Muriel Bower

Who is Muriel Bower?

Muriel Taitt is an American foilist, coach, and educator.

She is author of the foilist's classic textbook Foil Fencing, now in its 8th edition. In the second edition, former F.I.E. President Miguel de Capriles identified her as "a sensational teen-age Pacific Coast champion before the war [who subsequently] returned to competition to win a well-earned No. 3 national rating. She is one of the small but bright cluster of California women who dominated the national fencing scene in those years".

She holds the distinction of having been accredited the first woman fencing master in the United States, by her fencing master, the Hungarian Istvan Danosi, USFA Hall of Fame recipient.

Her first fencing master was Henry Uyttenhove, who was Douglas Fairbank Sr.'s fencing trainer. Uyttenhove was fencing master at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, to which Fairbanks belonged. Uyttenhove was replaced by Jon Hermann, also from Belgium. Muriel was obviously Hermann's star pupil, but a serious car accident prevented her going to the 1948 Olympics, and she started working with Hermann as his assistant. She was going to college during this period, earning a bachelors in PE at UCLA and a Masters at USC