When the U.S. women’s national soccer team receives a ticker-tape parade in New York on Friday, it will mark the first such celebration for a female athlete since 1960.
That’s when Manhattan confetti rained on New York native Carol Heiss Jenkins, then 20, who won Olympic and World Championships figure skating titles earlier that year.
Here’s a 1960 video report of her parade.
“You look up at the buildings, and people are just hanging out of the offices of these high buildings and cheering,” Jenkins said this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. “There was so much warmth and applause, and people were all just so genuinely happy for me. It was that small-town feeling in this huge city.”
A 1960 video report said below-freezing temperatures and brisk winds kept many route windows closed, meaning less ticker tape than expected for the March event. Some 250,000 New Yorkers showered her with confetti, according to newspaper reports at the time.
A month later, she married 1956 Olympic figure skating champion Hayes Jenkins.
