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Women Who Fly
Portraits of female pilots
By Rebecca Maksel
airspacemag.com, December 19, 2008
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Everyone’s heard of Amelia Earhart. But how about Patricia Jenkins, a pilot who uses her helicopter to herd cattle? Or Suzanne Asbury-Oliver, a skywriter for the Pepsi-Cola Company? Or Florence Parlett, an airport operator in tiny Edgewater, Maryland?
“As a photographer working at the National Air and Space Museum,” writes Carolyn Russo in her book Women and Flight, “I pass by Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega almost every day. So when a friend suggested I photograph [modern-day] women aviators, it seemed only natural.”
In 1992 Russo began her search for subjects. Rather than focus on “the fastest and most famous,” she decided to document a range of pilots, letting each woman tell her own story in the accompanying text. Russo’s book, Women and Flight: Portraits of Contemporary Women Pilots (1997, Smithsonian Institution), offers a delightful array of female pilots and their stories of flying. Click on the images at right to see a selection.
Text and images reprinted with permission.
Marty Goppert, Flying Circus Pilot
Dressed in her flying uniform for The Flying Circus, Bealeton, Virginia, 1992.
“The Flying Circus got started by these fellows who had a love of old airplanes. It’s a takeoff on the 1930s barnstorming show, placed between Warrenton and Fredericksburg, Virginia, off a country road….
I really never had a great interest in flying. I’m a nurse, and when I would go up with my husband, who was flying for United Airlines, and me being practical and thinking about the whole situation, I wanted to know how to land this airplane if he ever had a heart attack…. So he said, ‘Well, if you’re going to learn to land it, you might as well get your license, because landing is the hardest part.’
I got my license so that I could land the aircraft, and from there my love for flying grew. I just really enjoyed going up and flying around and getting away from everything, especially if you’ve had a hectic day at work, and enjoying the beauty of the country from up above. You don’t have the traffic, the hassle, and the busyness of our society that we live in day to day.”
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It was a great thing the WASPS did during WWII. I was a teenager when Germany and Japan surrendered and remember the great things they did! Today, not in my Air Force career, women are flying again. This time in combat. Women C-130E crews are flying in Iraq and all the world. When I was flying C-130s I often told my wife "If you want to know where I am just read the headlines in the newspaper." These dedicated ladies are world travelers, just as we were in the 1960s and 1970s, often flying the same C-130 aircraft we flew. Little has been said about their dedication and valor. Their stories should be told in depth for posterity.
Posted by Lt.Col. Robert W. Ruffin Ret. on January 1,2009 | 10:49AM
The women never got the respect for what they done during WW-2. I flew with the RAF when I was 13 years old front gunner in a Wellington Bomber on Atlantic Patrol. I was in the Air Training Corps. We had completed all our training including gunnery and were allowed to fly relatively safe missions when we were out of school in the Summer. Just immagine the thrill at 13 of being behind a pair or .05 twin Browning machine guns in a rotating turret. We never did see a u-boat, but they were out there. Years later when I had come to America in my mid 20's I learned to fly and wound up with a Commercial Multi Engine certificate # 1416814. My greatest pleasure was flying my Luscombe 8A alone at night.
Posted by Robert A. Harbinson on February 19,2009 | 07:25PM