Midge Brasuhn

In the end we will not think of the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.
This page is a tribute to the late great
Midge "Toughie" Brasuhn!
Midge left us on August 9, 1971 and is now skating on the great banked-track in the sky but her spirit lives on in all the new rollergirls around the world!
She would have been so proud!
Roller Derby may have started in 1935 as an endurance sport but by 1937 it had evolved into a full team sport. Four teams had formed in Chicago, New York, Brooklyn, and Philly-Bronx - each team having equal numbers of men and women.
Although women had been skating from the very beginning, two outstanding skaters, Gerry Murray and Midge, who played on opposing teams, initiated the famous rivalry that firmly established the role of the Derby woman as an athlete and as a performer.
Gerry was the captain of the New York Chiefs. Midge was the captain of the Brooklyn Red Devils. "Together the two women, whose on-track brawling became a symbol of the Derby's wild image, attracted thousands of spectators to the sport." Midge was always one hundred percent devoted to roller derby. Her ex-husband, skater Ken Monte (also known as the "Dean Martin of Roller Derby") said: "She gave the Derby something; people can look at the game today and see that the girls are equals. On the same basis as a man. I think before your Midge or your Gerry Murray, those two particularly, people always thought of the girl skater as a freak or a sideshow. But these two girls made women mean something to the game, showed they were just as strong, that a point was just as important if it was scored by a girl."Midge skated for about 17 years altogether. She retired in Hawaii after she developed arthritis. If it weren't for Midge, who knows if we would have had all these fabulous derby "melees" and if folks would have figured out "that a point was just as important if it was scored by a girl."