Yes! Virginia: Life Lessons Through Ten Decades of Leadership - Softcover

Blankenbaker, Senator Virginia; Murphy, Betsy B.

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798989348268

Publisher: Beautiful Infinity Books, 2025

Synopsis

“Virginia has always cared about the little, the least, the last, and the lost.”
~ Bishop Rev. T. Garrot Benjamin Jr.

Born in Indiana in 1933 during the Great Depression, Virginia Blankenbaker was raised on a farm with a fireplace for heating. As the middle of seven children and feeling like a wallflower, Virginia learned early that to get attention she was going to need to create her own path.

Yes! Virginia is the uplifting story of a girl and then woman who became a leader in every decade of her life. From her first election to class president of the 4th grade in 1942 to twelve years in the Indiana State Senate, Virginia stood for big change even as she was packaged in a tiny 5’2” body.

Virginia championed legislation to declare Martin Luther King Day a state holiday and passed common sense gun laws with the support of both Republicans and Democrats.

Her opponents called her “just a housewife” and too liberal.

Her constituents called her a leader with a heart.

Her family and friends called her unstoppable.

"In the late 1970s and early 1980s, women were virtually non-existent in Indiana politics and government. "We" had only just begun to be accepted in any real numbers in law schools and MBA programs, which is where I was when I first met Virginia. In graduate school or not, women then were very much expected to choose between two very divided worlds: being mothers or being working women. The two worlds did not intersect. A choice had to be made.

Then there was Virginia Blankenbaker. She was an anomaly in so many ways. Tiny, always dressed in her tweed suits and perfectly coiffed, she navigated a landscape that had not been designed with her in mind. Yet she navigated it unapologetically, claiming what was hers. And I was in awe.

She was a mother and a wife, a teacher, a businessperson. Virginia’s presence and persistence were powerful counterweights to the invisibility I would have felt obligated to accept but for her presence in my life. Virginia’s quiet confidence and genuine belief in herself helped me find my footing. She was an incredible role model in every way. Meeting Virginia just when I did was an inflection point in my own life, one that continues to remind me that leadership is not only about what we achieve for ourselves, but about who we lift along the way."

~ MARTHA SANDERS HOOVER, Former deputy prosecutor (sex crimes) and founder of A Longer Table 501C3

Edition details

• Publisher: Beautiful Infinity Books
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798989348268
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160