FORT LAUDERDALE — It was Diana Nyad’s day, her moment, her stage as a plaque was unveiled honoring her life achievements at the same Fort Lauderdale beach she played on as a child. She pointed up East Las Olas Boulevard to a bridge she’d walk over each day from her home on Desota Drive.
“This plaque is right where I’d come with my family from the time I was in second grade through high school,’’ Nyad, now 76, said Thursday morning.
There was another girl who grew up a few miles away that she met in that Fort Lauderdale of the 1960s. They’d read about each other in the paper. Nyad remembers them often being the only two girls at athletic awards banquets, so they would sit together.
“Chris, come in here for a picture,’’ she said to Chris Evert, the tennis legend, as a photographer waited.
They have known each other for six decades, and now they smiled under the plaque that read, “Marathon Swimmer Diana Nyad.” Nyad’s success was etched on it, from being the first to swim Lake Ontario, north to south, at age 24, to being the first person to swim from Cuba to Key West without a shark cage when she was 64.
“I’m in absolutely awe of her,’’ Evert said.
Evert was told people say the same of her 18 Grand Slams.
“I didn’t nearly die in those like she nearly did,’’ she said.
Nyad almost did die after being stung by the highly venomous box jellyfish on one of her failed attempts to swim from Cuba. She failed three more times before succeeding. Those fails are all part of her achievement, and full journey that Annette Bening and Jodie Foster headlined in the 2023 movie, “Nyad.”
No one else who failed in attempting to cross the Florida Straits ever tried again, as Nyad did. It was that spirit that brought to the ceremony a few hundred family, friends, politicians and members of Nyad’s support team, who wore uniform T-shirts with their motto, “Find A Way.”
Nyad was constantly finding her own way from coming out as gay at 21 to swimming around Manhattan in a record seven hours and 58 minutes at age 26 – a record for men and women. She never felt hemmed in by what people thought or, later, by her age.
Swimming the 103 miles from Cuba to Key West in 52 hours, 54 minutes and 11 seconds was impressive enough. But doing it at 64?
“I faced challenges, but my challenges were within the line of the tennis court,’’ Evert said in a speech about Nyad. “You took on the ocean. The jellyfish. The sharks. The waves. The unpredictability of it all. And you did it with the belief that the human spirit can’t be held down at 64.”
If they once showed young, Broward girls how to excel as athletes, they’ve gone on to be role models of how to age with courageous dignity. Nyad with that swim. Evert took her battle against cancer public in recent years.
It told of the world they lived that when Lynette Long did a study of Florida plaques in 2017, just six of 950 were of women. Long pushed for ceremonies like Thursday for Nyad. Another is in the works for Evert.
“Two Fort Lauderdale girls,’’ said Evert, 70, at one point Thursday.
Nyad attended Pine Crest School. Evert attended St. Thomas Aquinas. Nyad was five years older, but they became friends in the manner the best in many areas often do. They’d brush against each other on occasion through the years.
Nyad went to Wimbledon twice and saw Evert there. She later interviewed Evert for television after her final match in 1989. Nyad also remembers bumping into Evert at a Fort Lauderdale store so many years ago.
“Chris, Wimbledon!” she said of Evert’s championship.
“I saw your picture in the paper!” Evert said.
Nyad punctuates the story by saying it was a small picture compared to Evert’s headlines. Evert laughs and says she doesn’t remember the story. But here they are, all these years later, two Fort Lauderdale girls standing under a plaque of achievement, getting their picture taken.
“I love you,’’ Nyad said. “I’m so glad you came.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it,’’ Evert said.