Alice Arden

Alice Jean Arden-Hodge (July 23, 1914 – March 1, 2012) was an American athlete who competed in the women's high jump event at the Olympic games in Berlin in 1936. Raised in Long Island, New York, Arden won ten athletic letters during her high school career across several different sports. The only woman from the New York City area to have been selected for the 1936 Summer Olympics women's team, Arden placed ninth in the high jump event and never competed in the sport again. Soon after, she married basketball player Russell Hodge and together they had three children, one of whom was Russ Hodge, a decathlete at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. As of 2008, Arden and Hodge's participation make them the only mother-son Olympians in American history.

Early life Arden was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Long Island, New York. Her father, Ray Arden, was an inventor who held over 400 patents. During her athletic career at Baldwin High School in New York, she won ten athletic letters in basketball, field hockey and athletics, and broke Babe Didrikson's high jump record. Arden had made what would become the best jump of her career in 1935, when she achieved a height of 1.613 m (5'3½"). The Olympic Games, however, was her final competition. Hodge, a center for the Liberty Emeralds, and Arden, also a center, were married in 1937. They had a son, Russ Hodge, in 1939 and moved from Monticello, New York, to Roscoe, New York, that same year. On his mother's 52nd birthday, he set a world record in a decathlon event in Los Angeles. Arden's husband died in 2001.