Denise McCluggage (January 20, 1927 – May 6, 2015) was an American auto racing driver, journalist, author and photographer. McCluggage was a pioneer of equality for women in the U.S., both in motorsports and in journalism. She was born in El Dorado, Kansas, and spent her childhood in that state. She graduated

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

from

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

. She began her career as a journalist at the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...

''.

Auto racing

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in the early 1950s, while covering a yacht race, she met

Briggs Cunningham Briggs Swift Cunningham II (January 19, 1907 – July 2, 2003) was an American entrepreneur and sportsman. He is best known for skippering the yacht ''Columbia'' to victory in the 1958 America's Cup race, and for his efforts as a driver, team o ...

, who built the first American cars to race at Le Mans. She bought her first sports car, an MG TC Midget, and began racing at small club events. In 1954 she moved to New York to work at the '' New York Herald Tribune'' as a sports journalist. The MG was replaced with a

Jaguar XK140 The Jaguar XK140 is a sports car manufactured by Jaguar between 1954 and 1957 as the successor to the XK120. Upgrades included more interior space, improved brakes, rack and pinion steering, increased suspension travel, and telescopic shock a ...

; she began to race professionally, and earned the respect of her male counterparts. Her trademark was a white helmet with pink dots. Her racing achievements included winning the grand touring category at Sebring in a

Ferrari 250 GT The Ferrari 250 is a series of sports cars and grand tourers built by Ferrari from 1952 to 1964. The company's most successful early line, the 250 series includes many variants designed for road use or sports car racing. 250 series cars are chara ...

in 1961, and a class win in the Monte Carlo Rally in a

Ford Falcon Ford Falcon is an automobile nameplate applied to several vehicles worldwide. * Ford Falcon (North America), an automobile produced by Ford from 1960 to 1970. * Ford Falcon (Argentina), a car built by Ford Argentina from 1962 until 1991. * Fo ...

in 1964. She also participated in the

Nürburgring 1000 km The is a 150,000 person capacity motorsports complex located in the town of Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It features a Grand Prix race track built in 1984, and a long "North loop" track, built in the 1920s, around the village a ...

sports car race. She drove Porsches, Maseratis, and other racing cars of many marques, often with another woman driver, Pinkie Rollo. She ended her racing career in the late 1960s.

Publishing

She helped launch the U.S. automotive magazine ''Competition Press'', now ''

AutoWeek ''Autoweek'' is a car culture publication based in Detroit, Michigan. It was first published in 1958 and in 1977 the publication was purchased by Crain Communications Inc, its current parent company. The magazine was published weekly and focused ...

''. She wrote many columns for ''AutoWeek'', and was a Senior Contributing Editor there until her death on May 6, 2015.

Skiing

In the mid-1950s, after a failed lobbying attempt to get the State of New York to develop a new ski area on Hunter Mountain, the original investor group contacted McCluggage, then a sports reporter at the New York Herald Tribune. They told her they had a mountain to give away to any developer who would build a ski area called " Hunter Mountain". McCluggage wrote an article that attracted the interest of a group of Broadway show-business people. In 1977 McCluggage authored the book ''The Centered Skier'', published by Vermont Crossroads Press owned by Constance Cappel and R. A. Montgomery. It mixed elements of sports psychology and

Zen Buddhism Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), an ...

highlighted by calligraphy by Al Huang. It became the foundation of approaches taken by the likes of the Sugarbush Ski School. On the

Professional Ski Instructors of America The Professional Ski Instructors of America and American Association of Snowboard Instructors (PSIA-AASI) is a nonprofit education association involved in ski instruction. PSIA-AASI establishes certification standards for snowsports instructor ...

reading list, the book had a resurgence when parabolic shaped skis were invented in the mid-1990s, putting carved turns, rather than skidded turns, within reach for recreational skiers.

Journalism

She held both the Ken W. Purdy Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism and the Dean Batchelor Lifetime Achievement Award. She was presented a lifetime achievement award by the IAMA and is the only journalist to have been inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. Her weekly syndicated column called "Drive, She Said" appeared in some 90 newspapers across the U.S. and Canada. McCluggage was the author of a number of books including ''The Centered Skier'' and ''By Brooks Too Broad for Leaping'' (a collection of pieces from ''AutoWeek''). She wrote the text to accompany Tom Burnside's photographs for ''American Racing: Road Racing in the 50s and 60s.'' She also wrote ''Are You a ‘Woman Driver?’''.

Personal life

McCluggage was married for one year to actor

Michael Conrad Michael Conrad (October 16, 1925November 22, 1983) was an American actor perhaps best known for his portrayal of veteran cop Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on ''Hill Street Blues'', in which he ended the introductory roll call to each week's show with "Le ...

. She died on May 6, 2015, aged 88. She was inducted into the

Automotive Hall of Fame The Automotive Hall of Fame is an American museum. It was founded in 1939 and has over 800 worldwide honorees. It is part of the MotorCities National Heritage Area. the Automotive Hall of Fame includes persons who have contributed greatly to a ...

in 2001 and Sebring Hall of Fame in 2012.

Auto racing

Publishing

Skiing

Journalism

Personal life

References

External links