Elinor Wible and her club titles at Mount Union

Elinor Hudson was born in Three Springs on Sept. 2, 1924, the only child of Edgar A. and Mary (Cutshall) Hudson. A 2015 Altoona Mirror article says her father was a charter member of the Juniata Colony Club, which it gives as the original name of the American Legion Country Club in Mount Union. The Mirror says her father's family owned a summer cottage along the course's third fairway, and that she learned the game there.

The club's roll of ladies' champions begins in 1942. It lists Elinor Hudson as champion from 1942 through 1947 and Elinor Wible from 1948, the year she married Clair C. Wible. The roll shows 45 titles in a row, from 1942 through 1986, then adds 1988, 1989 and 1996, for 48 titles. The streak ended in 1987, when another golfer won. The club's profile and the Mirror both put her career total at 48, and the Mirror says she was 62 when she won her 45th straight club title in 1986.

The accounts disagree about the early years. The Mirror says she won her first club championship at Mount Union in 1940 and kept winning in successive years, despite a two-year hiatus during World War II. The roll names her champion in 1942 through 1947 without a gap, which leaves no room for a two-year break in those years. The roll begins in 1942, so it cannot settle what happened in 1940.

The club and the Mirror both credit her with 25 Central Counties championships, and the Mirror dates the first of them to 1946. The club's Central Counties page says she won the Women's Golf Association crown in 1953, beating the defending champion on the 20th hole.

The club says she competed in the 22nd Women's Western Open at Whitemarsh Valley Country Club near Philadelphia, June 18 to 23, 1951. Patty Berg won that tournament. The tournament's 2024 records guide does not name Wible, so whether she played is not confirmed. The Mirror instead says that in 1952 she qualified for an LPGA event, the Whitemarsh Invitational near Philadelphia, and won its consolation division.

Sports Illustrated featured her in Faces in the Crowd on Nov. 10, 1986. The club's profile quotes the item as saying she won her 45th club golf championship by one stroke, with an 83.

Wible graduated from Saltillo High School in 1941 and from Bucknell University in 1945 with a bachelor of science in business education, and she taught at Mount Union High School and at Saltillo High School. From 1962 to 1984 she owned and operated Wible Bottling Works in Three Springs and the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Lewistown. She married Clair C. Wible on July 21, 1948, at First Baptist Church in Three Springs, and he died on Oct. 9, 1988. At that church she served as a youth leader, deaconess, Sunday school teacher and pianist, the profile says.

The Huntingdon County Sports Hall of Fame inducted her in 1998. She died at her home in Three Springs on Aug. 4, 2012, at 87, following a brief illness. According to the club's profile, her family continues her legacy there through the Elinor Wible Memorial Golf Tournament, held each June.

Checked 2026-11-01 · Primary sources and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive

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