Paula Murphy shook up the racing scene like no other woman driver has ever done. It was a man’s world in the 1960s and 1970s, and Murphy, born in 1928, entered a space where women weren’t welcomed.

Novi family attorney Elaine Stypula, 60, died while running a 102.5-mile endurance race in a mountainous region of Colorado July 11. Stypula was a veteran of numerous ultramarathons, races longer than ...