Women Aviators (24 page)

It was a sunny afternoon on the first day of September 1929. Twenty-year-old Fay Gillis was flying in a new plane that her instructor was testing. She had been taking lessons for a month and had just soloed the day before. She was hoping to experience some aerobatic flying with her instructor in the new plane.

Suddenly, the biplane began to break apart over Long Island Sound. The tail and the wings vibrated and then fell off. It flipped over, and Fay heard her instructor yelling at her to jump. She struggled to free herself from the seatbelt. As soon as she was free, she fell. She began looking for the rip cord that would release the parachute and save her life. Curtiss Flying School
required everyone to wear a parachute up in the air. They were told put their hand on the rip cord and jump clear of the plane. It was important to count to ten before pulling the cord so that the parachute didn't hit the plane.

But Fay spent precious time just trying to find her rip cord. When she finally found it, she pulled hard, knowing she was too close to the ground. She braced herself for impact. But the hard fall to the ground never happened. Instead, Fay felt herself swinging in the air. Her parachute had caught in a tree.

A fire truck from the airfield came to release her from the branches. They and the parachute had saved her life. The pilot instructor wasn't so lucky; he later died from injuries from the accident. The parachute earned Fay a place as one of the first women members of the Caterpillar Club, a club for people who had been saved by parachuting after bailing out of airplanes.

The incident also brought Fay fame and a job—all before her 21st birthday. Glenn Curtiss offered her a job selling and demonstrating airplanes for Curtiss Aviation. She was the first woman it had ever hired for this position, and it allowed her to meet other aviators. A month later, she earned pilot's license number 9497 at Curtiss Flying Service in Valley Stream. This location was also where the Ninety-Nines organization was launched four days later by women aviators Fay had met. Fay, who had just flown in, was wearing coveralls for the first meeting on November 2. She became a charter member of the Ninety-Nines.

Helen Fay Gillis was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 15, 1908. She soon became known as Fay. Her father's profession as a mining engineer meant frequent moves, because he supervised the building of electrolytic zinc plants. Moving was
an adventure for the Gillis family, particularly for Fay and her sister, Beth.

The two sisters were very close. Fay skipped a grade in school and ended up being in the same grade as Beth. Fay most enjoyed writing while in school. She was a reporter for her high school newspaper. Unfortunately, when the girls were juniors in high school, their mother died.

Both girls attended Michigan State University. Beth decided to study psychology and sociology, but Fay didn't know what to study. Restless, she moved to New York to take flying lessons at the Curtiss Flying School in Long Island, New York. Airplanes fascinated her. The slim, blue-eyed brunette also still had writing in her blood, so after she got her pilot's license, she began working as a journalist. Aviation was one of her favorite topics. When her father's business moved to the Soviet Union, Fay joined him in September 1930. Although she continued writing about aviation, she became a foreign correspondent too, writing for the
New York Herald Tribune
and the
New
York Times.

She didn't stop flying, though. Fay was the first foreigner to own a glider in the Soviet Union and the first American woman to fly Soviet civil aircraft. Her reputation as an expert aviator opened doors. Aviator Wiley Post arranged for her to coordinate landing and refueling stops for him in the Soviet Union during his 1933 record flight around the world. Wiley promised Fay that she could come along on his next adventure.

But when the time came for the trip to begin, Fay had to turn it down. In 1935, she chose instead to elope with a dashing journalist, Linton Wells. She would remember the decision for the rest of her life: Humorist Will Rogers took her place on Wiley's plane, but the two died upon takeoff in Point Barrow, Alaska.

Fay and Linton honeymooned in Ethiopia, where the two journalists covered the country's invasion by Italy from 1935
to 1936. Sometimes their bylines appeared side by side in the newspaper. They led an exciting life. Some people even believed she was a spy. When the Wells couple returned to the United States, they lived and worked for a time in Hollywood, covering the expanding movie industry. Fay often took her pet leopard, Snooks, on interviews.

After taking a break to raise her son, Fay returned to journalism as the first woman broadcast correspondent to cover US presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. As part of the White House press corps, she traveled to Vietnam and China.

Fay never forgot her devotion to aviation and the Ninety-Nines. Because of her efforts, the organization grew throughout
the world, expanding to more than 3,000 members in 30 countries. She spearheaded efforts to bring women pilots together.

Fay honored her friend Amelia Earhart by creating a scholarship in her name in the 1940s. In the early 1960s, she worked to get the US Postal Service to honor Amelia Earhart's birthday by releasing an airmail stamp on her birthday. But that wasn't all. After her successful campaign for the stamp, she and other Ninety-Nines members gathered in Atchison and used the stamp on thousands of envelopes. The first of those canceled stamps, known as first-day covers, are the most coveted and therefore the most valuable. First-day covers were flown to almost every state capital in the United States and sold with proceeds going to the Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarship fund.

Seventy years after receiving her pilot license, Fay was still flying—she even landed a plane on her 92nd birthday. Her one regret in life was that she hadn't been able to fly in space. Instead, she was part of a committee that selected the first journalist to go to space. It was the next best thing for this aviator journalist.

Fay died in December 2002 at the age of 94. She was active until the end, devoting her time and energy to other women aviators.

W
HAT COULD MAKE A
helicopter pilot—with injuries from a crash in freezing temperatures—want to get back in the helicopter to do it all over again? If you're 66-year-old Jennifer Murray, you're someone who enjoys a challenge. Many of her trips benefit charities. Her world-record trip around the world and over both the North and South Poles benefitted SOS Children's Villages, an organization that provides a family atmosphere for orphaned children.

Jennifer Murray and Colin Bodill set records on their own before meeting each other. Colin, a daredevil microlight flier since 1975, had won several British championships and a 1997 world championship. The two pilots started talking about circling the globe by crossing both the North and South Poles.
After three years of planning, their helicopter took off from New York on October 22, 2003. They flew along the east coast of both North and South America, alternating flying and navigating duties each day.

One of the most frightening sections of the trip was crossing the Drake Passage, the icy 540-mile (870 kilometer) body of water between South America and Antarctica. But they made it, becoming the first to fly a single-engine helicopter over the Drake Passage.

They set another record as the first civilian single-engine helicopter to reach the South Pole. The milestone was particularly special, as the date marked the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight.

Antarctica is a particularly dangerous place to be. About 50 percent larger than the United States, it is always covered in snow. It is also the windiest place on Earth. On day 58 of their trip, a blizzard hit, making visibility nonexistent. Jennifer and Colin knew they had to land and wait out the storm, but because they could not see the landscape, they had to rely solely on their instruments. They crashed on the ice sheets of Antarctica; both pilots were injured. Colin had a broken back and internal bleeding. Jennifer sustained cracked ribs, cuts, and a dislocated elbow, and she went into shock. They knew they couldn't survive in the Antarctic cold of −50° C (−58° F) for long. At first, they lay next to the tangled metal they had flown. Finally, Colin was able to erect a tent to provide them with some protection from the elements. Jennifer said lying inside the tent was like being in a bowl of milk.

Before leaving on the trip, Jennifer and Colin had gotten a piece of new technology installed in their helicopter, a type of GPS/emergency response system called the D1000 tracker. When they crashed, the box called its emergency number, which
connected to the manufacturers of the system. The manufacturers had the number to the base camp, approximately 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the crash site. The D1000 tracker was able to give Jennifer and Colin's location within 50 yards (45 meters).

The injured pilots heard a small plane fly over, but they knew that with the whiteout conditions, they couldn't be seen. The rescue plane landed near the coordinates and found Jennifer and Colin. The rescuers first took the two injured pilots to base, where they waited for further transportation. Even though they were in the middle of nowhere, Jennifer and Colin were able to get to a hospital less than 24 hours after they crashed.

On December 6, 2006, they made another attempt because, as Jennifer said, “You haven't failed until you stop trying.” This time, Fort Worth, Texas, was the starting and finishing line. The day boasted blue skies and sunshine and a crowd of about 200 people to see Jennifer and Colin—the Polar First team—off on their journey.