In honor of the 50-year anniversary of Title IX and women in sports, we salute one of the greatest female athletes in the area’s history, Joan Dan (Dodd), the “Balboa Bay Mermaid.”

She could also be described as the Babe Didrikson Zaharias of Newport Harbor High, in reference to the Olympic gold medalist who broke records in several sports, and Joan’s classmates from 1949, two of whom I spoke with for this column, remember her as athletic and smart.

Joan was Newport Beach’s “Bathing Beauty” and the city’s version of Esther Williams, it said in her September 2013 obituary. Joan was 82 when she died.

It was a privilege to interview her years ago and listen to her stories of growing up on Balboa Island in the 1940s.

Newport Harbor did not have a swimming pool, so Joan’s swim team would practice in the bay, swimming island to island. Her father, Marion, worked in real estate and Joan lived in more than 20 different homes on Balboa Island. The nearest pools were in Los Angeles County.

She became a freestyle sensation with daily workouts from Balboa Island, then know as a “village,” to the Balboa Pavilion and back. She would launch at a spot near the Balboa Ferry and complete the journey “two or three times,” she once said, depending on the day.

“In those days, the water was clean. You could actually see the bottom,” she said, “But now it’s too polluted. I don’t think anybody could swim in it now.”

Joan played every sport available to her growing up, and especially loved tennis and basketball. But she was encouraged to pursue swimming by then-Newport Harbor Coach Marge Adams.

Joan, who also attended Newport Grammar School, became a world-class swimmer, earning 45 medals in her career and a spot as an alternate on the 1948 U.S. Olympic team at age 16. She was photographed for Life Magazine, which featured Joan at the beach laughing and frolicking with seaweed in her hair like a mermaid, spurring her nickname.

“Hollywood got a hold of Joan for a while for (possible) movies. She was a pretty lady,” said fellow ’49 Newport grad Don Knipp, who lives in Costa Mesa. “She was a good buddy of mine. She was a great lady. She was always involved in women’s athletics.”

When Joan wasn’t swimming, paddle boarding, or at the beach with friends, she was working at her father’s other business: Dodd’s Malt Shop on Balboa Island.

“I worked for her wonderful dad, then the owner of a very popular malt shop on Marine Avenue,” said Don Cantrell, Newport Harbor Class of ’50. “He often drove Joan, his youngest daughter, every Sunday to big swimming meets in LA and Pasadena.”

Joan married her high school sweetheart, Bogie Horrell, and they raised three children: Deborah, Lori and Robert. The couple divorced and Joan married Ivan “Danny” Dan in 1971, and they were happily married for 42 years.

“My grandma has been an inspiration and role model, as well as a best friend,” her granddaughter, Emily Horrell, said. “She was an amazing lady and the kindest woman I have ever known.”

Joan won her first swimming race at age 5, when kids swam from Balboa Island to a sea wall and back. Her father always kept a stopwatch in his pocket.

“That made me more nervous,” Joan said. “My father wrote everything down and kept track of all my times. He enjoyed it. I guess I was his boy.”

Richard Dunn, a longtime sportswriter, writes the Dunn Deal column regularly for The Orange County Register’s weekly, The Coastal Current North.