Tori Murden Mcclure
Tori Murden McClure is best known as the first woman and first American to row solo and unassisted across the Atlantic Ocean. She was also the first woman and first American to travel overland to the geographic South Pole. McClure has completed major climbs on several continents. She is the President of Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as chaplain of Boston City Hospital, as policy assistant to the Mayor of Louisville, director of a shelter for homeless women, and has worked with the boxer and humanitarian Muhammad Ali. McClure recounts her journey across the Atlantic in her memoir A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean, finding that what she is looking for lies not in a superhuman show of strength, but rather in embracing what it means to be human.
“During dinner a sea turtle stopped by for a visit. At three or four feet in length... the turtle swam alongside for about twenty minutes, its head bobbing just above the surface of the water. Then with laughing eyes the turtle passed me..being left behind by a turtle pricked up my competitive nature. I pulled harder trying to keep up, but I couldn't catch the turtle. Soon I was reduced to laughter. " I am in the North Atlantic in a rowboat, racing a turtle...and loosing. Okay, so they can swim thirty miles an hour. Out here, I am the tortoise and it's the hare.”