TALLAHASSEE - Toni Jennings isn't pressured by the fact that she's likely to become only the second woman ever to run one of the state's oldest male bastions, the Florida Senate.

She's already broken her share of barriers.

At 23 she joined her father in the construction business, long a male-dominated industry. Today, she's president of Jack Jennings and Sons and worth $1 million.

At 27 she became the youngest woman serving at that time in the state House. Later, she became the first woman to head the Senate commerce panel, traditionally ground zero for some of the state's thorniest business issues.

And now, with 20 years in the Legislature behind her, Jennings knows all the skeletons and where to unearth them if needed.

So it isn't surprising that the Orlando Republican is taking in stride last week's vote by colleagues that will elevate her to the Senate presidency for two years if her party maintains control of the upper chamber in November.

The only woman to have held the post is Gwen Margolis, a Miami Beach Democrat who was president from 1990 to 1992.

``As a young woman, I even got the: `Why aren't you home taking care of your children?' And I said, `Because I don't have any,' '' said Jennings, who is 46 and single.

``I guess if I was the first woman [president], I would feel a real mantle to carry. But it's one of those things where I feel I've been here so long, the testing is over.''

AS TOUGH AS SHE WANTS TO BE

In a sea of gray suits, receding hairlines and intense glares, Jennings is a contrast of bright dresses, gold jewelry, a mass of hair and an ever-present disarming smile.

Those who know her say she is a lawmaker who can be a hard-as-nails negotiator in private, yet one willing to compromise.

``I do believe you catch more flies with vinegar than honey,'' Jennings said. ``You don't push me too far. I usually tell you exactly what I think. Don't try to go behind me, around me, under me or through me.''

Jennings puts strong emphasis on the lessons she's learned in the construction business. Her company works mostly in Orange and Seminole counties building jails, parking garages, country clubs and financial institutions.

She regularly deals with a payroll of 25 to 50 employees, Workers' Compensation claims, filing quarterly reports to the state. Brothers John and Jeff, seven years younger, are her engineers.

``Every time we come up here and pass a tax, or a fee, or another report that business has to fill out, I remember: `I may have to do that,' '' Jennings said. ``If more people involved in business were in the Legislature, I think it would make people more sensitive to things we do in an arbitrary manner.''

SPOTLIGHT APPEARS HER DESTINY

With that kind of perspective, Jennings - who was first elected to the House in 1976, then the Senate in 1980 - finds a strong ally in the business community.

``She's going to be very good for us to work with because she is so knowledgeable about business issues and knows so many business people,'' said Lee Hinkle of the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Of course, a few things must still happen for Jennings to reach the pinnacle of power in the upper chamber.

Republicans, who now enjoy a 22-18 lead in the Senate, must maintain their edge in the elections. And Jennings must win re-election herself, which seems all but assured since she's a powerful incumbent and is currently unopposed.

For their part, Democrats have nominated Sen. Daryl Jones of Miami to be their president if they regain control of the Senate. That, too, would hold historical significance - Jones would become the first black president this century.

But barring a disastrous turn of events for Republicans, Jennings should be the one who gets the spotlight in November.

Jennings said her presidency is likely to focus on looming federal budget cuts, improving education, and transportation - including a high-speed rail line linking Orlando, Tampa and Miami.

``I'm the example of what I'd like to see us have 160 of,'' she said. ``The citizen Legislature is supposed to be made up of people that deal with the same problems and issues that everyone else deals with.''

She becomes the first female in the Plant City club.

PLANT CITY - A massage therapist shattered the 41-year-old gender barrier at the Plant City Rotary Club Monday afternoon, but the breaking glass hardly made a sound.

Amanda Cruickshank, a 30-year-old Lakeland native, was quietly sworn in as the first female member of the organization. Both she and club members hoped the ceremony would draw little or no public attention. The induction was not announced and was not on the club's agenda.

The club is one of the last in Central Florida to admit women and until now was one of the few clubs around the country that didn't have women in its ranks.

Still, club president Billy Herold had hoped to keep the induction out of the news. ``I wanted to keep this low-key,'' he said.

However, the significance of the event wasn't lost on Herold.

``Amanda, you are the 79th member of this club - the sixth member so far this year... and you are now the member with the longest hair.''

Cruickshank, who runs her own massage business in Plant City, also downplayed the event.

``I'm excited,'' she said as she ate lunch at a table with seven other men. ``I like what the Rotary stands for.''

She has seen no opposition to her induction, she said. ``I've been accepted pretty well for being the first female.''

Rotarian Clayton Jenkins, owner of a construction company, offered Cruickshank's name for consideration.

``I am a proud sponsor,'' Jenkins said. He hinted there was some opposition over his proposal but ``none worth mentioning.''

Cruickshank was the first inductee proposed by Jenkins in his eight years in the club. She approached Jenkins about joining the club, which raises money for various charities.

The club was criticized last year for being among the 6 percent of the 7,300 Rotary clubs across the nation with no female members. In 1991, three area women were in line for induction, but none was ever sworn in because of the uproar over having female members.

Faye Bell was one of the three. She said she withdrew her name because ``the members were not united in wanting female members.'' She said Monday's induction may signal a new way of thinking for Plant City Rotarians.

``I hope they realize that some of the hardest workers in any service club are females.''

Bell said she would still consider becoming a Rotarian. But members would have to be unanimous about wanting women in their midst, she added.

``I would not join a club to be in a battle,'' she said.

Jorge Blondet, governor of the Rotary's West Central Florida district which includes 2,200 members in 42 clubs, said Plant City's induction of Cruickshank means just two clubs in the district have no female members, the Rotary Club of Brandon and the Rotary Club of Lakeland South.

Lakeland South club President Richard Snyder said Monday he does not see admitting a woman as a big issue that would draw opposition from his club. Members are admitted based on recommendations from current members. ``No females have been proposed. We really haven't had to decide.''

Brandon club President Charles Talley Jr. could not be reached for comment.

The passengers and crew of the fleeing merchant ship had more than enough reasons to be terrified as the howling wave of pirates swarmed across the deck. The clang of crashing cutlasses, the crack of flintlock pistols, groans from the wounded and the dying. The noise was cacophonous. Still, Dorothy Thomas noticed something unusual about two of the screaming thugs who slashed their way past her horrified gaze.

``By the largeness of their breasts,'' she recalled years later, ``I believed them to be women.''

An 18th-century gentleman in search of a suitable bride would have been well served avoiding Anne Bonney and Mary Read. They were hardly the lasses to set a mother-in-law's heart fluttering with joy.

On the other hand, a pirate captain looking to fill his ranks with ruthless sailors who possessed lightning-fast sword arms and a cheerful willingness to take all manner of risks - well, he couldn't have asked for a better choice.

These two legendary hellions could reef a sail in foul weather, throw a heaving line as well as any man and cut a throat with the best of them. They had to. The Spanish Main - the pirate-infested Caribbean coastline - was hardly an island of enlightenment.

Unlike the film or pulp fiction adventures from which most modern perceptions are drawn - including the new Gasparilla krewe named Bonney-Read - there was little romance or glamour in freebooting.

While Geena Davis may have thrilled movie audiences in the recent release ``Cutthroat Island,'' life in those grim times was less appealing. For one thing, Davis (and nearly every other cast member, for that matter) was far too well bathed. The average pirate's aversion to hygiene was perhaps exceeded only by the rejection of honest work.

Pirate ships were small, crowded, dank and foul, with crews to match. They operated under rigid rules, some of them - such as electing a captain - surprisingly democratic.

One rule that was almost universal prohibited women from even boarding a pirate vessel. The most successful of the Spanish Main pirates, Capt. Bartholomew Roberts, spelled out the prevailing attitude: ``No woman shall be allowed to sail on board. If any man shall carry her to sea in disguise, he shall suffer death.''

Small wonder, then, that two of the more noted women pirates, Bonney and Read, often went to great lengths to disguise their gender. Anne Bonney, illegitimate offspring of an Irish lawyer, immigrated to America in the late 1600s and quickly turned to thievery on the high seas with her husband, James. When James accepted an English pardon in the Bahamas, Bonney was disgusted and struck up a torrid romance with pirate captain ``Calico Jack'' Rackham.

One of the more notorious of the horde of pirates haunting the West Indies, Rackham soon threw convention to the winds and smuggled his lover aboard his sloop Vanity. Bonney's disguise didn't last long, but by the time her secret was out, no one in Rackham's crew was objecting. She swung a mean boarding ax.

PAIR MAKE A DYNAMIC DUO

The Vanity spent several years marauding along the American coast, with Bonney taking a short hiatus in Cuba to give birth to a son.

She returned in time to participate in the seizure of a rich Dutch merchant ship and to befriend a young Dutch sailor, who cheerfully threw in with the pirate crew.

The two became fast friends. When he confessed to being a she, Mary Read by name, Bonney intervened with the captain and crew of the Vanity to allow her friend to remain. The two made a ferocious team.

Read had been living in a man's world by passing herself off as one for most of her adult life. Born in England, she had served in both the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman and the British army.

She had run a saloon in Holland. After the death of her husband, she had disguised herself once again and signed aboard the ship later seized by Rackham's crew.

By 1720, the exploits of Bonney and Read were making headlines. Newspaper publishers knew a good story when they heard one, and many lurid accounts - many fictitious - were published in England and the Caribbean.

SAVED BY THEIR GENDER

What was not fiction was how the two were finally brought to justice, and how, for once, their gender proved an advantage.

Rackham and his crew were anchored off Jamaica, celebrating a lucrative bit of high seas robbery, when the British sloop Albion tracked them down. It was able to steal up on the Vanity because the crew was celebrating in typical pirate fashion, by drinking themselves into insensibility.

In fact, Read and Bonney were the only pirates sober enough to offer any resistance. As the Albion bore down upon them, the women tried desperately to rouse their besotted crew mates. None rose from his stupor to come up on the main deck, even after an enraged Read fired a pistol into the hold and killed one.

After the Albion's crew boarded, Bonney and Read were subdued, and the entire band of thieves was hauled off to a Jamaican port. The trial was assumed to be a mere formality.

For the male members of the crew, it was. Sentenced to death by hanging along with their compatriots, Bonney and Read were asked by the judge if they had anything to add in their defense. They responded with a sentence that has passed into pirate lore, and set the staid halls of justice rocking with laughter: ``My lord, we plead our bellies.''

Both were pregnant, and under English law, their unborn children could not be killed regardless of their mothers' crimes.

Read died of disease in prison, but no clear record remains concerning Bonney's fate. Legends persist that she was spirited away to Ireland with her child and lived the rest of her days in well-kept anonymity.

Anne Bonney and Mary Read were not the only women to sail under the Jolly Roger. While historical records are sketchy, others clearly made their living by piracy, and one led the largest pirate fleet in history.

-- Alvida - Before Vikings ravaged the North Sea in the 10th century, she led an all-woman crew from Sweden that terrorized the Baltic coast.

-- Grace O'Malley - Celebrated in patriotic song and legend, this Irish terror fought a decades-long war against the English monarchy in the 1500s. She was so adept that Queen Elizabeth I struck an uneasy truce with her to curtail her activities. At the age of 71, O'Malley was still seizing ships when it struck her fancy. An all-female krewe in Tampa has borrowed her name.

-- Charlotte De Berry - After leading a mutiny on an African-bound vessel in the mid-1600s and beheading the captain, the Englishwoman led her crew of desperadoes in a series of raids that seized gold ships along the entire African coast. Known for her cruelty, she once sewed a captive's lips together.

-- Fanny Campbell - During the Revolutionary War, this Massachusetts native joined with hordes of chartered privateers that relentlessly preyed on English shipping and made the American coast one of the more dangerous trade routes in the world.

-- Ching Shih - Taking over her late husband's enormous pirate fleet of more than 1,500 vessels, this queen of Chinese pirates made the 19th century Chinese coast a dangerous place for merchant ships of any nationality. She eventually stopped her attacks under pressure from European powers, but continued to live in well-regarded splendor, running a lucrative smuggling operation and attended by her 80,000-member army. She was the most successful pirate of them all.

For more information: For those interested in learning more (and discovering, for example, that there are at least three different ways to spell Mary Read's and Anne Bonney's names), these books are recommended: -- ``Pirates in Petticoats'' by Jane H. Yolen; McKay; 1963.

-- ``History of the Buccaneers of America'' by James Burney; George Allen & Unwin; 1916.

-- ``Pirates in History'' by Ralph T. Ward; York Press; 1974.

-- ``The Golden Age of Piracy'' by H.F. Rankin; Colonial Williamsburg Inc.; 1969.

Ruby Tiger Osceola, a 100-year-old Seminole Indian, is both a link to the past and a leader for the future.

TAMPA - When Ruby Tiger Osceola was born 100 years ago, there were fewer than 360 Seminole Indians in Florida. Thousands had died in the Seminole Wars or been shipped west and herded onto reservations.

Her grandparents and great-grandparents were among a small band driven deep into the swamps of South Florida, refusing to give in to the U.S. Army's ``subjugation and removal'' effort, as Secretary of War Jefferson Davis called it in 1855.

The birth of Ruby Osceola in the Everglades on Dec. 1, 1895, represented the tribe's will to survive. Today's descendants of those Florida Seminole survivors number about 2,000, of whom Osceola is the oldest.

She's a tiny woman, shrunken by age and shy with outsiders. But among Seminoles, to whom she speaks only in her native language, she is a giant.

Mother of seven, grandmother of 28 and great-grandmother of 30, she's the matriarch of the roughly 80 Seminoles who live on or near the 9-acre reservation off Orient Road in Tampa.

Beginning Thursday, her family will celebrate her century of life with a four-day event that will include storytellers and Indian dancers. Traditional beads, multicolored dresses and other Seminole crafts will be on display to the public in recognition of the cultural heritage Osceola helped keep alive.

Her legacy runs even deeper.

``She kept the family together,'' says her daughter Maggie Osceola. ``She's always watching out for the children and the grandchildren. She always wants everyone to be together.''

Throughout their history, the people known as the Seminoles have never been in one place for very long.

They began as members of various Creek tribes who migrated into North Florida in the early 1700s. They hunted, farmed and traded with one another. They lived in peace under the English and the Spanish until 1812.

That year, U.S. troops at war with England moved into Florida to punish the Seminoles, supposedly for aiding runaway slaves and bringing food to the besieged city of St. Augustine, which harbored British people.

In 1818, Andrew Jackson, then a federal general, led an attack on Seminole and Spanish settlements. When the Spanish protested, the United States offered to buy Florida for $5 million. Spain agreed.

Off and on until the late 1800s, Indians and U.S. troops battled for the right to land occupied by the Indians but coveted by white settlers.

In 1830, Jackson, by now president, signed the Indian Removal Act ordering that all Indians in the Southeastern states be moved to Western reservations.

Many chiefs were persuaded to go. But not the famed Osceola, to whom Ruby Osceola claims a distant kinship.

Osceola became notorious in 1835, when he killed chief Charley Emanthla after the chief agreed to go west and sold his clan's cattle to white men. Osceola is reported to have taken Emanthla's money and scattered it across the prairie as a sign of contempt.

The Seminole warrior led hit-and-run raids on U.S. soldiers and settlements throughout Central Florida. Troops burned Indian villages in response.

Osceola was captured when he attended a meeting supposedly to talk about a truce. He died in prison at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, S.C., of a throat infection in 1838.

Still the war, known as the Second Seminole War, went on. Many Indians surrendered and were sent west. Some warriors were tricked, like Osceola, and captured. Others withdrew deep into the Everglades. By 1842, they had retreated so far south that U.S. officials declared the war to be over.

Still the government was determined to rid the state of the Seminoles. U.S. officials offered the last surviving major chief, Billy Bowlegs, $215,000 to take his people to Oklahoma. He refused.

Fighting began again in 1855, when a group of land surveyors found Bowlegs' Everglades camp and destroyed his crops. Within three years, Bowlegs was worn out. The government made another offer and he accepted. He and his 120 followers were the last in a line of 12,000 Indians lured, cajoled and forced to leave Florida for reservations in the west.

Still, about 200 remained in their wilderness home. Skirmishes continued for another 30 years. Ruby Osceola was born into this small band of survivors. Every now and then, her children say, she'll recall as a child seeing white men in the swamp and hiding.

Her mother died when she was young, and she was raised mostly by her father. The family traveled the swamp by foot and dugout canoe, hunting deer, turtles and fish.

Always independent, she raised seven children on the money she earned working for local farmers. In 1960, her husband was stabbed to death, and she, her children and their families gathered up their belongings and left the Everglades.

She never remarried, says Keith Simmons, who is married to one of Osceola's granddaughters.

The family moved to Naples, then Bradenton to work in a plant nursery. In the early 1980s, the Seminole tribe bought the 9 acres in Tampa as a place to shelter bones uncovered during downtown construction. Chief James Billie asked Osceola and her family to make a home on the new Seminole land.

The original group of 30 has nearly tripled, filling the three apartment buildings behind the reservation's high-stakes bingo hall.

Time is catching up with Osceola and she's beginning to slow down. Increasingly her mind wanders back to the swamps of her childhood. But she still wants to do all the work, her children say.

``She always wants to be making something or be doing something,'' says daughter Maggie. ``She tries to do the laundry. And she gets real upset when people try to help her.''

Ruby Osceola is not all business. She has a quick bright smile and an easy laugh.

``My husband is always trying to make her laugh,'' says Tracy Garcia, one of Ruby's daughters-in-law. ``He calls her big momma and big boss. That makes her giggle.''

But Ruby Osceola holds on to her role as the group's leader. She always keeps her eye on the children around her. She worries they'll get involved in drugs. And she worries about family members who have left the crowded Tampa property to live in homes nearby.

She doesn't like to see people moving away, says Maggie. She worries that she won't be able to protect them.

``She wants to protect everybody.''

TAMPA - The daughter and sister of Polk County migrant workers, Elaine White left home for Florida State University ``with a Bible, $50 and an old suitcase.''

She has added a few possessions in the two decades since then. A college degree, a family, a 14-year career with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

Monday, she added a little piece of history: The highest-ranking woman ever in the sheriff's office.

White's promotion from captain to major of Jail Division I, announced at an afternoon news conference, makes her the first woman to run one of the county's jails.

Beginning April 1, White will oversee daily operation of the Orient Road jail, which has about 1,700 inmates and 350 employees. She is one of eight majors, a rank only surpassed by colonel and sheriff.

``Law enforcement is a male-dominated field, and I feel extremely proud to represent both minorities and females,'' said the 38-year-old mother of two, who is black.

Ability, not race or gender, brought White's promotion, said Sheriff Cal Henderson. But, he added, having a high-ranking woman benefits a sheriff's office with increasing numbers of female employees and inmates.

``Capt. White [has] worked her way up from deputy and excelled in every rank,'' he said. ``I think in the last year and a half she's shown the type of leadership that I'm looking for not only with the inmates but with the employees.''

White joined the sheriff's office in 1982 as a jail deputy. Corrections, she was told in college, ``is going to be the field of the future.''

She moved quickly through the ranks, becoming a captain at Orient Road about 16 months ago.

``I was looking for an organization that would promote women, and I found that here,'' she said.

White's is a large family - she is one of 13 brothers and sisters - and in a family of migrant workers, everyone digs in. White began working the fields as a child and worked until she left Dundee for Tallahassee and a degree in criminal justice.

Many of her family still live the migrant's life she left behind.

``They're so extremely proud that someone came out of the fields and did something like this,'' said White, a 1976 graduate of Haines City High School.

Sometimes, she said, they are impressed by nothing more than the steadiness of her career: 14 years with the same organization. The antithesis of a migrant life.

``They think I'm a winner,'' White said. ``If it rains, I get a paycheck. If it's cold, I get a paycheck.''

White's promotion is one of four prompted by the announced retirement of Col. Ronald Poindexter, the head of enforcement operations: -- Maj. Robert Hart, currently commander of the Special Investigations Division, will replace Poindexter. Hart is a 28-year veteran of the sheriff's office.

-- Maj. Gary Terry will replace Hart as commander of Special Investigations. A 25-year veteran of the sheriff's office, Terry currently heads Jail Division I.

-- Lt. Richard Hafeman, a 17-year sheriff's office veteran, will become captain of Jail Division I.

No doubt Shannon Faulkner is bouncing between exhilaration and despair this week.

Faulkner won the right to attend the formerly all-male Citadel on Friday, when two U.S. Supreme Court justices turned down the school's latest attempts to stop her admission as a full-fledged cadet.

She joined the 592-member corps of new cadets over the weekend and on Monday at 5:30 a.m. began military training with her classmates.

Her two-year battle for admission to the 152-year-old South Carolina military college was ugly.

She received death threats, her family's home was vandalized and she became the subject of intense criticism, scrutiny and commentary.

Although she has been a day student at the Charleston school for 20 months and says she has made a number of cadet friends who privately support her efforts, she expects to be hazed, ignored and isolated while a cadet.

To be frank, I wouldn't want to be in Faulkner's boots this week, during ``hell week,'' the Citadel's version of West Point's Beast Barracks.

BIG BOOTS TO FILL

The pressure from within the school, including the regular hazing, and the attention from within and without will be excruciating.

And there will be more than a few people hoping, praying, that Faulkner fails.

A number of women protested her entry to the school.

``It's a black day for the Citadel,'' said one. ``Shannon does not speak for us. She's not welcome here.''

I wouldn't want to be in Faulkner's boots ever, for that matter.

Attending a military academy was never my dream.

But at one point, a female member of my family whose father is a United States Military Academy graduate considered attending West Point.

Then, just 20 years ago, women were routinely - and openly - discriminated against in a host of areas.

In 1975, many jobs remained gender specific and many excluded women. Salaries and work assignments based on gender were common.

Credit was hard to get for a single woman. Married women frequently were asked for their husband's signature.

Women were denied admission to many social and service clubs and organizations.

In education, women were, of course, denied admission to more than just the Citadel. Even the U.S. service academies, including West Point, discriminated against women.

This particular young family member, who was soon to graduate from high school, wrote a letter to a U.S. senator asking him to sponsor legislation allowing the admission of women to the U.S. service academies.

His response symbolized the prevailing attitude in those days: patronizing, demeaning and discouraging.

She was hurt, her self-esteem bruised.

After all, here was a letter from a U.S. senator basically telling her that women couldn't cut it in a service academy.

A few years later, in 1976, West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy finally opened their doors to female cadets.

Today, about 12 percent of the 4,000 cadets at West Point are female.

ANOTHER SOLDIER

This year, a woman, Rebecca Marier, was the No. 1 graduate in the United States Military Academy Class of 1995, which had 988 members.

What a grand achievement in a time when, sad to say, women still are discriminated against in more than a few places in the United States.

Though it seems hard to believe given the struggles - and lessons - of the past 20 years, women are still excluded, patronized, demeaned and discouraged with unfortunate regularity.

Shannon Faulkner is just another soldier in the equity battle.

But at least now, thanks to her own dogged determination and two male Supreme Court justices, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia, she has the chance to succeed or fail.

The opportunity to achieve.

That's all she wanted.

That's all she deserves.

Last Wednesday, I wrote that Shannon Faulkner deserved a chance at the Citadel.

Not all of you agreed.

Many called to express your disagreement; all but one were women.

The lone man described Faulkner in obscene terms not fit for a family newspaper.

The women were more civil but no less outraged at Faulkner's attempt to attend the all-male public military college in Charleston, S.C.

One described her as pushy and uppity.

``It's entirely wrong that she wants to go to the Citadel,'' said another woman. ``I hope they give her the silent treatment.''

Several complained that it wasn't fair that Faulkner had a private room and was neither required to meet the same height and weight requirements as the male students, nor get her hair cut short.

If Faulkner wanted to ``play with the boys she should get her head buzzed, she should do the same things, meet the same standards,'' the woman said.

Several commented that Faulkner certainly didn't represent them, and they were annoyed that she was being held up by some as a representative of all women.

There were also many comments about the sanctity of all-male or all-female schools and the benefits of such education, particularly for women.

The calls dwindled, but the controversy did not.

STRESS FUELS RETREAT

On Friday, Faulkner fueled another round when she retreated from the Citadel, citing stress.

The school's student body was seen celebrating exuberantly after Faulkner's decision was announced.

But her decision - even considering the incredible stress - disappointed many who watched the drama from a distance and hoped Faulkner would end gender-based discrimination at the Citadel, which has a long history as an all-male institution but is a public educational facility supported by tax dollars.

``This is a sad day for women,'' said one.

Another wondered if Faulkner had been offered money to leave.

Others complained that Faulkner looked physically unprepared for the ordeal called ``hell week'' that begins the Citadel experience for incoming freshmen.

Others speculated about her motives.

Had she done the whole thing as a joke? Was she only interested in getting into the history books? Was she trying to score a lucrative book and movie contract?

So far, all we really know is what she said when she began her march - that she had long dreamed of attending the school and her legal efforts were intended to realize the dream.

Only Faulkner knows the true purity of her motives.

They may not rank with those of Rosa Parks, for instance. That legendary seamstress's refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus to a white passenger inspired the bus boycotts that contributed to the success of the civil rights movement and catapulted Martin Luther King Jr. into prominence.

Faulker's motives also may not rival those of Charlayne Hunter-Gault, one of two blacks who integrated the University of Georgia in 1961.

Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes faced many of the same hostilities as Faulkner when they entered the Athens, Ga., university - including mobs of white students who shouted racial epithets.

OPENING THE DOOR

Faulkner may not have survived hell week, but she did open the door at the Citadel just a bit for other women who want a chance to attend the institution.

Her efforts are an appropriate topic for discussion during this month that celebrates the 75th anniversary of suffrage.

Just 75 years ago, women couldn't vote.

Today, even though women can vote, Americans still struggle over the sacrifices we must all make for liberty for all and the responsibility we must all exercise for equality.

What is particularly noteworthy about the Faulkner odyssey is what it says about our ambivalence regarding the status and role of women in our culture.

If Shannon Faulkner were a black man, we would be unified in our contempt of discrimination.

But she isn't.

She's just a lone 20-year-old woman.

Wilma Vaught, a retired Air Force brigadier general, is the driving force behind a memorial for women who served in the military.

SUN CITY CENTER - Thirty years ago, when an ambitious Wilma Vaught was shut out of the executive business world, she turned to the military.

There she built her career, becoming a U.S. Air Force brigadier general and receiving dozens of commendations, including the Defense and the Air Force distinguished service medals, the Bronze Star and the Meritorious Service Medal.

She retired in 1985, but she didn't stop. Vaught, 65, has spent the past nine years building support for a monument to the women who helped pave her way. In Sun City Center on Thursday, Vaught will sum up the project to a gathering of Florida women who served as U.S. military officers.

More than 88,000 women veterans live in Florida.

``It's been a long, difficult, uphill climb,'' Vaught, of Falls Church, Va., said last week from her office in Washington. But the Women in Military Service for America Memorial is well on its way.

On June 22, Vaught helped break ground on the memorial, which will sit at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.. Scheduled for an October 1997 opening, it will be dedicated to the 1.8 million women who served with America's armed forces from the Revolutionary War to the Persian Gulf War.

They were nurses, clerks and translators. They taxied aircraft and ran motor pools. They served in all branches and all military theaters. More than 200 were killed.

At the June groundbreaking, a Court of Honor saluted the women who have died in military service. Among them are Maj. Marie Rossi, the Army helicopter pilot who was one of the five women killed in action in the Persian Gulf War, and Lt. Kara Hultgreen, the Navy's first female F-14 combat carrier fighter pilot, who died in a crash at sea last October.

``There's been women in the service for a long time. And they really haven't been appreciated or recognized,'' said Eleanor L'Ecuyer, a retired U.S. Coast Guard captain who organized the gathering in Sun City Center this week.

``This makes us feel great.''

Despite her experience at breaking barriers, Vaught has faced new challenges over the past nine years as she worked to raise the $25 million the monument is expected to cost.

``The first lesson I learned was that only money builds memorials. Not great causes. Not great designs,'' she said. ``There are so many wonderful, wonderful causes out there, and this was just one more.''

The American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars auxiliaries and Paralyzed Veterans of America were a big help. The project got a boost last year when it received a $9.5 million federal grant. And AT&T has pledged to donate $1 million. But Vaught's quest continues because she needs $6 million more.

``You have to be totally committed,'' she said.

While traveling the country to meet with women veterans, Vaught has learned that many harbor bitter feelings about their service because they were taunted, snubbed, sometimes even attacked by resentful servicemen.

She was reminded that those resentments still exist when she saw the Citadel cadets cheering the news that Shannon Faulkner had decided to drop out.

``That was disgraceful,'' Vaught said. ``We don't need men like that in the armed forces.'' Indeed, they're poor representatives of the institution that gave Vaught a chance to build a prestigious career.

Vaught received a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and a master's in business administration from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

The military offered her the type of advancement opportunity that she couldn't find in private business.

She served as a management analyst in Saigon, South Vietnam, from October 1968 to October 1969, where she became a sharpshooter and received a bronze star.

She served on Air Force bases throughout the world and became the only woman promoted to brigadier general in the comptroller career field.

She is also the first woman to command a unit receiving the Joint Meritorious Unit Award, the nation's highest peacetime award.

For information about the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, call (800) 222-2294 or (703) 533-1155, or write, Dept. 560, Washington, D.C., 20042-0560.

Times are changing in old world of clock repair.

TAMPA - When Anne Adametz makes house calls, she's often greeted with blank stares and a cool ``May I help you?''

Even when she is expected and right on time.

In a profession teeming with older men, this 25-year-old female horologist is as rare as a 13th chime on a mantel clock.

``I have great fun with it; the reactions of people amuse me,'' Adametz says.

Recently a man came into the shop and stood patiently. When Adametz tried to help, he explained he was waiting for the repairman.

``When I told him that was me, he just felt like a goof,'' she says. ``He apologized; he felt like a [chauvinist] pig, but I wasn't insulted.''

Adametz began at Boyd Clocks in Tampa two years ago, cleaning up and doing light secretarial work. She had no ambitions to become a clock person.

``I don't think this profession crosses women's minds, because they've never even been exposed to it.''

Adametz showed an aptitude for hands-on work, however.

``I used to take apart my mother's plumbing,'' she says.

Her parents also were a strong influence; her father was a rare books dealer, and her mother sold antiques.

``Genetically, Anne's way ahead,'' says David Boyd, who founded Boyd Clocks. ``She has a very fast mind; you tell her something once and she's got it.''

Like Adametz, Daryl Scherzer's interest in antiques predated his decision to become an antique clock repairer.

``I've always liked mechanical things and antiques, ever since I was a teenager,'' he says.

Scherzer is phasing out his career in construction to repair antique timepieces. He takes classes at Winter Park Adult Vocational Center, and he has started a part-time business, Times Past, from his Lakeland home. On Saturdays, he sets up shop at Sweet Memories Antiques in Brandon.

Scherzer attends the Lakeland chapter of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, a group of more than 400 clock enthusiasts and dealers that meets on the second Sunday of every other month in the Lake Mirror Civic Center.

At 44, Scherzer is wet behind the ears compared with the sea of senior citizens.

``When I go to association meetings, I feel young,'' he says with a laugh.

At the meetings in Lakeland and Tampa - whose chapter has 30-plus members - people buy and sell clock parts, books, tools and such. They also attend workshops on techniques such as gold leading and reverse painting on glass.

Mostly, they get a chance to chat and swap stories about their passion: clocks and all the accouterment. It can become addictive.

``Clocks are useful to you in your home,'' says Adametz, who has begun her own collection. ``They gain in value but they don't eat or cause any problems.''

But they don't just keep time; they can consume it.

``I once spent an entire weekend repairing one clock.''

Her boyfriend understands; he builds neon clocks for the store.

Recently, she was laboring on a customer's clock when her boyfriend entered the room.

``The guy said to my boyfriend, `Don't worry, she's working!' like he was my boss. And my boyfriend said, `What do you mean? I work for her!' ''

Even though she is often asked who really fixes the clocks, she says, ``if we weren't doing the quality of work, they wouldn't come back.''

These young people's interest reassures Boyd.

Clock repair and restoration, he says, ``is of an older generation. But it is by no means a lost art.''

TAMPA - There was never any question that America's favorite kid sister, Bonnie Blair, would take to the ice.

She was the youngest in a big family of skaters, and you might say she simply took the hobby one golden step further than her five siblings. Or most anyone, for that matter.

Blair's five Olympic gold medals in speed skating are the most won by an American woman. Her six medals (including a bronze) - earned in the 1988,'92 and'94 games - make Blair the most decorated Winter Olympic athlete in our country's history.

Since retiring from competition this year, Blair, 31, has traveled the country on the motivational speaking circuit, sharing her inspirational life story with millions.

Tampa Bay area residents will be treated to that story Sunday, when she delivers a keynote speech at 1 p.m. as part of VISIONS: The Women's Expo at the Tampa Convention Center. Country singer Naomi Judd and television talk show host Maury Povich also are featured during the two-day event.

Blair's speech will center on encouraging people to achieve their best - a subject on which she is considered an authority. Blair's ascension to the pinnacle of her sport most often came against great odds and under enormous pressure. Twice she won gold medals in races decided by a slim 0.02 second.

In the 1988 Calgary Olympics, for example, Blair's turn to skate in the 500-meter race came just after her chief rival, East Germany's Christa Rothenburger, had set a world record.

Instead of succumbing to the pressure to produce, Blair set another world record of 39.1 seconds - a mark that held up until March 1994.

``At one point early on, I can remember being more happy with a fourth place in the 1,500 meters than by a win in another race, because that was my personal best,'' said Blair during a speech to the Women's Sports Foundation convention earlier this year in Dallas. ``In speed skating, you're always competing against yourself; there are no judges. It's totally objective.

``The one thing that changed me was a little bit of success. That's when I started getting dedicated.''

PASS THE PEANUT BUTTER

Blair's stories offer insight into the mind of an elite athlete and how a positive mind-set can be used to tackle everyday struggles.

She relays the message with the enthusiasm you would expect of a champion who boasts her own traveling fan club, the Blair Bunch, mostly neighbors and relatives from her hometown of Champaign, Ill.

Blair's is a success story as all-American as her favorite meal, a glass of milk and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

She started skating at the age of 2, imitating her older brothers and sisters. As Blair's talent became obvious, fundraisers often were held to earn the money necessary to travel to larger competitions. The Champaign Police Department once sponsored an early tour.

Blair was chosen as a keynote speaker at the women's expo because ``she's just an incredible role model,'' says spokeswoman Nancy Woolfolk.

``It's important that we have inspirational messages for women to educate and motivate us, to make us feel one with one another and capable of achieving our personal potential.

``We chose celebrities such as Bonnie, with those kinds of messages to impart. She really exemplifies the all-American woman.''

Women comprise less than 2 percent of the nation's 260,000 career firefighters. Natalie Frewer wants to join their ranks.

DADE CITY - As a little girl, Natalie Frewer lived down the street from a firehouse and loved to watch the firemen race away on shiny red trucks.

``I've always wanted to be a firefighter. I can't wait to get out there and start saving lives,'' says Frewer of Floral City, who just completed the Pasco-Hernando Community College Fire Academy.

She was the only woman in a class of 16.

``Whenever I see that firetruck going down the road, I wish I were on it,'' she says.

Frewer was born the same year the nation saw its first career female firefighter - only 21 years ago.

The brotherhood of firefighters is one of the last areas of public service that women are cracking. It's a dangerous and physically grueling job, but one that more women are taking on.

``The numbers go up every year,'' says Terese Floren, executive director of Women in the Fire Service, a national association based in Madison, Wis.

Still, women comprise less than 2 percent of the country's 260,000 career firefighters, Floren says. In comparison, women make up 10 percent of the nation's municipal and county law enforcement officers, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

In the Tampa Bay area, full-time female firefighters comprise about 5 percent of major departments.

But some of the things that make firefighting different from other jobs are hurdles women must clear to be accepted and rise through the ranks.

The physical demands of the job are the first challenge. To be state certified, fire academy students must pass a tough agility test.

They must strap 25-pound steel air tanks to their backs and connect them to face masks in 90 seconds, quickly carry and raise ladders and run while dragging 85 pounds of waterlogged hose.

After four months of physical training and practice with her class, Frewer passed the drills and a lengthy written exam with high marks.

``I feel like I really accomplished something,'' she says. ``I worked really hard for this and I'm so happy.''

But, Floren says, ``There's a social perception that women do not have the strength and stamina to be firefighters.''

CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT

In April, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action sexual discrimination lawsuit against the Los Angeles Fire Department on behalf of women recruits.

The lawsuit alleges officers required women to perform drills more often and under more difficult conditions than their male counterparts.

In addition, a videotape called ``Female Follies'' was shown at some of the city's fire stations. The tape, shot during training exercises, shows females making mistakes while the men perform the tasks well, according to The Associated Press.

``The upper-body strength is the biggest thing you have to overcome,'' says Pasco Fire Rescue Lt. Cindy O'Neal. ``But you just use technique and flexibility to get around it, and we have to pass all the same tests as the guys.''

O'Neal, 28, is one of 15 women in a department with 188 men. She is one of four female lieutenants in the department, but the only one - and first in the department's history - fighting fires. The others are in rescue squads.

``You're constantly having to prove your abilities, and you're often especially chosen to perform physical chores,'' says Kelly Gifford, 33, a 13-year firefighter and paramedic with the Tampa Fire Department. She is one of 26 full-time women firefighters in her department. There are 472 men.

Gifford and other women say that some of their tougher challenges don't come at blazing buildings or bloody accidents, but back in the station.

``The hostility comes from within the fire station from those men who resent women being in the fire service,'' Floren says. ``Most male firefighters today are the `show-me' kind.''

But Tampa fire Capt. Karl Wolf,a 14-year veteran who has supervised women firefighters, says all rookies undergo scrutiny.

``The new kid always has to prove themselves, whether male or female,'' Wolf says. ``Some of the women don't see that.

``But I'm not naive. There are some guys that have a chip on their shoulders about women and test them a little more.''

Firemen traditionally have been a close-knit group with intense camaraderie. Most departments operate on 24-hour shifts, with employees living and eating together and sharing a single bunk room with rows of beds and zero privacy.

``Bonding is very strong in the fire service,'' Floren says. ``If you're brought in, it works very well. But if you're excluded, it can be used to shut you out even more.''

It also can be really tough on self-esteem, Gifford says.

``Nobody wanted a woman in their station when I came on, but things have changed a lot,'' she says.

PART OF THE TEAM

Frewer says she did not feel any exclusion from the male students in the fire academy.

``Everybody was very supportive. Nobody looked at me and said, `Oh, you're just a girl,' '' she says. ``Everyone was a team and that's the way you have to work in the fire service.''

Often on training exercises, Frewer's squad-mates shouted words of encouragement.

Frewer plans to complete paramedic training to receive her associate of science degree, then join a fire department. She is optimistic she will not encounter job discrimination.

``I think everyone there [in the department] will be thought of as a team,'' she says.

But veteran women firefighters say that when they first joined, they didn't anticipate the stresses of living and working in a male-dominated field.

``The toughest part is living with men 24 hours a day, in a bunk room with no privacy,'' Gifford says.

Most of the nation's fire stations were built to accommodate men exclusively, Floren says.

Two years ago, the Tampa Fire Department formed the Women's Advisory Committee to deal with these issues. Now all Tampa stations have two bathrooms.

The advisory committee's agenda includes developing a standard maternity policy and addressing child care needs.

Child care is one of the more vexing problems firefighting mothers face: It's nearly impossible to find care that accommodates the 24-hour shifts.

Some women depend on relatives to care for their children. Frewer says her parents and her fiance will take care of their toddler son when she starts full-time work.

``It's really difficult to raise children and work on this job,'' Gifford says.

A single parent, Gifford has a regular workday. But when she was on the overnight shift, she would leave her daughter with her grandmother so much that the child began to call her ``Mom.''

Other women hire expensive in-home care. Some Bay area firefighting couples work alternate shifts, so one parent always will be home with their children.

Despite the difficulties, women who have experienced the adrenalin rush of battling a blaze or rescuing a victim say they're hooked on this career.

``People have this perception of firefighting being this big macho job, but it's really about compassion and putting the pieces back together,'' Gifford says.

``Saving lives and helping people in our community is what I want to do,'' Frewer says. ``I really want to save lives.''

No discussion of historical women of significance, on whom we've been focusing on Mondays throughout Women's History Month, is complete without touching on the women who didn't make it into the national and international history books.

These women who were inspirational role models participated as individuals or as part of women's organizations that made significant contributions through charitable or service activities.

Such women and such groups existed in virtually every community. In Tampa, for instance, the Tampa Woman's Club has been a strong presence for 95 years.

Founded in 1900, the club chose as its first president Mrs. A.E. Dick, wife of the manager of the Tampa Bay Hotel, now the site of the University of Tampa. Other early leaders of the club included Mrs. Thomas Shackleford, Mrs. O.J. Spafford and others.

In those days, women were not referred to by their given names in the newspaper or in club records, so those names are lost to history. In that regard, certainly, the Tampa Woman's Club has changed a bit.

The current president is Noussy Tavakoli, who presided Thursday over one of the club's annual fundraisers, an international luncheon prepared by members and served at the club's comfortable clubhouse on Bayshore Boulevard.

While we dined on tabouli, hummus, Swedish meatballs, spaghetti, chicken and yellow rice and more than a plate full of other delectables, former President Louise Dibbs filled me in on club history and the community service projects in which the 325-member group is involved in now.

In the early days, the club primarily focused on the genteel activities traditional to upper-middle-class women. Then civic, educational and welfare projects became an integral part of the club's raison dHetre.

During World War II, the club ceased functioning and the clubhouse was used by the Red Cross. In 1944, the club resumed meeting.

In 1946, the club held its first Fashionollia, a fundraising fashion show that will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 1996. The most recent Fashionollia raised $10,000.

LONG LIST OF SERVICES

The list of service projects undertaken by the Tampa Woman's Club, which moved into its present home in 1972 after years in the former O.J. Spafford home on Plant Avenue, has grown significantly.

Now it includes volunteer work for a variety of organizations and charities, as well as cash and merchandise donations to many groups such as the Nature Conservancy's Adopt-a-Manatee project, the MacDonald Training Center, ROCK Camp, the Spring and Operation Smile, which helps with medical care for Third World children who have cleft palates.

The adult literacy program at Hillsborough Community College is a major beneficiary of the club's activities this year. Last year, about $18,000 was donated to charity.

But club members give more than money. They volunteer their time as well.

In fact, 10-year club veteran Katy Harper says the money is the least of it.

``It isn't just what we give in money that's important. The money we give is minimal to what we do in so many other ways.''

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Tampa psychologist Sue Gridley wants to recognize Wealtha Bevier, her chemistry teacher at Sarasota High School, as an unsung hero.

Bevier, according to Gridley, was raised in a pioneer environment made more challenging because all her siblings were brothers.

``Perhaps that helped her influence countless girls to believe they could achieve in areas that the strong stereotypes of the 1950s and 1960s told us we were unsuited for.''

Bevier made the few girls who enrolled in advanced chemistry welcome even though the boys in the class, ``responding to the prevailing attitudes, made it clear we were most unwelcome,'' wrote Gridley.

``She may not have had national or global recognition, but by inspiring many of us to dare to follow our ambitions, she launched many young minds on to college, graduate school and professional careers.''

A Tampa cigarmaker envisioned herself flying from Tampa to Cuba. She never got her chance.

TAMPA - She thought she could soar into the sky and win recognition as a woman aviator at a time when Ruth Elder and Amelia Earhart had gained acclaim for daring flights across the Atlantic.

Victoria Pou Mateo, a 24-year-old Tampa cigarmaker, was taking lessons on weekends and hoping to buy her own airplane. She talked about flying alone from Tampa to Havana.

But the young woman plunged to her death in a fatal crash July 15, 1928, ending her dreams of leaving the Hav-A-Tampa cigar factory and starting a new career in aviation.

Victoria Mateo had a 5 1/2-year-old daughter, Theola, who thinks about her mother wistfully today. Clippings, snapshots and family remembrances are about all she has left of a mother who died too young.

In January 1928, Victoria was one of two women interviewed by a Tampa Daily Times reporter at the new municipal airport being prepared for dedication in February as Drew Field.

She already had a studio portrait of herself in a leather pilot's helmet, and she was attired in flying togs when interviewed. But the writer quoted her reluctance to cut her long, black hair, as many young women in the'20s were doing.

``A bob is one of the modern things I don't like,'' Victoria said. ``But I do like flying.''

WHAT A WOMAN CAN DO

She talked then of making the flight to Cuba to visit family relatives. Her father was a native of Barcelona, Spain, and her husband, Manuel Mateo, was of Hispanic descent, too.

``Of course, it's going to be a great, big adventure when I start off for Cuba alone,'' Victoria told the Times reporter. ``But it will be more than that. It will prove to me that what another woman can do, I can do, too.''

This was a reference to the exploits of Ruth Elder, a Lakeland woman who had flown with George Haldeman on a trans-Atlantic flight that ended off the Azores in October 1927. Both were rescued.

(In June, Amelia Earhart had become an instant celebrity as the first woman to cross the Atlantic successfully by airplane. She accompanied two men on a Newfoundland-to-Wales flight.) Ironically, the field near Lakeland where Victoria Mateo met death in July had been renamed Haldeman-Elder Flying Field.

According to an account in The Tampa Morning Tribune, Mateo had gone to Haldeman-Elder field that Sunday afternoon to take a lesson from O.G. Stone, a more experienced Lakeland pilot.

Stone also was demonstrating an airplane he hoped to sell to her. Although he had logged 200 hours in the air and Mateo had 27, neither was yet a licensed pilot.

The two flew for 1 1/2 hours, returning to the field about 6:30 p.m. at an altitude of about 2,500 feet. Then something went wrong.

More than 100 onlookers had gathered at the field to watch the usual Sunday afternoon aerial doings. Witnesses said they heard a roar as the Mateo/Stone plane approached - and took a dive.

Newspaper accounts speculated that the plane with dual controls had hit an air pocket and that one of the pilots had frozen while gripping the stick.

Within seconds, the plane had crashed into the ground. Both occupants were killed instantly. The body of the young woman landed 75 feet away from the wreckage.

GRIEF HITS HARD

In the aftermath, family members said Victoria had begun flying lessons in the fall of 1927 without telling them. They were worried and fearful, for newspapers were full of articles about air crashes.

When the call came of her death, they said they knew what had happened, almost without asking.

Little Theola found it hard to face the reality of her mother's death - but when it sank in, it hit hard. She was so distraught, she had to wait a year before entering B.C. Graham Elementary School.

Now 72, Theola Mateo Rees says, ``It wasn't pleasant growing up without a mother in those days.''

She went to live with her grandmother, Maria ``Pino'' Mateo. Besides her father, she had two attentive aunts.

Rees recalls walking from her grandmother's home on Park Avenue in Tampa Heights to Woodlawn Cemetery, where she would go to see her mother's grave.

``There was a lot of tragedy in my family,'' she said. A 3-year-old brother had died when Theola was only 6 weeks old.

Along with a picture album that has photographs of her mother, Rees holds on to three books on flying that were her mother's: ``Modern Flight - a Manual of Practical Flight,'' ``Aerobatics'' and ``The Aeroplane Speaks.''

Her father, Manuel Mateo, was a salesman through the years, working for Unijax, formerly the Tampa Paper Co., at the time of his death.

Theola Mateo grew up to marry Daniel J. Rees, and they had four sons. She has been a homemaker and has worked as a switchboard operator. The family lived in Riverview until her husband's death in 1992. She now resides in Brandon.

The airport where her mother died was active from 1925 through 1945. It's now the site of Oscar J. Pope Elementary School, off U.S. 98 between Lakeland and Highland City.

Well, it was like pulling teeth. But you eventually came through.

What am I talking about? The historic women who influenced you that I beseeched you to send for profiling during Women's History Month.

I know, I know.

You were busy.

You forgot.

You couldn't find a stamp.

You couldn't think of any historic women who influenced you.

You couldn't remember whether it was Margaret Chase Smith or Clare Booth Luce you wanted to honor.

Probably it was Margaret Chase Smith, born in 1897, who was the first woman elected to both the U.S. House and Senate and one of the first Republicans to mount public opposition to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Although maybe it was Clare Boothe Luce, born in 1903, who was an author, playwright, U.S. House member and U.S. ambassador to Italy.

Anyway, you finally did offer an eclectic group of influential women, and we'll do thumbnail sketches of them on Mondays through March.

Names still may be submitted. Please send them by mail, e-mail or fax.

-- -- --

Jeanie Williamson of Tampa selected American tennis great Althea Gibson, born in 1927, who was the first black to play at Wimbledon.

Gibson, a Florida A&M graduate, won a number of amateur and professional women's tennis titles during her impressive career, which spanned four decades from the late 1940s to the 1970s.

Williamson, who is white and grew up in the deep South during segregation days, said reading Gibson's life story when she was a child ``aroused my interest in the issue of segregation and gave me the courage, as a child, to begin to think for myself and to make my own decisions about the morality of segregation, about the equality of all individuals and about respect for every person as a person, apart from race.''

-- -- --

Jean Harden of Tampa submitted Alice Paul, born in 1885, who worked tirelessly for women's suffrage.

Paul organized silent sentinels, women who encircled the White House on Woodrow Wilson's Inauguration Day. Many of the pickets, including Paul, were arrested and served time in jail. In 1923, Paul authored the Equal Rights Amendment.

According to ``American Women's History,'' by local historian Doris Weatherford, Paul was largely responsible for the renewal of the suffrage movement after Susan B. Anthony's death.

-- -- --

Aviation pioneer Jacqueline Cochran, born about 1910, was nominated by Dorothy Ellis of Tampa.

Cochran's influence on aviation was legendary. She held amazing numbers of speed, altitude and distance records and was a founder of the Women's Air Force Service Pilot program that served the Allied effort during World War II.

Cochran, who became a very glamorous woman and even developed a line of cosmetics, grew up in poverty around the sawmills of Florida's Panhandle. At one point, she lived across the street from some of Ellis' family.

``Jackie was about 8 years old... She was barefoot and wearing flour sack dresses. The neighbors helped the family out with food and clothing. Jackie fell in love with a beautiful blond doll in the company store. She worked at all kinds of odd jobs to earn money for chances on the doll and won it. That doll became the symbol of what she wanted to look like.''

-- -- --

Claire Howell of Tampa nominated author Ann Morrow Lindbergh, born in 1906, who was famous in her own right long before she married Charles in 1929 and lost a child to a kidnapper and murderer in 1932.

Howell said she was moved by Lindbergh's courage in ``Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead,'' which was about the baby who was killed.

Lindbergh's most famous book, published in 1955, was ``Gift From the Sea.''