Over the past few years, one of our most consistently popular issues has been the annual Corvette Ladies Salute. It was a semi-regular fixture back in the old, i.e. New Jersey days, and when my predecessor dropped it, along with the annual Corvette Price Guide feature, a lot of you weren't too pleased. I didn't have a clue (yeah, I know, so what's new) about VETTE Magazine traditions when I moved up to the Driver's Seat and promptly got hit with a ton of nasty letters for first omitting the Price Guide and then the Corvette Ladies.
We brought back the Price Guide in the May '00 issue, and 16 months later (Sept. '01), re-activated our Corvette Ladies Salute. Right off the bat, we got an essentially 100-percent positive reaction for the Ladies issue from the ladies who wanted to be a part of this annual special and from you, the readers, in general.
We make our share of boo-boos, and inevitably we'll misplace a submission (or three). We also (and inevitably) receive a few submissions after our cutoff date. In both instances, we'll carry over those materials for "next year."
With the 16 extra pages we got starting with this year's March issue, we figured we could easily devote more pages to the ladies and be able to run more "other" articles than we'd been able to in any of the previous three years. That was until we got in efore. We budgeted substantially more pages for this year's Corvette Ladies than ever before, and by the time we hit the deadline we'd announced last fall for receiving submissions, realized we were at least 10-12 pages shy of what we'd need to include everyone who'd sent in materials. So...
We ended up using material based on when it was received; you know, first come, first served. Cody (Dakota Wentz, our group Editorial Intern) took on the task of writing up all of the Vette Files profiles-over 16 pages worth-and managed to do a great job of it while completing a journalism class term paper and cramming for his spring-semester college final exams. Thanks, Cody! Thanks also to Managing Editor Janet and Art Director Mike for the extra effort they've put into this issue-these specials require a lot of additional work. The Team discussed how to handle the volume of material we received this year, and we decided that if you made the effort to get your entry to us on time, it wouldn't be fair to make you wait until next year to be included. Beginning next month, the October issue, we'll be running a page or two of a special Corvette Ladies Vette Files in every issue until we've used all of this year's materials that were received by our original deadline. And we're not going to forget about the rest of you who have sent in (or are planning on sending) photos of your Corvette(s) to be included in the Files. We'll still run a page of The Vette Files in every issue where space allows.
The response for this year's Corvette Ladies Salute was overwhelming and very gratifying. I'm sorry we ran out of space and couldn't include everyone at the same time, but every one of you who sent in your photos and bios will spotlighted within the next few months.