Women Aviators (10 page)

Bobbi last piloted an airplane in 1984. She wore many different hats after her golden days of flying: commercial photographer, real estate broker, offset printer, and life insurance and mutual fund salesperson. When Bobbi Trout died at 97 on January 24, 2003, she was the last of the surviving participants of the 1929 Women's Air Derby.

O
N A BRIGHT, CLEAR
O
CTOBER
Sunday, a 17-year-old girl with a two-month-old pilot's license was getting ready to take a flight. But this particular endeavor was unique. It could result in her losing her license—or her life. The year was 1928, and she was about to fly under New York City's four bridges, a feat never before tried.

As she was waiting to climb in her plane, she tensed when someone tapped her shoulder. Was it the police or perhaps the newsmen who had dared her to attempt this feat? She turned and saw a kind, handsome face, one known throughout the world: Charles Lindbergh.

“Good luck, kid. Remember to keep your nose down in the turns,” Lindbergh said, grinning.

Shaking her head in amazement, Elinor Smith watched one of her heroes walk off. Imagine. Charles Lindbergh, who had made his famous trip from New York to Paris around the time of her first solo, had come to see her make this historic flight.

She took off in her father's Waco 9 biplane. The view of Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean was incredible. In her autobiography, she wrote, “And the clouds on that particular day had just broken open so there were these shafts of light coming down and lighting up this whole landscape in various greens and yellows.”

New York City is a city surrounded by water—not only the Atlantic Ocean, but also the Hudson and East Rivers. Manhattan, one of the city's five boroughs, is actually an island. Four bridges provide a way across the East River into Manhattan. The Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges connect Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge, connects Manhattan to Queens. During her flight, Elinor had to dodge a few ocean liners, but she was successful.

Eight days later, she was summoned to the mayor's office. Elinor couldn't stop shaking. What if mayor Jimmy Walker took away her license? Never let her fly again? She just wouldn't be able to stand it.

The mayor looked at the girl standing in front of him and sighed. Who would have thought that this five-foot, three-inch girl could raise so much havoc in his city?

He began, “You're suspended …” and then paused as he heard her gasp. In a gentle voice, he continued, “You're suspended from flying for ten days, retroactive to the day of your flight. I believe that means two more days of not flying.”

“Oh, thank you, Mayor Walker,” Elinor said. She left the New York City mayor's office. She still had her pilot's license, and she
had done something no other pilot had done. What would the Flying Flapper of Freeport, as the media called her, have thought if she had known that her record would still stand 85 years later?

Born on August 17, 1911, Elinor Smith grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York. As the daughter of vaudeville performer Tom Smith, she grew up with supportive parents who encouraged her to challenge herself. She was taught that her gender shouldn't interfere with what she wanted to do.

One day when she was six years old, the family was driving along Merrick Road. The children screamed for Tom to stop when they saw a sign that read,
AIRPLANE RIDES—$5 AND $10
. Elinor's father talked to the pilot and then returned to get the children. After tying Elinor's blond braids together to keep them out of her face, he lifted her and her brother, Joe, into the second seat, strapping them in together in the Farman pusher biplane.

The ride marked the beginning of Elinor's love of flying. She was taking lessons by age 10 and soloing at 15. Soon after her first solo flight, she set an unofficial women's altitude record of 11,874 feet (3,619 meters).

When she earned her pilot's license, signed by Orville Wright, she was the youngest pilot the FAI had seen yet. At 18, she was granted a transport pilot's license, the first person in the United States to receive one. “I had been brought up to think that anyone could do anything he or she put his or her mind to, so I was shocked to learn that the world had stereotypes it didn't want tampered with.”

From 1929 to 1930, Elinor joined a cross-country tour as a demonstration pilot for an airplane manufacturer, Bellanca. She also flew for a group of parachutists to promote the Irvin Air
Chute Company. Women pilots were often limited to the lighter planes, but Elinor knew the size of the plane didn't matter. She flew the big six-passenger Bellanca, astounding the press that a 17-year-old female could do such a thing.

“Becoming a professional pilot was for me the most desirable goal in the world, and I was not going to allow age or sex to bar me from it,” she recalled about that time.

Records were being set almost daily. Elinor decided she would set the first women's endurance records. Viola Gentry beat her to it by flying for more than eight hours. Less than two weeks later, Bobbi Trout pushed that to 12 hours.

Elinor didn't let it bother her. She just beat them both with a flight time of 13 hours, 16 minutes, and 45 seconds. It was her first world record, set on January 31, 1929. She flew in an open-cockpit Bird biplane. Strong winds and fog surrounded her, and the temperature dropped. She had dressed warmly, but the temperature was below freezing. She was ready to land by 3:00
AM
but had never landed at night—plus the visibility was poor. Nevertheless, she did it. And almost three months later, she nearly doubled her endurance time. Elinor, Bobbi, Viola, and Louise Thaden continued to take turns holding the women's endurance record for the next few years.

Elinor went on to set more records for endurance, altitude, and speed than anyone. Sometimes, she beat her own records. Together, she and Bobbi Trout became the first women pilots to refuel in the air successfully.

In 1930, Elinor was chosen by other pilots as the woman pilot of the year. Still a teenager, she was honored by the recognition. No doubt her women's altitude record of 27,418 feet (8,357 meters) earlier in the year had a lot to do with the award. A year later, at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, she added more than 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) to her altitude record.

Elinor made her mark on aviation in other ways as well. In addition to writing aviation articles for magazines and commentating for NBC radio, she was an advisor to the New York State Aviation Committee. She continued performing at air shows and as a movie stunt pilot.

Elinor met a New York politician and attorney, Patrick Sullivan, and in 1933, they married. When she became pregnant with her third child, she decided to quit flying to raise her family. She had four children in all.

Twenty-five years later, after her husband's death, Elinor returned to flying, now as a member of the Air Force Association. She thrilled at flying the T-33 jet trainer and the C-119 for paratrooper maneuvers. In 2000, Elinor was invited to fly the NASA Vertical Motion Simulator. She was successful, which came as no surprise to anyone who knew her. She became the oldest pilot to land a simulated shuttle and was delighted to have an all-female support crew.

M
ANY EARLY WOMEN PILOTS
had to fight to pursue their passion to fly. For some, the battle against discrimination and society's expectations was just too much to overcome. Others did fight it, every step of the way. Edna Gardner Whyte was one of those women. She was an exhibition flyer, a flight instructor, and a businesswoman in aviation.

Born on November 3, 1902, Edna had wanted to fly since she was a little girl. Unlike many early women pilots, Edna didn't have a privileged childhood. She spent her youth on a Minnesota farm, where the only speed she experienced came from riding horses.
Later, she would drive a Model T and see firsthand how fast it could go—and she even ended up rolling it over.

When Edna was seven, her family moved to Seattle, where her father got a job with the railroad. He was killed in a head-on collision within the year. Then her mother became ill from tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitarium. Edna and her brother and sister were split up and sent to live with different relatives. The rest of her childhood was spent moving from home to home.

When Edna grew up, she became a nurse. While in nurse's training, she had devoured articles about Katherine and Marjorie Stinson. The sisters were pilots who had been asked by president Woodrow Wilson to train pilots to fly in World War I. One of Edna's patients offered to take her up in his airplane. She wrote of the experience, “He showed me how to use the stick—nose up, nose down, nose sideways. We were following the roads, dirt and gravel back then, and I thought it was wonderful.”

Edna found someone who agreed to teach her. She paid $35 per hour, half her monthly salary. When Edna went to test for her license in 1928, she received the highest grade on the written portion of the exam. But when it came time for her flight test, the government inspector refused to test her.

“But why?” she asked.

He said, “I've never tested a woman, and I don't know that I want to start now. Women don't belong in airplanes. That's a man's job.”