In 1942, 25-year-old Alice Y. Matthews was a weekend widow when husband George went off to compete in pistol competitions. In response, George came home one day to their house at 108 Greenhill Road in Broomall with a package for Alice: “Well, one night he came in, dropped a package beside me on the bed and told me to go to it. In it was my first gun . . . a .22 Woodsman, standard barrel. So, I became a pistol shooter.”
It was a challenge. With George coaching her, she began to practice her target shooting. The following weekend, Alice went to the match, competed with 29 men and beat them all. A star was born.
The news accounts from the 1940’s are replete with reports of Alice’s championships. Photos showed her among the many trophies she had won. She won the National Women’s Pistol Championship in 1946, and by July of 1947 she was the poster girl for women’s shooting – with a cover appearance and feature article in the American Rifleman magazine. A 1950 article said that women were barred from many shooting ranges in Pennsylvania, and so she had to shoot in the woods near her home.
Perhaps her experience was impetus for the establishment of the Broomall Sportsmen’s Club, chartered by the NRA in 1945, with first President Lester Downs. Alice became a spokesperson for women in sports, at a time when there were only a few role models such as Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Olympian sprinter, and championship golfer. In 1950, Alice urged women to get involved in the sport: “It doesn’t require great strength or a mass of equipment – a normal set of nerves, patience to practice and her own gun are about all a woman needs.”
Her time in Broomall was relatively brief – in 1949 George took a job in Michigan, and the couple moved to Grosse Point outside of Detroit. She continued to appear in the news for several years, and then the stories ended. A check with the NRA disclosed nothing further. Like so many shooting stars, she flared up and lit the sky and then disappeared from sight.
For more on the history of Marple, visit the Marple Historical Society website and Facebook page, and join the Society to keep up to date on coming events: ww.MarpleHistoricalSociety.org
