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Hers Is A Life Lived In Fast Motion

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The Associated Press

Published: August 14, 2008

THE VILLAGES - Betty Skelton Erde is 82 and lives in a retirement community where many are content to putter about in golf carts. Not Erde: She drives a blazing red Corvette to match her red hair and really means it when she says, "I like fast cars."

An auto racing pioneer, Erde (Uhr-Dee) once was the fastest woman on Earth, setting female speed records at Daytona Beach and Utah's Bonneville salt flats half a century ago. On Wednesday, she reached a new milestone as only the fifth woman inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in suburban Detroit. Michael Andretti was among the other inductees.

Dozens of firsts are attached to her name: the auto industry's first female test driver, in 1954; the first woman to set a world land speed record in 1956 (145 mph at Daytona Beach); and then the world land speed record for women in 1965, hitting 315.72 mph at Bonneville.

Oh, but did she tell you she started out as a stunt pilot?

"To me, there's hardly any feeling in the world that can equal the feeling of an airplane when the wheels leave the ground," said Erde, an inductee into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

Born in 1926 in Pensacola, Erde was smitten by the aviation bug early.

Spellbound, she watched landings and takeoffs at the Naval Air Station, took lessons as a child and soloed at 12.

"Unfortunately, it was kind of illegal, so I had to wait until I was 16 to tell anybody," she said, laughing.

She mastered dozens of tricks. Her signature move: cutting a ribbon strung between two fishing poles with her propeller, while flying upside down 10 feet off the ground.

In 1948, she bought a rare Pitts Special - a lightweight, red-and-white biplane suited for aerobatics. But while Erde was soaring in popularity, she also was a rarity - a young, beautiful woman in a male-dominated world of death-defying stunts.

"I wanted very much to fly in the Navy," she says. "But all they would do is laugh when I asked."

In 1953, the man who began the NASCAR circuit asked Erde to fly some auto racers from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. She and Bill France became fast friends.

In February 1954, at France's invitation, Erde went to Daytona. She climbed into a Dodge sedan, went 105.88 mph on the beach - that's when folks still raced on sand - and set a stock car record.

Now living for a year in her retirement community, Erde still longs for the cockpit of a plane. But she gets her speed fix by watching Danica Patrick in the IndyCar Series and lives with the satisfaction that she helped open aviation and motorsports to young women.

Said Erde, "It's been quite a ride."

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