April 22, 2010
Pat Grant, a legendary Oklahoma golfer and retired military officer and attorney, will be inducted into the Women's Oklahoma Golf Hall of Fame on Sunday, April 25. The induction banquet will be at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
A 1942 graduate of Oklahoma Baptist University, Patricia Ethel Grant is the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. W.N. Grant of Cushing. She graduated from Cushing High School before earning a bachelor of science degree in secondary education from OBU. While in college she was a member of the Student Council, was selected in 1941 as "Best All-Around Woman," and was listed in Who's Who Among Students In American Universities and Colleges in 1942.
As an OBU student, she won the Oklahoma women's amateur golf championship all four years (1939, 1940, 1941, 1942) and then won the title twice later in 1946 and 1949. Due to World War II, there were no tournaments from 1942-45. She was a medalist in the Trans-Mississippi Golf Tournament in 1942 when she was an OBU senior.
In 1974 Grant became the first woman to be inducted into the OBU Athletic Hall of Fame.
She served in the Women's Army Corps for 22 years, entering during World War II and retiring in 1965. She rose from private to lieutenant colonel. When she retired, there was only one full colonel position authorized in the WAC and that was the director of the Corps.
Her Army duties included company commander, battalion supply officer, supply officer with the Nuremburg War Crimes trials, and many other assignments.
In golf, she played in the National Open, the National Amateur, and the Title Holder's Golf Tournament many times. She won the Third Army Women's Division of the Third Army Golf Tournament several times. She won the Second Army Women's Division once; the European Army Championship; and the Fourth Army title.
She received a master's degree in government administration from Wharton Graduate School of Business and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania in 1956 and a juris doctorate from St. Mary's School of Law in 1966.
She began work as an attorney in Texas, and in 1972 she was selected as Texas Woman of the Year by the Texas Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs.
She practiced law until her second retirement in 1995. She now resides in Cortez, Colo.
Other honorees at the Oklahoma Women's Golf Hall of Fame Banquet include the late Joan Blumenthal; Janice Burba Gibson from Tulsa; and Beth Stone, formerly of Muskogee, now living in Tucson, Ariz.