On
august 31, Betty Skelton-Frankman will be inducted into the National Corvette
Museum Hall of Fame, becoming the first woman so honored. This is entirely
appropriate considering that Betty is widely known as "The First Lady
of Firsts." She earned this nickname the hard way, struggling against
the establishment to overcome prohibitions against women participating on
equal footing with men in business and sports.
Betty
was born only a few years after American women gained the right to vote. When
she was growing up during the Great Depression, females were expected to stay
home and tend to their families. In the following decade, the harsh realities
of war would make the transition of women into the workplace easier, but it
would be many more years before anything close to equality would be achieved.
That’s just the way it was and everyone knew it. Everyone except David
and Myrtle Skelton, Betty’s parents.
