Obituary Alberta Lee Cox
Monday, March 30, 2015
Raytown Schools - Alumni Hall of Fame
Alberta Lee (Babe) Cox attended Raytown Schools for 12 years, graduating from Raytown High in 1949. She is credited with the following inspirational quote, “It is not enough to be good if you have the ability to be better. It is not enough to be very good if you have the ability to be great.”
Alberta was a five-time All-American AAU basketball player from the early 1950’s into the late 1960’s. She is an AAU Women’s basketball Hall of Fame member and an original member of the Helm’s Foundation Hall of Fame. For 20 years she played on the National AAU women’s basketball team and represented our country in the USA, Europe, Canada, and South America.
She was the first woman to coach a U.S. Olympic team sport and the first woman to coach a U.S. women’s basketball team on foreign soil. In 1965 Alberta was named the Missouri Woman of the Year, in 1979 was inducted in the All-Time Kansas City Amateur Sports Hall of Champions, in 1991 was selected as the recipient of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Jostens-Berenson Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1993 was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in Springfield.
In the world of American Saddlebred Show Horses, Alberta Lee Cox’s name is legendary, both in the Greater Kansas City area, as well as the Midwest, and even internationally. She regularly competed in showing horses from the 1950’s until the 1990’s. Her most famous steeds were Miss Dolly and Commander’s Mary Lou with whom she won repeated awards in the show ring. Whether it was the Missouri State Fair or the annual American Royal, Alberta was invariably the rider to beat.
If you see gifted athletes or exhibitors competing, they are more than likely connected to this lady who guided through example by her graciousness and high achievement.
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