Inducted: 2014
Debbie is a three-time Olympic champion, and a former world record-holder at three distances. Meyer won the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle swimming races in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Debbie remains the only woman Olympian to win three individual freestyle swimming gold medals during one Olympics. She broke 24 American records and won 19 championships; she won the James E. Sullivan Award; and, in 1969, she was named Associated Press Athlete of the Year. Debbie is the recipient of our Mensch Award, an honor given to a non-Jewish individual who best exemplifies the high ideals we have come to expect from the leaders of our own Jewish community.