Born in Wheeling, W.Va., Fritzi Stifel Quarrier is the first female inductee into the West Virginia Golf Hall of Fame.

The eldest daughter of Edward W. and Emily Pollock Stifel and niece of fellow Hall of Fame member, Julius Pollock, Fritzi was a natural-born athlete. Early on, her father named her Fritzi, short for snicklefritz, as she was quite a chatterbox in her early years.

During her college years, Stifel attended Finch College in New York City, where she studied violin. Upon graduating, she returned to Wheeling, where she became an original member of the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra. Although the arts were one of Stifel’s great loves, golf was the one that stole her heart.

At just 23 years old, Stifel won her first West Virginia Women’s Golf Association Amateur Championship. She went on to claim nine more victories through 1940. In two those Championships, she defeated her own mother. In 1963, she became the first female inductee into the West Virginia Sports Hall of Fame and the Wheeling Hall of Fame in 1980.

Her fame reached far beyond the boundaries of West Virginia, though. Competing in national and international Championships, Stifel was a 10-time contestant in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship, where she reached the semifinals in 1935. In 1927, she reached the finals of the Canadian Amateur and won the Mason-Dixon Amateur in 1934. A member of the U.S. Women’s Amateur team for what is now known as the Curtis Cup, Stifel was ranked seventh among the best female golfers in the nation.

By 1938, Stifel was married and had begun a family. Two years later she retired from competitive golf and became involved in the Wheeling community with many philanthropic organizations.

Fritzi Stifel Quarrier truly was a woman of distinction. A loving mother to her children, devoted daughter and sister to her parents and siblings, and dedicated wife to her husband.