IT'S NOT OFTEN you get to spend an afternoon with somebody your children read about in history books, but on Saturday afternoon I got lucky and ended up shooting the breeze with a true American folk hero, Lilly Ledbetter, the inspiration for the first piece of legislation President Barack Obama signed: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Ledbetter was the keynote speaker at the excellent Ventura County Women's Forum held at Cal Lutheran University, of which the National Women's Political Caucus was a sponsor.

Celebrities don't impress me. It's the plain folks who are out getting it done who I find ultimately more fascinating, and in this regard Ledbetter is without peer. With her Southern drawl and quick wit, she's a colorful and articulate voice for pay equity issues.

"You're really something. I hope you never go up against me," Sen. Ted Kennedy once told her.

For 19 years, Ledbetter, now 71, worked grueling 12-hour days and even endured sexual harassment at her job as a supervisor at Goodyear Tire Company in Gadsten, Ala. Then one night in 1998 she received an anonymous note that let her know she was earning far less than men doing comparable work at her plant.

A recipient of a top performance award, she was more organized and diligent than her male counterparts, but nonetheless found herself on the short end of the pay scale.

"I was feeling very degraded, less of an individual with less respect. I never backed down on any job no matter how hard or how dirty," Ledbetter said. And then it dawned on her that her lower wages also affected her overtime pay, Social Security and retirement benefits.

"At that moment I realized for the first time in my life that I was a second-class citizen and would be for the rest of my life. I thought about it and filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission."

After several months, the investigator for the EEOC called and said, "You've got one of the best cases we have ever seen."

LEDBETTER WAS IMMEDIATELY shunned by her co-workers. "Believe you me it was like I had a very serious disease somebody could catch and when I'd meet them in the hall they'd turn and go the other way."

Ledbetter found a lawyer who would take her case pro bono, took early retirement and sued for illegal gender discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. A jury awarded her $360,000 in back pay and damages, but the case was appealed and eventually wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court where she lost in 2006 on a 5-4 decision.

Because the Civil Rights Act imposes a 180-day deadline on most claims, and Ledbetter did not find out about her pay inequity for many years, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority said that an employee is not entitled to recover for anything that occurs before that cut-off.

"But bless Justice [Ruth] Ginsberg's heart -- the only woman on the court. She said it didn't make sense. These people don't understand what it's like in the real world because people don't stand around the water coolers discussing their pay. ... These cases are very difficult to prove," Ledbetter said.

A bill to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stating that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck passed the House in 2008, but Republicans killed it in the Senate.

More setbacks came for Ledbetter when her husband died of cancer last December. "We'd been battling that all through this. Your life doesn't stop because you've got a lawsuit."

But even while helping her husband fight a serious disease, she never gave up her cause. "The true test of a person is not so much what happens to us but how we react to it. Do we see it and do nothing or do we fight back?" she said.

A favorite of the Obamas, Ledbetter campaigned hard for our new president and after he won, she danced the second dance with him at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball. That's when she knew her bill was destined to become law.

"He kept telling me during the dance, 'We're going to do this.' And I knew he meant the bill. And he did."