Olympic diver Zoe Ann Olsen Bramham of Stuart, Fla., didn't officially graduate with the La Porte City High School Class of 1949, but they let her come back for their 50th reunion, she said.

"I guess they figured I'd gone to school long enough there," said Olsen, who had already made a name for herself in Iowa as a springboard diver by the time she finished the 7th grade at La Porte City and moved to California.

She went on to earn two Olympic medals - a silver and a bronze, won in 1948 and 1952, respectively.

Born in Council Bluffs in 1931, Olsen lived first in Cedar Falls, then La Porte City from about age 3 to age 12.

Olsen's mother, Norma, a South Dakota native, was a pioneer of synchronized swimming.

Her father, Cedar Falls native Art Olsen, was an athletic standout at what is now the University of Northern Iowa. He later was principal and coach at La Porte City. He also coached Zoe Ann.

In the summers, her father managed the Cedar Falls municipal pool and her mother taught swimming. Zoe Ann learned to swim at age 2 1/2.

She began diving at age 6. When the weather became colder, her mother stretched the family's gas rationing coupons to allow trips to the YWCA pool in Waterloo a few times a week. Between trips, Zoe Ann bounced and twisted on a canvas trampoline in the yard.

By the age of 11, she had won all of the Iowa women's state springboard diving championships, according to the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

When Zoe Ann's father enlisted during World War II, his wife and daughter followed him to the West Coast.

There she competed with the Athens Athletic Club of Oakland, winning her first national championships at 14. She eventually acquired 14 national titles.

Zoe Ann's first Olympic springboard diving medal came in 1948 in London.

In October 1949, she married her high school boyfriend, Jack Jensen, a football standout at the University of California who went on to play baseball with the New York Yankees, the Washington Senators and the Boston Red Sox.

Their Oakland, Calif., wedding was attended by 1,000 people, and garnered lots of press coverage. Olsen's former classmate from La Porte City, Carol Froning Deppe, now of Ames, was her matron of honor and has remained a lifelong friend.

After the wedding, Zoe Ann was ready for a break. "I was so disappointed I didn't get the gold," she said. "I just needed to get away from diving."

Four years later, after the birth of her first child, she reconsidered. She began watching other divers and "no one (was) doing anything any different than I did," she said.

She asked her father to come to Detroit and coach her for a week prior to the 1952 Olympic tryouts. "He thought I was kind of foolish to try to make the team after not touching a diving board for three years," she said.

But he came and she qualified.

Helsinki was "weird," she remembers. Zoe Ann had to do one dive three times.

Judges disqualified her first attempt because of a technical fault in the springboard. On her second dive, she didn't realize she had to wait for the whistle and was disqualified once again.

Her third dive got her into the finals by two-tenths of a point.

Certain she hadn't placed, Zoe Ann ran to the showers. While getting dressed, her freshly washed hair in pincurls, she heard someone screaming. "Zoe, you're holding up the ceremonies … they're waiting for you."

Zoe Ann ran out to accept her bronze medal, a bandanna over her bobby pins.

She gave up diving, then tried water skiing. A badly broken leg put an end to that. She wasn't expected to walk again. The leg healed, but not well enough to allow her to ski competitively.

Zoe Ann and Jack Jensen had three children - a daughter, now living outside of Denver; a son, Jay, of Florida; and a son, John, now deceased. The couple divorced in 1963; remarried 14 months later, then divorced for good in 1970.

She married Don Bramham in 1972. They moved to Florida from Lake Tahoe in 1988. In the early '90s the couple spent four years in Saudi Arabia while Bramham worked for the Department of Defense.

Zoe Ann, now 73, said she's always surprised when someone recognizes her name and achievements of 52 years ago. She is grateful for the doors that opened to her - including a luncheon at the White House and meeting President Eisenhower.

But it was recognition from a newspaper in her home state of Iowa - when she became Number 86 on the Des Moines Register's Iowa Sports Hall of Fame - that left her feeling "very, very honored."

"I was down on the list," she teased, "but after all I left when I was 12."

"I have always been so happy I was raised in Iowa. I wouldn't want to have been raised anyplace else."

- Brenda Cornelius, Courier Staff Writer