Wally Funk's Race for Space

by Sue Nelson

  Wally worked at the NTSB for just over ten years, until her retirement in 1985. During that time she continued flying privately and as an instructor. ‘Teaching people was really my thing. Even at NTSB, I was still teaching flying on the side after work. I never really told them I was doing that. But after 450 accidents, picking up bodies and doing investigations I wanted to make great pilots out of my students,’ she said. ‘I thought, all these people are dying and what are you doing? You’re investigating, but you’re not helping people get better – and I’ve never had a student have an accident.’

  Wally was never short of students, but admitted to finding it difficult to find work as a pilot during the 1980s because she was a ‘girl’. I’d tried and failed to get her to say woman. ‘I had one airline tell me I’d done excellently on all the tests, but they said, “We can’t hire you.” I asked why. They said: “We don’t have a girls’ bathroom.”’

  Years later she read that one of the first female airline pilots had prepared for that interview question. Her solution, which the pilot brought to the interview, was a piece of paper with ‘girls’ written on one side and ‘boys’ on the other ‘to put on the john’. The ingenious woman got the job.

  I followed the trail of another plane overhead. ‘Flying was your first love, wasn’t it?’

  ‘There’s no other discussion,’ she said. ‘That’s all I’ve ever done.’

  Her favourite plane was either a Cessna 182 or a Stearman – a biplane – which she owned in her early twenties. ‘When I had the Stearman I was teaching acrobatics,’ she said, before admitting that she could also put a 182 through a loop even though it wasn’t rated for acrobatics. ‘I could not do it in a 150 or 172 because they don’t have the horsepower. My preference is to fly high-wing aircraft.’

  What about flying highlights? ‘I loved racing,’ she said. ‘I can’t even tell you how many races I’ve raced. The Powder Puff Derby, the Palms to Pines Air Race, then another down into Mexico. There was one called the Poker Run where you had to land at five different airports and pick a card up at each one and see what hand you had when you got to the terminus.’

  It was a whole new world. One where a pilot could play a game of cards across hundreds of miles.

  The ludicrously named Powder Puff Derby, a favourite race of Wally’s, was officially known as the All Women’s Transcontinental Air Race (AWTAR), but its nickname, by the humourist Will Rogers, had stuck. ‘It was coast to coast so you have to refuel every three-and-a-half hours,’ Wally explained. ‘Then you take back off again and in the evening they flagged your time. Everything was precisely timed on the clock. Say you go from A to B to get gas – that time goes against your handicap. I probably gassed up four or five times in an air race that took two to three days. You have to look at your charts carefully and know your co-pilot.’

  The Palms to Pines Air Race was also women-only. This was a race from Santa Monica, California, where you found palm trees, to Independence, Oregon, where there were pine trees. A particularly good year for Wally was 1975. She came second in the Palms to Pines and beat seventy-nine other competitors to win the Pacific Air Race from San Diego to Santa Rosa.

  How did you beat someone if they were flying the same plane as you? ‘Different airplanes had a handicap because the engines were different. You might have a Stetson that had 100 horsepower or a Cessna 182 that had 200 horsepower. You had a chart, so I would find a plane that had a good handicap and fly them over a low course, say 1,000 feet, and see what their speeds would be. Then I’d take them up to 5,000 feet, because sometimes on a race you’d go over hills and mountains. I would spend months sometimes picking the right plane. I wanted perfection.’

  Even if women were racing against each other in the same plane, it was up to the expertise of the pilot to choose the right altitude and course to get the best performance from the engine. ‘You paid a month ahead for your hotel room, meals, everything. It was very expensive, the rental of the aircraft, the gas and getting the mechanic for an annual inspection before you took an airplane up. So there’s a $2,000 bill right there. Ms. magazine sponsored me several times. I had the name painted on the side of the airplane. They loved it, as they would write the race up.’

  Was there any prize money? Wally snorted. ‘I only got trophies.’

  And the prestige, I suggested. ‘Oh my word, yes! I would give anything to take you on a race,’ she said. ‘You would holler and scream all the way.’

  I assumed Wally meant in excitement. When asked what gave her the most excitement, she responded quickly. ‘Parachute jumping was fantastic. The other time was being in a glider at Stillwater, Oklahoma, when I went up to 14,000 feet.’

  Back on the ground, a guy wouldn’t believe she’d gone that high. She told him to look at the instrument on board that would give her altitude. ‘He did and said, “Oh yes”. So I said, “Hi”’ – her tone suggested a firm farewell rather than a greeting – ‘and walked away.’

  Proving someone wrong had played a consistent part in Wally’s life. As had the support of her parents, especially her mother, Virginia Shy Funk. Wally referenced her often and, when she first gained her private pilot’s license at Stephens College, her mother was one of the first people she took flying. ‘I was thrilled she was going with me and she was thrilled to go up. A dream had come true for her.’

  Her mother died aged ninety-five in January 1998. ‘We had a wonderful relationship,’ said Wally. ‘I found out about four or five years into my career, when I took her to a race, that she had flown in 1919 in a Stearman-like aircraft in Olney, Illinois. A guy had landed his plane outside the school house and she wanted to fly. He said, “You have to have a dollar a minute”, so Mother ran back to her friends, got ten dollars and went back to the pilot. He took her up and she did turns and loops and rolls. So she had her first experience flying as a youngster.’

  The effect it had on Wally’s mother was instant. ‘When she went running home to her father, she said, “I wanna fly.” Grandfather was a business entrepreneur and he owned a bank. He said, “No daughter of mine is going to fly,” and that really put the crush on her. So when I came along – and it was the spirit of that Taos Mountain – they were so happy that I had that instinct. My parents were overjoyed about it, as I was living her dream.’

  It felt as if we could have sat on that bench, in the warm sunshine with the Eiffel Tower alongside us, talking and staring at planes all afternoon. But we had a train to catch from the Gare du Nord. Wally took one last look at the sky.

  On the Eurostar from Paris to London, Wally chatted about everyone we had met over the last few days. ‘We did so much. I learned so much. I’m worried I won’t remember it all.’

  Her return trip to Texas was the following day, so I made a mental note to print off the itinerary for her, with photographs and names and a summary of our discussions before she left. As usual, Wally had a busy schedule ahead. Month after month, there were trips planned across the United States. There were talks on aviation or space to give, and ceremonies to attend. In just a few weeks, in May, half a century after taking her astronaut tests, the name Wally Funk was going to be inscribed on the National Air and Space Museum’s Wall of Honour in Washington, DC, in recognition of her ‘contribution to our aviation and space exploration heritage’.

  Wally mentioned she had a short trip planned in September to New Mexico. The trip, she explained, was one of several events that Virgin Galactic arranged for their Future Astronaut customers. Its aim was to visit Spaceport America.

  This was going to be the space equivalent of an airport. It had only been completed five years ago, and was part of the nascent future of commercial space travel. The spaceport would eventually house a number of privately owned spaceplanes from a number of different organisations that would take small satellites and paying passengers into space.

  It was also where Wally’s journey into space would begin. And it sounded incredible.

  ‘I can take someone with m
e,’ said Wally. ‘Why don’t you come along?’

  6

  Spaceport America

  September, 2017. The car was parked in front of my hotel in Albuquerque and, if I was being kind, it had seen better days. If I wasn’t being kind, the small red Honda looked ready for the scrapheap. The only positive was that Wally would not be at the wheel. The vehicle, as I understood from our conversations before I left the UK, belonged to the couple who had collected her from the airport that morning. They would then drive us to a friend of Wally’s on the other side of town.

  When Wally got into the driver’s seat I couldn’t disguise my panic.

  ‘Aren’t your friends driving? Isn’t this their car?’

  ‘No,’ said Wally cheerfully. ‘It’s mine. They keep it at their place for whenever I’m in New Mexico.’

  My voice went up an octave. ‘I thought they were taking us.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she added soothingly. ‘I’ll be driving.’

  The male friend must have recognised the fear on my face because, while lifting my luggage into the boot, he whispered ‘Good luck,’ and left, grinning.

  The passenger seat was extraordinarily low, and any spring in it had long sprung. The last time I’d sat this close to the road’s surface was in an MGB GT. It was a British two-door sports car, 1969 vintage, with chrome bumpers, a wood-panelled dashboard and an ‘overdrive’ switch that only converted into fifth gear on a downward slope, in a prevailing wind, at a very specific speed. Sadly, the car, the one I’d owned when I first met my husband, was exchanged for a people-carrier after the birth of our son because there was no space for a child seat. No one waved, I discovered, when you hit the road in a Renault Scenic.

  A further pang of nostalgia for the MG arrived on seeing the Honda’s rotary handles. The air conditioning wasn’t working, Wally informed me, and the temperature was already in the 1980s so I wound down the window. After the car coughed and spluttered a few times, I recalled that the MG also had a habit of not starting. It also had a habit of breaking down. In the middle of London. During rush hour. At major intersections. After several grinds of the ignition key, the Honda’s engine finally turned over. Then the beeping began.

  ‘That shouldn’t happen!’ shouted Wally.

  I was trapped in a scene from Groundhog Day. ‘It’s because you haven’t got your seat belt on.’

  ‘No. It shouldn’t happen because I got him to rewire it so that it didn’t beep with me not wearing the seat belt.’

  After a quick call and a heated discussion over what wire to pull, the beeping stopped. The car journey across town could begin and, whether I liked it or not, Wally was driving. Despite this terrifying development, I was genuinely happy to see Wally again, and not just because it meant our road trip to Spaceport America would soon be underway. Simply put, I had missed her. By now we spoke reasonably regularly over the phone and emailed often, but nothing could beat the full Wally, face-to-face, larger-than-life experience. Somewhere along the last six months, this voluble, stubborn, generous, occasionally difficult and eminently likeable woman had become a friend.

  The invitation to visit Spaceport America as Wally’s ‘plus-one’ had been a fantastic surprise. Unfortunately that invitation turned out to be a surprise for Virgin Galactic, too. They had informed me, with some confusion, that Wally had already designated her plus-one to someone else. Perhaps because it was Wally, Virgin Galactic made an exception. A pretty generous exception as it turned out. Wally could have two plus-ones. I could go to the ball after all.

  The deal was that Wally, plus-one and plus-two made their own way to the Spaceport in southern New Mexico. There would be some ‘treats’, but guests paid for their own accommodation and meals. The trip included collection from El Paso, if arriving at the nearest airport to the Spaceport, an outreach event or hike, and a guided visit to the Spaceport for an update on how Richard Branson’s SpaceShipTwo was progressing. All Wally wanted was a date: When would she be going into space?

  Before our shared journey into Wally’s future, I wanted to make a short trip into her past. The Lovelace Foundation for Medical Evaluation and Research, where Wally and the rest of the Mercury 13 had taken their astronaut tests, no longer existed, but the site where it used to be was close by. Often referred to as the Lovelace Clinic, this was the civilian facility where human spaceflight in America began. William Randolph Lovelace II oversaw the original Mercury 7 astronaut physical selection process there and, through his enlightened attitude for the time, almost gave thirteen other women the opportunity to follow in their footsteps.

  Lovelace saw a Russian become the first woman in space in 1963, but sadly, despite his best efforts, would never see an American woman do the same. In 1965, a year after he had been made NASA’s director of Space Medicine, Lovelace died near Aspen, Colorado, in a private plane crash, along with his wife and the pilot. Other members of his family continued the business, however, and from the freeway I glimpsed the Lovelace name on a number of medical and health-related buildings. The New Mexico native had left a legacy in more ways than one.

  The short drive to the former site of the clinic felt much longer. On several occasions, Wally was either driving in the middle of the road or across more than one lane. The vehicle behind us hit his horn aggressively after we swerved into a central lane. When Wally turned off the main road into a side street I felt marginally safer.

  ‘I think it’s near here.’

  In a huge car park, Wally circled several medical centre buildings until we reached a dead end. She was flummoxed. ‘Well, I cannot believe this has happened.’

  ‘Do you think this is where it used to be?’

  ‘No, they tore the whole thing down.’ Wally sounded impatient. ‘I have to ask.’

  She waved down a passer-by. ‘Hi. Is this the old Lovelace Clinic?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘that was over there. If you go to that old parking lot, that was it. That big thirty-storey building.’

  Wally was dismayed. ‘I never thought it would take me this long to find it. I’m going in there to check. I think I saw a door back there …’

  A warning sound erupted from the car. A different one to the seat belt alarm. And it worried me. ‘What’s that beeping?’

  But she had gone. The driver’s car door was open and we had stopped in the middle of the car park. Luckily it wasn’t busy.

  Wally returned to the driver’s seat within minutes, having learned that only the front portion of this huge modern complex was part of the old building. ‘Well,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I was right. It was right here, but it’s changed. You got your camera with you?’

  The beeps had stopped while she was on her recce, but they restarted again. Wally had jumped out of the car, and was marching into the distance, shouting at me to come this way or that. She barked instructions on what angle to position my camera and warned me not to get the Pepsi sign in any photo. The beeping continued.

  ‘Wally, you’ve left the car running.’

  She ignored me. ‘I recognise this part here. We’ll drive around the front. This part will be more accurate.’

  How did she remember the building from 1961? ‘It was two or three storeys. Stairs at the front. Nice entrance on the roadside. Now there used to be a motel across the street. I don’t remember the name of it. That was all open space …’

  After we’d driven across the busy main road for the front view, Wally finally noticed the noise. ‘What’s that beeping?’

  ‘I think it’s because your seat belt isn’t on.’

  ‘It hasn’t beeped before. And I told you. He fixed it.’

  ‘My seat belt is on.’

  We took a few more photos. It was impossible to get Wally contemplative because in each shot Wally beamed, mouth wide, immaculate teeth on show, with her arms outstretched and upwards. ‘You’re doing that pose again.’

  ‘Yeah. I did that for somebody outside church the other day and the guy said, “That was the greatest
pose anybody’s ever given me.”’

  Back in the car the beeping continued like a metronome. Wally was dismissive. ‘It should go off in a minute.’

  It didn’t.

  Thankfully the journey to the plus-one’s home lasted around ten minutes. I clutched my seat again as several vehicles were forced into evasive manoeuvres. We entered a distinctive neighbourhood. Each house was architecturally different, mostly single-storey, with curved arches or walls and a small garden leading down to the pavement. However, they all had walls of the same smooth salmon-pink or terracotta-red facade. ‘These are made of adobe brick,’ said Wally. ‘Just like my adobe house in Taos.’ I found Taos difficult to pronounce. ‘Rhymes with house, louse and mouse.’

  In the front garden of one of these beautiful adobe houses, an unfamiliar bird with a quiff and a distinctive long tail ran in front of several clusters of prickly pear cactus plants. Without thinking, I yelled, ‘What is that?’

  Wally slammed on the brakes and leaned across me to look out the window. Within a few seconds she started to laugh. ‘What – you’ve never seen a roadrunner before?’

  ‘You mean meep meep roadrunner – like in the cartoon?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘No, I haven’t. A roadrunner! I love it.’

  As I chuckled at this ludicrous-looking bird wandering among the cacti, Wally laughed at my response to the roadrunner.

  It must have been an odd sight, as two women guffawed sitting in a car by the kerbside. Her simple pleasure at my simple pleasure only enhanced our mutual enjoyment. This was where our personalities overlapped. Both of us were quick to see the funny side of most things, and to enthuse about anything that tickled our fancy, whether it was a cockpit, a space capsule or, as on this occasion, a roadrunner.