Billie Jean Moffitt King

is honored with a Premium Paver from Joan Beren.

Billie Jean Moffitt King defines true leadership. She is a visionary who finds practical solutions to achieve goals. She takes responsibility for her own ideas and actions.

Ms. King was a most exciting player to watch. All female tennis players recall with satisfaction and glee her thorough trouncing of Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes" at the Houston Astrodome.

Between 1966 and 1972, Ms. King won 20 Wimbledon titles, including six singles championships. She helped found the Women's Tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation, an advocacy organization for female athletes.

In 1998, Billie Jean King won the Elizabeth Blackwell Award, an honor for women championing equality of the sexes. Billie Jean King is a heroine for today's successful and aspiring female athletes. Almost single-handedly she dragged, a.k.a. guided, women's tennis into financial parity long before Title IX.

For her countless victories and world records, both on and off the tennis courts, Ms. King deserves a place of honor in the Wichita State University Plaza of Heroines.

September 5, 1998