Mary Lou Petty

Early life Petty was born April 5, 1915 in Spokane, Washington to mother Mary F. Watkins Petty and father Walter E. Petty Sr. She was an adept swimmer by the age of 8 and began swimming competitively at the age of 13. In Spokane, she swam for the Spokane Women's Athletic Club under Coach Margaret Mahoney. Mary Lou graduated Spokane's Lewis and Clark High School in 1933 where in January of her Senior year she was elected President of the Girl's Federation. a Swimming Hall of Fame Inductee. Receiving strong coaching and training in Seattle, she later qualified for the 400-meter freestyle at the 1936 trials in New York, winning a birth on the U.S. Women's team for the 1936 Summer Olympics. During this inter-Olympic period, between 1932 and 1936, she set several national records. Her roommate on the boat to Berlin was Eleanor Holm Jarrett. Despite food poisoning, Mary Lou managed to place fourth in the competition and later recalled observing both German Leader Adolf Hitler and athlete Jesse Owens at the Games.

Marriage and later life Upon her return to New York from Berlin in 1936, she married fiance Robert Gleason Skok at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral on August 29, 1936. The couple eventually moved to Los Angeles after the birth of their two daughters in Spokane. In Los Angeles, husband Bob Skok attended school to pursue Optometry as a career. While in Los Angeles, during World War II, Mary Lou worked for Lockheed where she helped build wings for the Lockheed Hudson bomber. She and Bob Skok remained together after marrying until his death on March 27, 1998. After the war the family moved to Tempe, Arizona in 1949 where husband Bob Skok started an Optometry practice. Mary Lou spent several summers in Washington, where she and her family raised beef cattle at the family's Gleason Ranch in Brady, Washington. After their 1949 move to Tempe, Mary Lou and her husband helped found Rolling Hills Golf Club, and were long time members of the Mesa Country Club.

After her move to Arizona, Mary Lou pursued golf as a sport, winning Arizona State Women's Golf Association Senior titles in both 1966 and 1970.

Honors In 1974, Skok was the first female athlete inducted into the Inland Northwest Sports Hall of Fame, and was made a member of the Pacific Northwest Swimming Hall of Fame in 2006 in Seattle.