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.
LEARN MORE
“Ruth Nichols” on Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum website, http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/topics/women/Nichols.cfm
“Ruth Nichols” on National Aviation Hall of Fame website, www.nationalaviation.org/nichols-ruth
FAY GILLIS WELLS
Promoting World Friendship through Flying
FAY GILLIS WELLS 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.
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.
Eleven-Year-Old Writes Fay Gillis Wells B
iography
In 1997, eleven-year-old Sara Rimmerman met Fay Gillis Wells when Fay came to talk at Sara’s Kansas school. Sara’s sister, Rachel, had met the 90-year-old aviation journalist at a school assembly and couldn’t wait to introduce Fay to her sister and mother. A small group met for tea, where Fay told wonderful stories about her life. They learned that no one had written a book about Fay. So the group decided that Sara, a fifth grader who loved to write, would tell Fay’s story. After two years of interviewing, researching, and writing, Sara’s book was published in 1999. It was called Hidden Heroine and told how Fay earned a pilot’s license, lived in Russia, and became friends with Amelia Earhart.
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.
LEARN MORE
“Fay Gillis Wells” at the Women Fly Resource Center Women Pilots website, http://womenaviators.org/Fay.html
Fay Gillis Wells in the Air and On the Air by Lillian Brinnon and Howard Fried (Woodfield Press, 2002)
“Fay Gillis Wells” on the Ninety-Nines International Organization of Women Pilots website, www.ninety-nines.org/index.cfm/fay_gillis_wells.htm
Hidden Heroine—Fay Gillis Wells by Sara Rimmerman (Zeus Enterprises, 1999)
International Forest of Friendship website, http://ifof.org
JENNIFER MURRAY
Helicopter Flying for Charity
WHAT 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.
Once again, they headed south along Central America. The first few days were met with route changes to avoid flying in bad weather. Even though they had crossed the Drake Passage before, Jennifer said she worried about the hostile body of water. They crossed it on December 30 and, for a change, had good weather awaiting them—for a few days at least.
The winds were particularly fierce, and they found themselves grounded for several days. They stayed in tents and abandoned huts at the Carvajal base. They weren’t very welcome, though; a group of elephant seals took a disliking to the Polar First team, snapping at them.
There wasn’t much to do except wait for the weather to clear. Jennifer and Colin get along well, except when it comes to music. Jennifer enjoys listening to classical music; Colin prefers anything else.
After the weather cleared, they took off for the site of their previous helicopter crash. Although the wrecked machine had been hauled off to a landfill, Colin still had the key, and the two buried it there. Although visiting the crash site and saying goodbye was emotional, the experience gave them closure.
The trip across Antarctica was almost entirely dictated by the weather. A hint of blue in the sky would send the pilots scurrying to pack up. Even when visibility was good with clear skies, they had to deal with strong headwinds. The higher their altitude, the greater the winds. But if they flew too low, they burned more fuel. Still, they usually found an altitude that worked out.
They crossed the Drake Passage again; this stage was shorter than anticipated due to strong tailwinds that put them back in Chile. They had survived the South Pole. Now it was time for the North Pole.
They approached the Arctic region in April. Jennifer admitted to having nerves, though this was mainly due to fear of the unknown. But flying over the North Pole was also similar to navigating over Antarctica in that they were constantly looking for windows of good weather. They found them and were on their way.
The red Bell 407 helicopter made the around-the-world flight from pole to pole in 170 days, 22 hours, 47
minutes, and 17 seconds; they reached the place they started, Fort Worth, on May 24, 2007. The amazing sights included two of the coldest places on Earth, as well as some of the hottest too. They refueled 101 times in 26 countries for the 32,206-mile (51,819 kilometer) trip.
The helicopter used on the world trip made a final trip to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Jennifer has been awarded both a silver medal and the Britannia Trophy by the Royal Aero Club. She’s also a two-time Guinness World Record holder.
A trip like this takes a huge amount of preparation. Fueling stations and airports aren’t very plentiful at either polar region, so Jennifer and Colin had to have fuel stored in remote locations. Fortunately, the woman who set the Guinness World Record in 1997 for flying the globe in a helicopter knew how to plan ahead.
Jennifer was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1940. Although she may have been born in the United States, her heart belongs to Great Britain. Her British father and American mother returned to England when she was four years old. She went to school there and graduated with a degree in textile design. In between working as a textile designer, she married, raised three children, and traveled the globe. She had a nose for adventure, whether it was trekking in Nepal or running a marathon.
Flying, however, wasn’t one of the adventures that she ever considered. In fact, she didn’t think about flying until she was 54. Her husband bought half a share in a helicopter. Jennifer said he told her that she had better learn to fly it because he didn’t have time. Despite being asked if she wanted the “wives” course, which was little more than a helicopter tour, Jennifer signed up for helicopter training at flight school, and she found that she rather enjoyed it.
Women Aviators Page 14
