Before Amelia (42 page)

One day, a story buzzed around the school that Bernetta had been an aeroplane pilot, the second woman in America. When a colleague confronted her—had she ever been a pilot?—her face became expressionless for some seconds, then she relaxed and nodded her head. Was she really the second? “No,” she replied. “I was the third.” In the conversation that followed, it was apparent she did not miss flying. For excitement, she thought stunts in a Chris–Craft “lots more fun!”

In 1941, Bernetta became assistant to Dr. Frank Aydelotte, director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. She remained there until her retirement in 1948, ending a career of more than twenty years in education. She lived quietly in New Hope, Pennsylvania, until her death in 1972 at eighty–six years of age. She was almost blind in later years, and the beloved rugs were her security. She sold some, one at a time, to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for its fine collection.

Bernetta Miller, fifth licensed woman pilotin America, closed the door on her early career when aviation failed to offer real advancement. Her education, interests, and a wish to be useful carried her to distant parts of the globe, which she explored avidly—on the ground. For her, the skies held no more fascination.

Four more women won pilot's licenses before the end of 1916: Florence Seidell, Mrs. Richberg Hornsby, Dorothy Rice Peirce, and Helen Hodge Harris. They all broke out of the accepted role for women of their generation. Because they had sufficient financial help, they were able to fly for their own amusement, without the need to pay their way.

Florence Seidell, born on June 15, 1885, in Lebanon, Kansas, received license No. 258, having passed her tests on June 20, 1913, at Griffith Park, Los Angeles, flying a Curtiss pusher. Glenn L. Martin, who had taught her to drive her first automobile six years earlier, gave her lessons in the early months of 1913 at Newport Bay, California, on a hydro–aeroplane. (Martin had a second school for land aeroplanes at Griffith Park.) Florence made the cover of
Aero and Hydro,
March 8, 1913, carrying a passenger over Newport Bay. The daughter of a wealthy family, Florence flew solely for her own amusement.

Mrs. Richberg Hornsby's story is similar. Born on November 26, 1887, in Chicago, she trained at the Wright School in Dayton, where she passed her tests on June 12, 1914, to win license No. 301, the first woman graduated by the school. She and Marjorie Stinson were the only two women trained at Dayton before the First World War. Mrs. Hornsby, the daughter of a Chicago lawyer, had married two years before she took up flying, but was separated from her husband. Again, the story ends there.

On August 17, 1916, Dorothy Rice Peirce (later “Sims”) qualified for license No. 561 at Mineola, New York, the tenth American woman to become a pilot. She trained on a Wright biplane, and with luck and some skill she passed her tests.

Dorothy was born into a family of characters on June 24, 1892, in Hollywood, New Jersey, according to Aero Club records. The family's hallmark was doing what they liked, when they liked. Her book,
Curiouser and Curiouser
(1940), with an introduction by George Kauffman, confirms the freewheeling home atmosphere, where children dropped out of school because they disliked it to pursue at home with tutors whatever interest caught their fancy. Both parents were musical, but the children would have none of that. Dorothy, by turns, took up skating, motorcycling, and painting. Eventually, she turned to flying.

She met her first husband, Waldo Peirce, in Spain, where she was studying art. The war came, and Waldo stayed in Europe to drive an ambulance. Dorothy went home, resolved to get into the war. She would fly!

She went to the Wright office inquiring about lessons—two hundred minutes for two hundred dollars—but then discovered the school wouldn't take her. Dorothy was determined and badgered the staff for four hours, until the office manager gave in. Robert Rinehart was her teacher, and in due course Dorothy soloed on August 17, 1916, and won her license. According to Dorothy, she was good at flying because of her sense of balance learned from cycling and skating.

She bought a used aeroplane, powered by a Gnome motor, that was built by a farmer in New Jersey, and set about looking for passengers to take up. Her mechanic, a solemn Swede named Bangs, tended to discourage would–be riders, asking, “You're not going to go up with
her,
are you?” As a result, passengers were hard to come by.

Even harder was finding people who would take her wish to fly for the military seriously. Turned down by the navy and the army, she visited Theodore Roosevelt at his home on Long Island. He was “very sweet except for the details.” Rocking in his favorite chair, he said “no” to everything Dorothy proposed. Women should not go to war; they should not fly aeroplanes. Dorothy next tackled General Leonard Wood, who was understanding but said the matter was out of his hands; he couldn't get her into the military.

In the meantime she had met Lawrence Sperry, son of Elmer Sperry, inventor of the gyroscope, who had made a self–flying gadget he wanted to market. He was happy to ride with Dorothy. On one particular flight, to show his confidence in the gadget, he walked out on the wing of the aeroplane. The machine fell eight hundred feet into ten feet of water in Great South Bay, a tangled mess of wires. Dorothy broke her back and was in a cast for six weeks, but she didn't blame Sperry. The two had spent considerable time together and were talking marriage and a flight to Europe. As soon as she was on her feet, Dorothy divorced Waldo, but plans for the European flight fell apart, and the romance cooled.

Columbia University, eager to organize a flying unit, had contacted Dorothy, while she had an aeroplane, to see if she would teach young men to fly. She would be happy to do so, but before official papers were signed, the mothers of the Columbia students bought an aeroplane and Dorothy was no longer needed.

One good thing came from that experience—Dorothy met Hal Sims, a wounded airman back from France and the adviser for the project. He was much taken with Dorothy in spite of her ignorance of mechanics and the technical side of flying. They married, Hal went back to France, and within weeks the armistice ended the war. Dorothy's flying career ended too.

She returned to painting, exhibited in New York City, sculpted, played championship bridge, and was a world traveler. One has the feeling that she learned to fly because it was new and exciting—possibly she had visions of flying in France—before moving on to the next pursuit. Her parents had always encouraged her, certain she had genius, but, as an adult, Dorothy admitted she was never sure what her genius was. She was never dull.

Helen Hodge Harris, the eleventh American woman pilot, won license No. 633 after completing her tests on November 12, 1916. She claimed two distinctions: first woman west of Chicago to win a license (she was unaware of Julia Clark and Florence Seidell), and the last American woman to receive a license before the war.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, on August 2, 1892, she became interested in flying in 1916, seven years after marrying Ralph Newbre in Oakland, California. She tried to train at the Christofferson School in San Francisco, was turned down because of her sex, and refused to take no for an answer. She was accepted, finally, as a student, provided she took the same courses as the men. Consequently, Helen studied engines, aeroplane construction, and the theory of flight as it was at that time. Her actual flying lessons began with Frank Bryant on a Curtiss–type biplane on the field at Redwood City. Having won her license, she flew mainly for her own enjoyment. During the war she taught cadets to fly and made an occasional exhibition flight for the school.

On one such flight in a pusher before a group of dignitaries, the motor mount broke and the motor fell out of the aeroplane. The coolheaded pilot landed the powerless aeroplane by “taking the controls in her hand and climbing out on the front wheel to nose it down.” Helen was uninjured and finished the exhibition in a machine new to her and the school, the China Tractor. She had the kind of confidence great aviators possess.

After the death of her first husband, Helen moved south and three years later married Frank Harris in Los Angeles, where she became supervisor of a machine shop making special aeroplane tools and finishing equipment. Directing a workforce of twenty men and fourteen women, Helen could operate lathes, milling machines, and precision grinders if needed, thanks to her early training.

She died in Pomona, California, in 1967, a staunch believer to the end that “nothing is impossible.”

These were not the only women flying by any means. Newspaper accounts from the period indicate that others were taking to the air, but they were not serious professionals. They enjoyed the sport of flying the same as driving an automobile, horseback r iding, or golf. Some, like Mary Sims Heinrich and Jean Doty Caldwell, were earnest students but gave up aviation to please a husband or family. Inez Eye studied at the Walden Monoplane Company on Long Island; she learned to fly but never got a license.

Geneve Shaffer Parsons claimed to have flown an aeroplane, built by her brother, Cleve, in the San Bruno hills near San Francisco in 1909. Cleve was an aviation enthusiast and founder of the Pacific Aero Club. The flight was a onetime occurrence. Some five months later, Geneve made a balloon ascension that ended in the drink near San Francisco. At this point she gave up aerial adventures to please her worried mother and is unknown in the record books.

Other young women were flying on the plains of the Alameda near Oakland in Silas Christofferson biplanes. Among them were Helen Gray, Barbara Miller, and Helen Audeffred. Flying was the in pastime among the social set, with this added fillip:There was a “subtle thing about it that makes one feel something above a mere human being.” Helen Audeffred found this appeal irresistible. However, none of these young women qualified for the Early Birds.

Hilder Smith, like Blanche Stuart Scott and others, flew for several years and didn't bother to win a license. She discovered aviation when her husband, Floyd Smith, decided to build an aeroplane after performing for five years on the trapeze and high ropes in a circus.

Hilder and Floyd grew up within thirty–five miles of each other in Illinois, but it was in California, when she was sixteen, that they first met. Floyd was an aerialist with the Flying Sylvesters, an occupation her father frowned upon, but in spite of his opposition, the two young lovers married, and Floyd began to teach Hilder the art of trapeze performing. She was soon a member of the act.

Then in 1911, Floyd decided he wanted to build an aeroplane and try a new kind of aerial performance. He studied aeronautics for a couple of months and began construction in January 1912 at Santa Ana. (The clown from their aerial act lived there.) Hilder worked as mechanic.

The Smiths made their first flight in June, after practicing for five days in a field in Santa Ana. Hilder—Floyd always called her Sis—was a willing passenger on most of the flights. The field was not perfect—roughly two blocks by three blocks with trees and wires surrounding the open space—and the machine had to circle several times to clear the trees and wires, but it flew. The motor that powered the machine came from Glenn Martin, who was also working in Santa Ana. When the farmer who owned the field appeared one night demanding five dollars a day for its use, the Smiths flew their aeroplane the next morning to Griffith Park in Los Angeles, about forty–five miles away, flying most of the trip in fog. It was a remarkable feat for a first aeroplane flight.

The couple were soon making appearances throughout the Midwest, on five hundred dollars borrowed from Floyd's mother. It was a picaresque existence, with motor problems, a drunken mechanic, crashes, and dishonest show promoters. After one misadventure too many, Floyd discovered the problem with his motor, made the needed adjustment, and became his own mechanic from then on. This experience led to employment with Glenn Martin as a mechanic. In 1914 he was promoted to chief pilot and, as usual, Sis was involved.

Martin, hired to put on a show for the opening of the Los Angeles Harbor, wanted a young woman to parachute from an aeroplane at the celebration. Sis made a deal: She would do the jump and in return she could fly Martin aeroplanes as long as “she didn't bend them.” According to the agreement, Hilder was taught by Arthur Burns, flight instructor for the Glenn L. Martin Aviation School at Griffith Park. Flying a Martin pusher biplane, she soloed during the summer of 1914, and, in turn, took up other students as passengers.

In the next several years, Hilder flew various Martin machines, including the TT biplane with a Curtiss OX–5 engine, which qualified her for membership in the OX–5 Club, a group of pioneer aviators. A letter from Art Burns testified she had indeed flown that machine with that engine to take her girlfriends up for rides. Other testimonials, establishing when she soloed, made her eligible for the Early Bird Society, for whom, in later years, she verified membership applications in the Los Angeles area.

Hilder could repair wings and shape struts with the best of aeroplane builders. When trapeze work was just a memory, she remained an avid aviation fan. She was, unquestionably, a can–do woman.

Alys McKey Bryant was a woman to be reckoned with. Of stocky build, she could box and she was self–reliant, intelligent, and a whiz with anything that required the use of her hands. Born on an Indiana farm, on April 28, 1880, one of three children left motherless while young, she learned mechanics from her father, an inveterate tinkerer. The family moved to Boise, Idaho, where her father owned the first electric car in town. As a schoolgirl, Alys wrote an essay describing an imaginary flight across the country from New Jersey to California in an electric–powered craft. She had no idea of aeroplane travel at that time, but on her first glimpse of an aeroplane, she recognized its potential.