FRANCES

While America’s young men were off fighting World War II, women’s sports, especially basketball, were booming. A November 1943 Dallas Morning News article announced the formation of a new girls’ league comprising four teams. Lake Highlands resident Frances Martin played forward for the season’s undefeated champs, the Dallas Hornets.

Highlights

Frances, a brunette beauty, grew up in Blue Ridge, Texas, where her dad was the mayor. She started playing basketball in high school and in ’42 pounced on an opportunity to try out for the Hornets. Her best memory is of scoring from cen- ter court for the win. “There were two seconds left and coach told me ‘shoot!’ I did — underhanded. It went in.” Though they were serious athletes, the female basketball players of the era were glamorous. Most of them stood 5’8” or 5’9” — the ideal height, too, for Frances’ post-season

“In ’43 we visited Mexico City for a tournament,” she says. The Hornets played the Politas and Piñas of Mexico. Before leaving Dallas, the Mexican Consul hosted a dinner for the Hornets and told Frances and her nine teammates that they were “pioneers in this new movement of friendship among peoples,” according to a Morning News article published in 1943. “In Mexico we met the Mexican president and had dinner at the home of the president of the university in Mexico City,” Frances reminisces. “I was escorted to dinner by a matador from Spain!”

Marriage and work

In 1946 Frances married Frank, an Army man who later worked in the carpet business. “He was as sweet as can be,” Frances says. In ’54, she went to work for a stockbroker. The workplace was very