Women Aviators (26 page)

J
ERRIE
C
OBB MAY HAVE
started piloting airplanes younger than any other woman. She flew her father's 1936 Waco bi-wing when she was 12 years old. She loved flying the plane with her father, Lieutenant Colonel William H. Cobb, by her side.

Born in Norman, Oklahoma, on March 5, 1931, Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb was the younger of two daughters. Within weeks of her birth, the family moved to Washington, DC, where her grandfather was a congressman. Due to World War II and her father's service in the National Guard, the family also moved to other places during her childhood.

As a child, she enjoyed sleeping in the backyard and looking at the stars. She had traded her blond pigtails for a blond ponytail by the time she earned her private pilot's license at age 16, which was the earliest age at which a person could get one. Still attending an Oklahoma City high school, she spent her spare time at the airfield, performing odd jobs such as washing and waxing planes in exchange for flying time. During her 16th summer, she barnstormed across the Midwest in a Piper Cub. Her first job after high school was flying a Piper Cub over towns, dropping circulars.

Jerrie spent one year in college before quitting. She already knew what she wanted to do: fly. She played semiprofessional softball for the Oklahoma City Queens to raise enough money to buy a Fairchild PT-23, a World War II surplus plane. With a commercial license at age 18, Jerrie began crop dusting, flying charters, and patrolling oil pipelines while she worked on her flight instructor's license. By 21, she was giving flight instruction.

Always ready for an adventure, Jerrie took a job ferrying military planes and bombers for the Peruvian Air Force in 1953. She got the job because male pilots thought it was too risky. She crossed shark-infested waters, Andean mountains, and jungles. Once, while refueling in Ecuador, she was arrested on suspicion of being a spy.

Back in Oklahoma at age 24, she began setting world altitude, speed, and distance records. She set an altitude record of 30,300 feet (9,240 meters) and a world distance record from Guatemala City to Oklahoma City in a twin-engine Aero Commander. The records had previously been held by Soviet military pilots. In all, Jerrie earned four world aviation records for light planes.

Like Jackie Cochran, Jerrie broke the sound barrier; her experience was with a TR-102 Delta Dagger. She learned to fly the Bell helicopter after 83 minutes of instruction and became
the first female test pilot for Aero Design and Engineering Company.

By the time she was 28, she had logged about 10,000 flight hours. The National Pilot's Association also presented her with the Harmon Trophy as the world's best female pilot. The same year, she was named “Woman of the Year” by the Women's National Aeronautic Association. Along with the Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement, Jerrie received dozens of awards during her flying career.

When NASA started investigating the possibility of female astronauts in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jerrie Cobb was its first choice. Not only did she have twice as many flight hours as astronaut John Glenn, she had piloted 64 types of aircraft. She passed all 75 tests, scoring in the top 2 percent of all male or female astronaut candidates. When the government shut the program down, Jerrie spoke before Congress and tried to convince them to change their minds—without success. They asked her to be a NASA consultant, but after two years of receiving no consulting work, she quit.

Disappointed, 32-year-old Jerrie took her aviation skills to new and unknown territory—the Amazon rainforest, an area that is larger than the United States. The natives called her plane, a twin-engine Britten-Norman Islander, “the bird.” Her landing strip was small, surrounded by 200-foot (61 meter) trees. The jungle is a difficult place to fly. Even taking off is a challenge, as a pilot must pull up quickly without stalling the engine.

The Amazon rainforest was one of the last wild places on Earth to which Jerrie could go. She carried with her antibiotics and other medicines, doctors, clothing, and seeds to grow into food for millions of people. When needed, she located downed aircraft. One day, Jerrie sat with the young chief of a village who was dying of meningitis, a white man's disease that was
unknown to the native population. She felt helpless as he lay dying. She began a foundation to buy medicine and crop seeds for the people she served. She took on special projects as well. At one time, she returned displaced Miskito people back to their homes in Nicaragua.

Jerrie made humanitarian trips to Amazonia, as South America's rainforest area is sometimes known, for 35 years. She was honored by the governments of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia for humanitarian flying to serve the indigenous people. Colombia even gave her an honorary rank in the Colombian Air Force. The government of Ecuador honored Jerrie in 1965 for pioneering new air routes through the Amazon. Twenty years later, Central and South American groups were still singing her praises for her lifesaving jungle flights.

For almost thirty-five years, she lived in remote villages in Central and South America. Her primary area was the land where Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela meet; the people there spend most of their daytime hours searching for food, primarily cassava, a starchy root. At night she would sleep in a hammock in a
maloca,
a communal home covered with palm leaves that houses 60 to 80 Indians. Canoes were the primary mode of transportation other than walking. Jerrie used her phenomenal aviation skills to improve the lives of millions of people and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in 1981.

In 1998, former astronaut John Glenn returned to space on a mission that would study the effects of space travel on older adults. NASA didn't realize what it was taking on by planning this new mission. Several members of the Mercury 13, the group of women who were to undergo astronaut training in the early 1960s, protested. They had waited more than 40 years for their first opportunity to go into space, and John Glenn was going a second time.

The story of the Mercury 13 received attention, and women such as Jerrie Cobb won a new group of admirers who agreed it was Jerrie's turn to go to space. It was enough to bring her home from the Amazon. She called going into space her destiny. “I've thought about it all my life. I will do whatever it takes.”

A campaign began. People began contacting NASA and Congress, sending them T-shirts that said,
WOMEN FLY.
They circulated petitions, collecting more than 15,000 signatures. The First Lady at the time, Hillary Clinton, asked Daniel Goldin of NASA to meet with Jerrie. Goldin was in charge of astronaut selection and had received the petitions. Jerrie dared to get her hopes up one more time, but Goldin said they had enough astronauts.

Today, Jerrie has flown more than 55,000 hours and continues to fly. She is in excellent physical condition from her time in the Amazon. If she could have one thing, it would be the opportunity that was denied to her more than 50 years ago. She wants to fly the ultimate flight—into space. Until then, she's content to remain in the Amazon jungles and help others. In doing so, she said, she feels like the luckiest woman in the world.

M
ANY YEARS AGO,
I
BECAME
acquainted with Bessie Coleman in a museum exhibit. I had never heard of this fascinating woman, who had done so much in such a short time, and that's unfortunate. Bessie Coleman is a name we should all know, as is Jerrie Cobb and the names of all the other amazing women featured in this book. Telling their stories in this book was an honor and a privilege for me. I'm only sorry that I couldn't feature even more women aviators.

I am deeply indebted to the Ninety-Nines, Inc. International Organization of Women Pilots. In the years that I've been learning and writing about women aviators, their artifacts and resources have been invaluable. (If you're ever in the Oklahoma City area, you should stop by the Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots near the airport.) Special thanks goes to Laura Ohrenberg from the Ninety-Nines headquarters.

Another incredible resource has been Texas Woman's University. Its Woman's Collection included a vast amount of information about women in aviation, Women Airforce Service Pilots, and the Whirly-Girls organization.

And finally, thank you to Jerome Pohlen and all the great people at Chicago Review Press for allowing me the opportunity to write about what fascinates me.

The reference to Katharine Wright as “the third Wright brother” is located at the Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company at
www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Facts/Wright_Family/Katharine_Wright/Katharine_Wright.htm
.

The quote attributed to Clare Boothe Luce comes from the Clare Boothe Luce biography at the Henry Luce Foundation website,
www.hluce.org/cblbio.aspx
.

Baroness de Laroche

Elise de Laroche's quote about her flight for Tsar Nicholas II came from an article she wrote, published in
Collier's Magazine,
volume 48, September 20, 1911. The article's title was “Flying in Presence of the Czar.”

Harriet Quimby

Harriet's description of her history-making flight came from an article she wrote for
Leslie's Illustrated Weekly.
“An American Girl's Daring Exploit” appeared in the magazine on May 16, 1912.

Her article, “How a Woman Learns to Fly,” also appeared in
Leslie's.
It was published May 25, 1911.

Louise Thaden's quote about the Women's Air Derby comes from her autobiography,
High, Wide, and Frightened
(
page 51
)
.

The quote about the first Ninety-Nines meeting comes from a November 2, 1929, article in the
New York Times.

Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart's last words are featured in many locations, including her official website,
www.ameliaearhart.com/about/bio2.html
.

Earhart's statement to Louise Thaden is featured on the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum website,
www.ameliaearhartmuseum.org/AmeliaEarhart/AEAviator.htm
.

Louise Thaden

Louise Thaden's quotes about winning the Bendix come from her autobiography,
High, Wide, and Frightened.

Elinor Smith

The Elinor Smith quotes come from her autobiography,
Aviatrix.

Edna Gardner Whyte

The quotes by Edna Gardner Whyte come from her autobiography,
Rising Above It: An Autobiography.

Beryl Markham

The quote about the Atlantic Crossing came from an account of her trip that she wrote for the
Daily Express.
It was repeated on
http://library.thinkquest.org/21229/bio/bmark.htm
.

Willa Brown

Details of Willa Brown's trip to the
Chicago Defender
come from a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Teacher Guide, “African American Pioneers in Aviation, 1920-Present,”
page 14
.