Mary Jane SEARS

Mary Sears was primarily a breaststroker, but it was in the butterfly that she won her Olympic medal, after finishing no better than seventh in the 200 m breaststroke in Melbourne. One year earlier at the 1955 Pan American Games she won gold with the 4×100 metre medley team (with Coralie O'Connor, Betty Mullen, and the non-Olympian Wanda L. Werner) and silver in the 200 m breaststroke. Sears, who competed for the Walter Reed SC, won four AAU titles indoors and four outdoors in breaststroke events, but she never won a national championship using the style that took her to an Olympic medal. Miss Sears later became Mrs. William Parks and, with her husband, raised four children.