FORT LAUDERDALE \u2014 It was Diana Nyad\u2019s day, her moment, her stage as a plaque was unveiled honoring her life achievements at the same Fort Lauderdale beach she played on a child. She pointed up East Las Olas Boulevard to a bridge she\u2019d walk over each day from her home on Desota Drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis plaque is right where I\u2019d come with my family from the time I was in second grade through high school,\u2019\u2019 Nyad, now 76, said Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
There was another girl she who grew up a few miles away that she met in that Fort Lauderdale of the 1960s. They\u2019d read about each other in the paper. Nyad remembers them often being the only two girls at athletic awards banquet and so would sit together.<\/p>\n
\u201cChris, come in here for a picture,\u2019\u2019 she said to Chris Evert, the tennis legend, as a photographer waited.<\/p>\n
They have known each other for six decades, and now they smiled under the plaque that read, \u201cMarathon Swimmer Diana Nyad.\u201d Nyad\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m in absolutely awe of her,\u2019\u2019 Evert said.<\/p>\n
Evert was told people say the same of her 18 Grand Slams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t nearly die in those like she nearly did,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
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, \u201cNyad.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s support team, who wore uniform T-shirts with their motto, \u201cFind A Way.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 a record for men and women. She never felt hemmed in by what people thought or, later, by her age.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
\u201cI faced challenges, but my challenges were within the line of the tennis court,\u2019\u2019 Evert said in a speech about Nyad. \u201cYou 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\u2019t be held down at 64.\u201d<\/p>\n
If they once showed young, Broward girls how to excel as athletes, they\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
It told of the world they lived that when Lynette Long did a study of Florida plaques in 2017 that just six of 950 were of women. Long pushed for ceremonies like Thursday for Nyad. Another is in the works for Evert.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo Fort Lauderdale girls,\u2019\u2019 said Evert, 70, at one point Thursday.<\/p>\n
Nyad attended Pine Crest School. Evert attended St. Thomas Aquinas. Nyad was five years older, but they became friends in the manner the cream of any business do. They\u2019d brush against each other on occasion through the years.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cChris, Wimbledon!\u201d she said of Evert\u2019s championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw your picture in the paper!\u201d Evert said.<\/p>\n
Nyad punctuates the story by saying it was a small picture compared to Evert\u2019s headlines. Evert laughs and says she doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you,\u2019\u2019 Nyad said. \u201cI\u2019m so glad you came.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have missed it,\u2019\u2019 Evert said.<\/p>\n
![\"MarathonSwimmer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/tfl-l-diana-nyad-swimmer-marker1.jpg\")
Marathon Swimmer Diana Nyad stands in front of a State Historical Marker along East Las Olas Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. Nyad and her crew exemplify perseverance and teamwork in Nyad’s 35-year pursuit of her dream to swim from Cuba to Florida. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT LAUDERDALE \u2014 It was Diana Nyad\u2019s day, her moment, her stage as a plaque was unveiled honoring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250,114,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-36390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-fort-lauderdale","9":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","10":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}