1962-
World's Greatest Female Athlete

Beginnings.

On the day she was born in early March 1962, Jacqueline Joyner was tabbed for greatness by a grandmother who had named her after President Kennedy's wife. "Someday the girl will be the First Lady of something!" That she might one day become part of American "royalty" seemed rather unlikely at the time, however. Jackie and her brother Al were born into the harsh, desolate, sometimes violent world of East St. Louis, Illinois, a far cry from the comparatively prosperous streets of neighboring St. Louis, Missouri, and a seemingly insurmountable distance from the Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea, where she would eventually change the standard of women's track-and-field excellence. That she did reach such heights was due in no small part to the determination and will to survive instilled in both her and her brother by their mother, Mary, who...