Women Drag Racers in the First Decade
1950s
Stella Booth
1906-1976
Two months after she bought her '56 Corvette, 50-year-old Davenport, Iowa, cosmetologist, Stella Booth, attended her first drag race at Quad-City Drag Strip near Cordova. "I was floored when someone asked me to drive my car down the strip," she said. "I cried all the way down the track. I wasn't frightened. I cried for joy because I knew I was winning. It was really very thrilling." She came away with a trophy. She was hooked. She continued racing for several years, the only woman who raced regularly at Quad-City in the late 1950s. She was also the only woman in 400 entries competing in the World Series of Drag Racing in 1958 at Cordova. It was thought that she was also the only drag racing grandmother in the country. In 1958 she added a supercharger to her Corvette and competed in modified sports.
Peggy Ann Brendel
1928-1997
Peggy started racing cars when she was 20 years old. Her husband, Irv Brendel, taught her to drive and work on cars. She raced on the dry lakes and was a winner at the Santa Ana Drags in the early 1950s. She raced an A/Roadster. In the 1960s, Peggy and Irv branched out into building and racing hydro drag boats. They divorced in 1974, but Peggy continued building and racing winning drag boats.
Kathleen Cosand
1918-2009
In its early years, the sport of drag racing drew people from many different backgrounds. Kathleen and Joseph Parker Cosand, Jr., were academics who enriched their marriage with a shared love of hot rodding. Kathleen's husband was a junior college administrator in Contra Costa County. In 1953, Kathleen won three trophies in her class at Pomona Drag Strip.
Peggy Hart
1914-1980
Peggy Hart, wife of C. J. "Pappy" Hart, worked together in lock-step to found and operate the Santa Ana Drags from 1950-59. Peggy was an accomplished drag racer in her own right, besting her male competitors with frequent regularity. She was adept at driving roadsters or dragsters. Inseparable as a couple, Peggy helped C. J. manage Lions Drag Strip from 1963 until its closure in 1972.
Doris Heim
1927-
Ralph Heim took his 1927 Model T roadster to the Pomona Drag Strip when it first opened. He let his sister, Grace Chelie, drive it a few times. It was at one of these races at Pomona when Grace was driving the street roadster when Ralph brought a date. Doris was dating Ralph Heim and spent Sundays with him at the drag strip. The two married in 1953. Grace had stopped driving before her brother and Doris had married. The car fishtailed once and it frightened her. But Doris thought it looked fun. She began driving--and winning--at the wheel of the B Street Roadster at drag strips all over Southern California: Pomona, Paradise Mesa, Saugus, and Santa Ana. Doris and Ralph divorced in 1959.
Betty Jane McKinney
1935-2012
In 1959, Betty Jane, from Pickens, South Carolina, became the first woman to compete at the weekly drag races at the Greenville-Pickens Speedway. She drove a '56 Chevy in C/Stock. "I like speed and the feeling of competition," Betty said. Other women in the Greenville area began competing at the weekly drag races, but Betty is the one who kept at it the longest. She started winning more consistently racing a '49 Plymouth in C/Gas.
Marion Mulvihill
1928-
She was a Navy WAVE in WWII. After the war, she met her husband, Frank, when he was a pilot for United Air Lines and she was a stewardess. They were living in Downer's Grove, Illinois, when the Half Day Speedway, the first drag strip in Illinois, began operating in 1952. At the time, Marion was working for Argonne Laboratories. "I first became interested in things mechanical as a kid back home in Alton, Iowa," she said. "I used to love to watch my brother tinker with bicycles and motors." One Sunday, Frank asked her to go with him to the new Half Day drag races. "The next thing I knew, I'd fallen in love with the sport." She didn't want to just watch--she wanted to compete. She turned out to be really good. She raced a motorcycle in the Class A category. On October 19, 1952, she beat eight men in garnering the win in her class. En route to the win, she set a track record of 105.3 mph, a mark that stood for many months. Her racing was curtailed in 1953 when she became pregnant with their first child, but that didn't stop her from helping Frank in the pits.
Ruth Ellen Perry
1938-
The daughter of an NHRA field director, Harry M. Perry, she held the women's speed record at the drag strip managed by her father--Barco Drag Strip in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. She raced her father's hot rod to a top speed of 88 mph. She was a 17-year-old senior at Elizabeth City High School. She married James C. McCulloch in 1958. Now in her eighties [in 2024], she lives in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
Louise Phillips
1933-2020
Louise and Jeri Phillips got interested in drag racing when their friends, Roger and Carol Cawley, of Des Moines, built a rear-engine dragster. Roger helped Jeri build a '32 Ford roadster that Louise drove. She raced it at Des Moines Dragway, Cordova, and Alton drag strips in the late 1950s into the early 1960s. Jeri got his nickname, "Jumpin'" Jeri, because of his high-in-the-air starting maneuvers as the flagman at Des Moines Dragway. Ed Phillips (the shorter of the two little boys standing to the left of their mother, Louise, in the photo below), said of his mother, "She never lost that lead foot."
Merlene Poole
1937-
Glenna Merlene Poole, from Muscatine, Iowa, was the wife of Warren Poole. She drove her husband's blown Chrysler dragster.
Thelma Ramsey
1926-1999
Thelma Ramsey, a mother of two from Wilmington, Delaware, was competitive at drag strips in Pennsylvania and Maryland in 1958. She was a frequent winner at Langhorne Speedway and Aquasco Speedway drag strips in her '57 Chevy. The Lancaster Drag-O-Way featured her in a best-of-five match race on September 20, 1958, against Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins. Doris Potter, another Wilmington drag racer, won match races against Thelma in the fall of 1958 at the Lancaster and Langhorne tracks with her fuel-injected '58 Impala. Newspaper ads publicized their Lancaster race as the "fiercest of all grudge races between 2 women." Her husband, Harold, was a frequent Super Stock top eliminator, occasionally facing his wife in races.
Helen Root
1930-
The mother of two children, Helen Root started drag racing in Southern California at least as early as 1953. Living in Norwalk, she and her husband, Barton Root, were the parents of two children. Helen and Bart shared driving duties with their '29 roadster, mostly racing at Pomona or sometimes at San Gabriel. In 1955, she won the California state championship in her Class C street roadster. She competed in the first NHRA Nationals in Detroit in 1955.
Joanne Schnepf
1934-2015
Joanne's husband, Jack, was the manager of the new Chandler Associated Drag Strip in Arizona in 1958. They lived on the Schnepf Ranch in Queen Creek, Arizona. He wanted Joanne to drive his '34 Ford A/R at Chandler in an attempt to become the fastest woman drag racer in the country. The roadster was a record-holding car with a very unique motor. It had twin McCulloch superchargers on a '57 392-cubic inch Lincoln Turnpike Cruiser engine. On September 28, she turned 12.77 at 125.44 mph, a speed that made her the fastest woman drag racer at the time. It was her only time racing the roadster.
Barbara Stock
1939-
Just seventeen years old, she was attending Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson when she was tabbed to be the driver of the Six Saints car club's A Street Roadster. In May 1956, she clocked 80 mph and narrowly missed winning her class at the newly-opened drag strip at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. She was the only female competitor on the D-M strip and was unofficially recognized as the "queen of the drag strip." After graduating from high school in 1957, she entered nursing school. She was working in a bank when she married Bill Sparks in 1959. She was a co-founder of a public relations firm in Tucson in 1987.
Lynn Sturmer
From Stickney, Illinois, Mrs, Lynn Sturmer drove a Chevy-engined B/GD called "Bean Bandit" at U.S. 30 Dragway in Gary, Indiana in the latter half of 1958. When she started racing the dragster, she ran in the mid-13s at about 107 mph. She made steady improvements, getting one top eliminator win, and clocking a season-best time of 11.70 at 120 mph.
Betty Tarlton
1930-
Betty Tarlton, 24-year-old wife of Truman Tarlton, of Colton, California, split time between racing at Santa Ana, Colton, and Pomona drag strips in 1954. During that year, she had never lost a race. Her favorite car to drive was a '53 Cadillac with a best speed of 89.43 mph. She generally drove it, but also other cars, like a '53 MG. She also wanted to try her hand at racing on a motorcycle.
Diana Vandenberg
1935-
Diana Vandenberg raced at Santa Ana in the 1950s. "My ’32 Ford was my first love,” she said. “I was one of the few (women) who got into a competition coupe that was stripped down as far as we could with the biggest engine we could put in it.” Vandenberg got into racing because it was a family pastime. She often helped her father maintain the four-cylinder Fords he used for his citrus-spraying business. “I was his No. 1 son, I guess,” Vandenberg said. “My mother even drove a stock car at the drags.” Vandenberg didn’t do too well starting out, but later, she began collecting trophies. “The secret was my shifting . . . and I only weighed 98 pounds at the most, so that helped, too,” she said. “I had an eye for the flag. I could get off the line faster than most. My best time was 103 (mph) in about 13 or 14 seconds. I’m very proud of the fact that I was able to do that.” She lived in Seal Beach when these excerpts from the story in the Orange County Register was published on April 8, 2010.
Fran Woerner
1917-2003
Affectionately called "Queenie," or the "Queen of San Fernando Drag Strip," Fran was the president of the Throttle Queens women's racing club. She was also the only woman member of the Sidewinders Club. Married to Harold Woerner, she had taken over 30 class wins in 1957 at San Fernando and San Gabriel Valley Drag Strip. She raced a '56 Chevy in F Stock and a Corvette. She continued her winning ways through 1958 and 1959.
