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Great Scott! The Lady's Been Some Daredevil! By JACK TUCKER BLANCHE STUART SCOTT, who is anything but an introvert and has made this pronounced lack of inhibition pay dividends all through her exciting life, has been offered a radio job at General MacArthur's Headquarters in Tokyo, with a captain's rank and an extra 25 per cent wage. [[image]] JACK TUCKER Mrs. Scott, the first woman in America to drive an automobile cross-country and the first woman ever to pilot an airplane in this country, probably would take the job in a minute were it not for domestic obligations at her home, 163 Hobart St. Her mother -of whom she thinks the world- is not well and requires pretty constant care. The remarkable Blanche -or Betty as she is more familiarly known- is hale, hearty and handsome today, and full of ideas springing from an adventurous career which, for many years, earned her a national reputation. "The only thing bothering me is how to deal constructively with my time," she says. "For one thing, I want to write fiction. A friend of mine in New York (Nancy Shores) made $80,000 last year with her typewriter. That makes me itchy." If Blanche could write as colorfully and pungently as she talks, she'd be a shoo-in. As a matter of fact, she does write very well. She was a staff writer in Hollywood for nine years, not to mention operating a motion picture studio in Flushing, and she turned out many a radio script. * * * BLANCHE first made her electric presence felt publicly in Rochester when, as a 13-year-old tomboy, she became at odds with the City Council because she was driving a car. The City Council wanted to stop her from driving because she was entirely to young, until Blanche pointed out there was no such thing as a driver's license in those days. Council bowed. [[image]] -Morrall BLANCHE STUART SCOTT When Blanche was 18, and fresh out of an uppercrust boarding school in East Bridgeport, Mass., she proceed to flabbergast her friends and, in fact, eventually the entire country, by talking herself into the venture of driving an automobile from New York to San Francisco. This feat had been performed then by only a few men, and no women. With the then Mayor Hylan officiating, Blanche took off from Manhattan to the accompaniment of cheering photographers, who knocked themselves out taking pictures. Male motorists, who preferred to believe that a woman's place was behind a stove instead of a wheel, scoffed at such unlady-like ambitions, but Blanche made them eat their derogatory remarks. This was in 1910. Forty-one days later Blanche not only had completed her latter-day Balboa trek, but continued from San Francisco to Los Angeles and thence into Lower California, where mesmerized and appreciative Mexicans threw fiestas and bullfights in her honor. The fact that Blanch was a striking brunet did little to lesson the ardent Mexicans' acclaim. All told she drove 6,100 miles singlehandedly. Two newspaper women accompanied her, but did no driving. * * * "YOU must realize," Blanche says, "that in those days there were only 218 miles of paved roads, exclusive of cities, in the United States. There weren't even any road maps for certain parts of the country, where cowpaths along the old Union Pacific tracks were the only 'roads.'" Blanche was arrested in Utah by a bug-eyed sheriff for failing to have a "pilot"" driver precede her through the desert. Blanche talked her way out of that one, and hired a willing but somewhat befuddled young Mormon as a "pilot." The Mormon got her lost in record time. Blanche's car was an Overland stock car Model 38, boasting 25 horsepower and retailing for luggage and tentage, water bottles, two five-gallon cans containing gas and oil, acetylene lamps for the night driving, and a cylinder of compressed air for administering to flats. "I had exactly one puncture. It was near Cheyenne at sundown," she says. "Wasn't hard to change." ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 1946 [[image]] Mrs. Scott's car at sheep camp near Medicine Bow, Wyoming. Her now ancient chariot developed no engine trouble whatever, she says, but six springs did throw in the sponge in losing arguments with gopher holes in the western sticks. The best time this venerable steed made was close to 50 miles per hour on a hard-packed stretch of sandy road in Arizona. The most mileage in a single day was 260 miles, the worst was 14. The latter total resulted from a series of streams and rivers, which were somewhat uncharted, nearly forcing Blanche to do the Australian crawl at times. "At Omaha," she says, "the local Hudson dealer offered me $5,000 to turn back and start all over again in a Hudson. "Turn back?" I said. 'I may be crazy, but not that crazy. You try it yourself, Mister.'" * * * HAVING been feted by nearly every governor in each state through which she chugged, Blanche had achieved so much publicity by the time she returned triumphantly to New York that she was a natural target for promoters. But Blanche was more interested in feminine trail-blazing, being convinced by then that the time was ripe to convince the world that a woman definitely did not have to dedicate her life to cooking three meals a day and hiding her light under the nearest grocery basket. When asked, therefore, if she'd care to pilot an airplane, Blanche, whose knowledge of aircraft was confined to seeing pictures of them, replied, "Sure, why not?" Following a brief orientation by Glenn Curtis, she climbed into what might laughingly be called the cockpit of a trembling biplane and soared into the wild blue yonder. It was the first time any woman ever had done such a thing, and the publicity repercussions were terrific. Blanche took it all in stride. "It wasn't much different from driving an automobile," she says. "Also; there were no gopher holes in the air. No flats to change, either." * * * AS I got up to leave Mrs. Scott's pleasant little home in Hobart Street, she said: "If you want to write anything about me, I want you to stress this point: You have a little daughter. So have a lot of people. Take my advice and make certain that your daughter doesn't grow to maturity without knowing how to work. Be certain that she can operate a typewriter and take shorthand. If she has any musical ability, have that ability developed. Teach her how to swim. Make her self-dependent. Don't let her go through life with an impractical education -and that goes for a college degree if the college degree itself represents only a free ride through college. Make certain that is she suddenly finds herself without support, she can go out and get a decent job and be able to qualify for that job.. I've seen too many women who have no working ability whatever, no real knowledge of what's going on in the world, no conception of what a dollar bill means, no intelligent curiosity about what is written in newspapers and the better magazines. "Make certain," Mrs. Scott concluded, "that your daughter doesn't grow up with the idea that conversation has to be confined to gossip and petty matters. Who cares about Mrs. Glotz's bridge party last night? Or what Mrs. So-and-So said about her neighbor, or who's going out with somebody else's wife, or how Mr. and Mrs. Joe Blow are always in debt because Mr. Blow drinks? "Women," said Mrs. Scott, "should wake up and take a serious, intelligent, articulate, practical interest in what makes the world tick." Amen. Blanche is a lady with courage of her convictions. Her own rich life speaks for itself.
