Alexandra Marlene RUDDICK

Sandra Ruddick grew up in Indianapolis and at the time of the 1956 Olympics was married with two children, quite unusual for an Olympic gymnast. She competed for the Athenaeum Turners, coached by Walter “Lefty” Lienert and was 1954 National American Turner champion. In 1956 she won the Central States AAU meet, and at the AAU Meet, which doubled as the Olympic Trials, Ruddick won the all-around, as well as the horse vault and uneven bars.

Ruddick eventually married four times, her fourth in 1976 to Alfred John. In the early 1970s, while a single mother, one of her children badly hurt an arm and to help pay for it, Ruddick worked in nightclubs all around the Mideast, in what is described in newspapers variously as a dancer, go-go-girl, or stripper, but she emphasized that her dancing was tasteful and incorporated many of her gymnastics moves. She later worked for many years with Bell Telephone. She was a member of the charter class of the Indiana Gymnastics Hall of Fame, inducted in 2012.