Suzanne Zimmerman Edwards
(July 13, 1925 – March 14, 2021)

Suzanne attended Lake Grove Grade School, West Linn High School, and Willamette University.
She lived a dynamic life. At 14, with only a couple of months of formal training, she earned a spot at the Nationals that occurred that year at Janzen Beach swimming pool in Portland. At 15, she began traversing the country during the war years with the famed “Cody Kids”, the championship team of girl swimmers sponsored by the Multnomah Athletic Club.  She won 15 national titles over 8 years culminating in a silver medal in the war-torn 1948 London Olympics for the 100-meter backstroke. Along with fellow Olympians Brenda Helser and Nancy Merki, both Portland natives, the Cody’s Kids won 42 individual, 16 relay and three team titles at the national level from 1939 to 1948.

Suzanne and the Cody Kids were widely feted across the country, including by movie stars in Los Angeles and Duke Kahanamoku in Hawaii. She was on the June 19, 1948 cover of Collier’s, a top national magazine, and at age 93, pointedly reminisced about her Olympics experience in a profile for Portland Monthly magazine (https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2019/02/this-93-year-old-oregonian-won-a-silver-medal-at-the-1948-olympics). She was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 1988.