Wally Funk's Race for Space
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The 1997 radio programme I made for the BBC about the Mercury 13, Women with the Right Stuff, is still available to listen to online via the BBC website. Sadly, two of the women I interviewed for it, Jerri Truhill and Irene Leverton, are no longer with us, so it’s a poignant listen, but also, hopefully, remains an inspiring one.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I’d like to thank Wally Funk for her time, energy, enthusiasm, friendship, good humour and ever-present laughter. She is the aviation equivalent of the Unsinkable Molly Brown and an inspiration to women everywhere, young and old.
The BBC has played an enormous role in my life. I’ve worked for the organisation as a staff member twice, resigned twice, and continue to work for them as an independent producer and broadcaster in between resignations. In one of those periods, when I was freelance in 1997, they commissioned my idea for a radio documentary on the Mercury 13 via the independent company Partners In Sound. That set off twenty years of intermittent relationships with several of the women, including Wally, and it also cemented my interest in making programmes that cover women’s history or have a feminist angle.
Two other, more recent documentaries I made for the BBC effectively resulted in the book, since it was travelling with Wally that gave me the idea of doing something different to a straightforward biography, which was nowhere near as appealing to write. But if it hadn’t been for Steve Titherington suggesting Wally as my presenter, this book would not have come into being.
Thank you Virgin Galactic’s Clare Pelly and Gemma Vigor for answering my questions and facilitating my trip to Spaceport America. There’s nothing I’d like more than to see SpaceShipTwo succeed and for Wally to be sat where she wants, behind the pilot, and finally go into space. Thanks also to Jeremy Close and Abbie Hutty at Airbus, Defence and Space for delighting Wally (and me) by hosting a visit to their Mars Yard at short notice; Elena Filippazzo, Samantha Cristoforetti and Jan Woerner at the European Space Agency; and NASA for inspiring me to aim high when I wrote to them, aged thirteen, wanting to be an astronaut; Nicholas Booth deserves a big shout-out for his early and consistent encouragement of this book idea; thanks to Loretta Hall for opening her home to a stranger and allowing me to depart as a friend; and my gratitude goes to Peter Tallack at the Science Factory and my editor at the Westbourne Press, Lynn Gaspard, for believing both in the book and in the appeal of the magnificently named Wally Funk.
Apart from Wally, I’d also like to identify four women whose lives have always been a personal inspiration: Barbara Young, Nicola Kerr, Melanie James and Penny Hollingham. In a world where women sometimes have to fight for equal opportunities or simply to be heard and acknowledged, their advice, strength and voices have always rung clear.
Finally, for the two men in my life: my husband Richard Hollingham, and our son Matthew. Richard, as a science journalist, gave invaluable advice and editing suggestions on early drafts. Matthew couldn’t have been kinder or more understanding. Thank you both for the constant support and for living with my obsessions.
Wally and her palomino horse, Victor, in Taos, New Mexico.
Girl Scout in the 1940s.
Aged 14 at the all-girls St Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri (c. 1953).
Preparing to fly a Cessna 195 (c. late 1950s).
Wally with silverware picked up as a member of the winning Flying Aggies student air team at Oklahoma State University (c. 1959).
Twenty-one years old and the first female civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill Oklahoma, 1960. Wally experienced her first jet flight in this t-33.
The 1951 Rolls-Royce, restored by Wally, that once belonged to the Queen Mother. Wally is wearing her mother’s wedding dress. (c. 1970s).
Article from a local Missouri newspaper in Wally’s scrapbook, dated 21 September 1961.
The Parade magazine cover article from April 1961 revealing that more women had passed the same astronaut tests as the Mercury 7 men.
A copy of the telegram received by Wally in September 1961 cancelling phase 2 of Lovelace’s Woman in Space program astronaut tests just days before they were due to start.
Wally assessing an aviation crash site scene as an NTSB air-safety investigator (c. 1984).
Aged 61 in Russia enjoying her first ‘zero G’ experience on a series of parabolic flights (2000).
Class of 2013 NASA astronaut Jessica Meir with Wally in front of a replica of the Orion capsule at the NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston (2016).
Wally with ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany (2017).
Sue Nelson and Wally at North West Regional airport, Dallas, preparing to fly over Dallas in a Cessna 172 (2016).
Wally at Spaceport America, New Mexico, beside a replica of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo – her ride into space (September 2017).