Lucy O'Reilly Schell

The first American woman to compete in a Grand Prix was also a distinguished rally driver and team owner

- DELWYN MALLETT

OCTANE READERS are likely to be aware of Harry Schell, the first American to participate in the modern Grand Prix era (although he was born in France and lived most of his life there - see Octane 62) but few will know much, if anything, of his spirited mother, herself a Grand Prix driver, rally driver and race team owner in the 1930s.

Lucy O'Reilly was born in Brunoy, south of Paris, in 1896. Her father Francis Patrick O'Reilly was the son of Irish immigrants and made a fortune in construction and investing in factories in his hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania. At the age of 46 he decided to devote the rest of his life to enjoying his money and travelling the world and, in 1896, while in Paris, he married Henriette Celestine Roudet, who gave birth to Lucy, within the year.

On the eve of World War One, the teenage Lucy met and fell for Selim Laurence 'Laury' Schell, son of an American diplomat, and at the start of the war volunteered as a nurse in a Parisian hospital, caring for wounded troops. In 1915 she accompanied Laury and his family to the US only to return to Paris in 1917, where the couple were married.