Today is the birthday, in 1888, of Amanda Clement. She was an American baseball umpire who was the first woman paid to referee a game, and may have also been the first woman to referee a high school basketball game. Clement served as an umpire on a regular basis for six years, and served occasionally for several decades afterwards. An accomplished athlete in multiple disciplines, Clement competed in baseball, basketball, track, gymnastics, and tennis, and has been attributed world records in shot put, sprinting, hurdling, and baseball.
Amanda Clement was born in Hudson, South Dakota, then part of the Dakota Territory, on March 20, 1888, to Harriet Clement (1849–1932), one of the original settlers of Eden, South Dakota, and her husband Phillip (1847–1895), who died when Amanda was very young. In 1904, Clement traveled to Hawarden, Iowa, to watch her brother Hank pitch in a semi-professional game. The umpire for the amateur game taking place before Hank’s did not show, and Hank suggested that Amanda, who had played baseball with her brothers and was knowledgeable about the game, serve as the umpire. In so doing, Clement became the first woman paid to umpire a baseball game. Her performance was so well received that she was hired to umpire further semi-professional games.
Her popularity was so high that baseball marketers emphasized her officiating of games to bring in crowds. In 1906 Clement wrote an editorial for the Cincinnati Enquirer arguing that women made better umpires than men because men would not speak abusively towards female umpires.
Although Clement spent only six years serving as an umpire on a regular basis, she continued to serve intermittently until her forties. Following her time as a regular umpire, Clement spent several years teaching physical education at the University of Wyoming, the Jamestown, North Dakota high school, and other schools in North Dakota and South Dakota. Clement also served as the coach of Hudson Independent basketball team, organized tennis tournaments, and served as a newspaper reporter, police matron, typesetter, justice of the peace, and as the city assessor for the town of Hudson. In 1929, Clement moved back to South Dakota to care for her mother, who was ill. Following her mother’s death in 1932, Clement moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where she spent twenty-five years as a social worker before retiring in 1966. Clement died in Sioux Falls on July 20, 1971.
Amanda Clement
Today!!!
Today is the birthday, in 1937, of Jerry Reed, US country guitarist who worked with Chet Atkins, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Elvis Presley. His signature songs included ‘Guitar Man,’, ‘East Bound and Down’ (the theme song for the 1977 blockbuster Smokey and the Bandit, and ‘She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)’. Reed died on 1 Sept 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJPM-M_Z65o
