Women Aviators (23 page)

When the war ended, Ruth continued volunteering her time. She worked on missions with UNICEF, including an around-the-world tour for the International Children's Emergency Fund in 1949. On that trip, the large, four-engine airline carrying Ruth and 56 others overshot its refueling stop—then it ran out of gas and crashed into the North Sea.

It was nighttime. The water was freezing. Being weighted down with wet clothes made swimming almost impossible. In the moonlight, Ruth spotted an upside-down 10-person raft with 14 of her people hanging on. She made her way to it. The water was rough, causing the raft to dip. At some point, the group was able to tip it over and get inside. The 15 people crowded together, trying to get warm; an unconscious man lay in Ruth's lap. She started singing hymns, calming everyone down.

When dawn came, the group counted 11 search planes in the sky. They circled nearby but didn't spot them. Finally, a 12th plane saw them, and they were rescued. Nine of the original 57 lost their lives.

Ruth was involved with other humanitarian causes as well, including her work with organizations such as Save the Children, the United Hospital Fund, and the National Nephrosis Foundation.

Born in New York City in 1901, Ruth Rowland Nichols came from a well-off family. Her mother was the daughter of a Quaker minister. Ruth said she received her quiet faith from her mother and grandfather; meanwhile, her attitude and personality seemed to come from her father. He was a successful businessman and a member of the New York Stock Exchange. As one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, Ruth's father believed she should try everything once, and if she failed, she was to get back up and try again. Although Ruth may have been born to money and privilege, she was also a determined young woman.

Ruth attended private schools while growing up. When she graduated from high school—the Miss Masters' School in Dobbs Ferry, New York—her father arranged an airplane ride with Eddie Stinson, a World War I pilot and brother to the Stinson sisters, who were also aviators. Ruth was very excited. Stinson was a hero of hers. But during the flight in a World War I Jenny, Stinson did a loop-the-loop, a big circle in the air that briefly involves flying upside down. Ruth was scared to death and unable to enjoy the rest of the flight.

But Ruth's response, when faced with fear, was to confront it. She did this by taking flying lessons while attending college. When she graduated from Wellesley College in 1924, she promptly took the test for her pilot's license. She passed, becoming the first New York woman pilot and the second woman licensed by the Department of Commerce.

Conquering her fear led to a love of flying. Despite her parents wanting her to settle down as a proper young woman of the times, she insisted on flying and even learned to fly and fix a Curtiss Seagull, a seaplane. Ruth became the first female seaplane pilot in the United States. No other female pilot of her generation could fly as many types of aircraft as she could. Over the course of her flying career, she flew 71 different kinds of aircraft
from 50 different manufacturers. She earned 12 different ratings in everything from monoplanes to supersonic jets.

In January 1928, Ruth flew a Fairchild FC-2 from New York to Miami with Harry Rogers, the owner of an airline. As the first flight of its kind, the trip received a lot of publicity and led the newspapers to christen Ruth “the Flying Debutante.”

In her purple flying suit, flying helmet, scarf, and goggles, Ruth became a familiar sight in newspapers and on airfields. This was especially true in 1929, when she landed in all 48 states (Alaska and Hawaii weren't states yet) on a promotional tour for aviation country clubs.

As one of the original Ninety-Nines, Ruth joined her fellow female aviators at the Women's Air Derby and National Air Race. She set a women's transcontinental record flying from New York to Los Angeles in 16 hours, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds. She shaved almost four hours off that time on the return trip.

The International League of Aviators honored two women in 1931 for their accomplishments in the advancement of aviation. They included French flier Maryse Bastié, for a 1,800-mile (2,900 kilometer) record-breaking flight from France to Russia, and Ruth Nichols, for her speed and altitude records.

Ruth prepared to be the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean to Paris. Her plane was said to be three times as powerful as Lindbergh's
Spirit of St. Louis,
capable of speeds 50 to 75 miles per hour (80 to 120 kilometers per hour) faster than Lindbergh's aircraft. The red monoplane, which belonged to Crosley Radio Corporation, was the same red monoplane she had set records in. One of those records was for speed—210 miles per hour (340 kilometers per hour). Briefly, she set another for altitude, but Elinor Smith soon broke it. Speed records were Ruth's favorite, and she tried to close in on male records.

Ruth's first attempt as the first woman to pilot solo across the Atlantic led to a crash in Newfoundland during the first leg of her trip. Blinded by the sun, she overshot the runway. The plane tipped at its nose. She fractured five of her vertebrae, and while she was recovering from this serious injury, another female aviator, Amelia Earhart, captured the record, becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Disappointed, Ruth threw herself into making other records. In one of her first flights after her accident, she set a woman's distance record of 1,977 miles (3,181 kilometers). For some of the first races, she wore a steel corset due to her spinal injury. At one point, she had to leap out of a burning airplane after a fuel leak started a fire.

By Ruth's count, she had been in 55 accidents, and five of those were “major crack-ups.” But Ruth didn't let injury or accidents deter her. She went on to fly higher than any woman in the world at 28,743 feet (8,767 meters). The next month, she set a speed record of 210.6 miles (338.9 kilometers) per hour. By 1931, Ruth was the first woman to simultaneously hold three international records for altitude, speed, and long distance.

When flying opportunities were curtailed during World War II, Ruth used her talents for humanitarian causes. She also worked as the director of a major aviation company, the Fair-child Airplane Manufacturing Corporation.

Ruth Nichols died on September 25, 1960. Part of the propeller from her Lockheed Vega is displayed in the Golden Age of Flight gallery at the National Air and Space Museum. Two years before she died, she set another record as a copilot in the supersonic Air Force TF-102A Delta Dagger. She flew at 51,000 feet (15,600 meters) and 1,000 miles per hour (1,600 kilometers per hour)—faster than any woman in the world.

According to Ruth, “It takes special kinds of pilots to break frontiers, and in spite of the loss of everything, you can't clip the wings of their hearts.” She left a mark on women's aviation and demonstrated how aviation could help others.

F
AY
G
ILLIS
W
ELLS BELIEVED
that aviation was capable of making the world a better place. With the goal of “world friendship through flying,” she led efforts to establish the International Forest of Friendship in Amelia Earhart's hometown of Atchison, Kansas. Amelia once said, “You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky.”

Located outside of Atchison overlooking Lake Warnock, the International Forest of Friendship is a beautiful place. It was created in 1976 as a bicentennial gift to the United States. After almost forty years, many of the trees have become quite large.

The forest is made up of trees from every location where a member of the Ninety-Nines has lived—all 50 states in the United States and 35 countries. There are trees from George
Washington's Mount Vernon and the farm that belonged to Amelia Earhart's grandfather. A very special tree is the Moon Tree, grown from a seed that went to the moon with astronauts on Apollo 14. The names of astronauts who have died on duty are engraved around the tree, including the seven astronauts who died in the space shuttle
Challenger
in 1986.

Memory Lane, a five-foot-wide sidewalk, winds through the forest. The beginning is marked with a plaque inscribed with Joyce Kilmer's poem “Trees.” Along the path are more than 900 granite plaques honoring great names in aviation: Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Harriet Quimby, Bobbi Trout, Ida Van Smith, Wiley Post, Patty Wagstaff, Chuck Yeager, Sally Ride, and many more. Each year, more honorees are inducted into the International Forest of Friends.

A life-size statue of Amelia Earhart looks out over the trees. Nearby is a gazebo, the Fay Gillis Wells Gazebo, dedicated in 1991. It's a good place to remember an important woman in aviation.