Lea Ann Parsley was the first US skeleton slider to win a World Cup medal, and won a silver medal in 2002 in the first women’s Olympic skeleton race. During those Winter Olympics, she was also one of eight athletes chosen to carry the World Trade Center flag into the Opening Ceremony. Parsley attended Marshall University where she was on the basketball and track & field teams, and was twice named Marshall Female Athlete of the Year. Joining the US Skeleton Team in 1998, in a 1999 race in Norway she won a silver medal, the first World Cup medal ever won by an American. In her career she eventually won seven World Cup medals.
Parsley started volunteer firefighting while in high school, and became a professional firefighter in 1995, earning top graduate honors from the Ohio Fire Academy. She was named the State of Ohio Firefighter of the Year in 1999 for her part in the rescue of a mother and daughter during a residential house fire. Parsley has also earned numerous academic degrees, including a bachelor’s in adult health education from Marshall (1990), a nursing degree from the University of Virginia (1992), a master’s in nursing from Ohio State in 1994, and a doctoral degree in community nursing in 2003.
United States