and all this has strengthened my wrists, my forearms and my fingers. My wrists are more like a man’s than any other woman golfer I know … the iron shots of women are not compact. They are weak. Women do not put what you call ‘stuff ’ into their shots. The short biographic sketch has her born in Atlanta in 1897. Who were her parents? Where did they come from? Why did they come to Atlanta?

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