Nineteen Stars of Indiana: Exceptional Hoosier Women 

In 2009, businessman and former Indiana Secretary of Commerce Michael S. Maurer undertook a project to write the stories of 19 accomplished Hoosier women for a book idea he had.

 

The number 19 is significant because Indiana is the 19th state admitted into the union of the United States in 1816.  Mr. Maurer contacted Dane Starbuck to help with the project. Dane and three other co-authors, along with Maurer, selected the 19 women to be featured from nearly 100 worthy candidates. 

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The group of 19 included a broad array of women of accomplishment, everyone from opera and Broadway musical singers Sylvia McNair and Angela Brown, to Rabi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, Indiana Lieutenant Governor Becky Skillman, to co-founder of Vera Bradley, Patricia Miller, artist Nancy Noel, and Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor. 

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Dane was asked to research and write the biographies of Sarah Evans Barker, the first woman in Indiana to be appointed a federal judge, Alecia DeCoudreaux, a corporate executive with Eli Lilly & Company who went on to become President of Mills College in California, and Nancy Shepherd Fitzgerald, founder of Anchors Away, Inc. a Christian based non-profit that has lifted the lives emotionally and spiritually of thousands of teenagers and young adults. Ms. Fitzgerald also happened to be perhaps the best woman golfer of her time in Indiana. 

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"It was a joy to capture the lives of these exceptional Hoosier women." - Dane Starbuck