Walking on Air (34 page)

12
.
Democratic Digest
, April 1935, 8.

13
. Letter, J. F. Victory, Secretary of NACA, to Phoebe Omlie, 18 May 1934, NACA file.

14
. Letters, Phoebe Omlie to John Victory and Phoebe Omlie to George Lewis, 19 December 1933 through 18 June 1935, NACA file. After eleven months development by the bureau, a blind landing system (that is, landing by instruments only) was adopted as the standard in September 1934. See
FAA Historical Chronology, 1926–1996
.

15
.
Memphis Press-Scimitar
, 12 June 1934.

16
. Letter, Joseph Ames, chairman of NACA to Herbert D. Brown, government efficiency expert in the Hoover administration, 23 April 1932, spelling out the differing functions of NACA and the Aeronautics Branch, quoted by Alex Roland,
SP 4103 Model Research
, Vol. 1, ch. 6, note 34,
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4103
. Amendment in
Congressional Record
, 80 (16 June 1934): 12203; cited in Tom D. Crouch, “An Airplane for Everyman,” 171, 185.

17
. Eugene L. Vidal, “Low-Priced Airplane,”
Aviation
, February 1934, 40–41; Corn,
Winged Gospel
, 99–100.

18
. Vidal, “Low-Priced Airplane,” 40–41.

19
. Crouch, “An Airplane for Everyman,” 172.

20
. “This Light Plane Business,”
Aviation
, December 1935, 25; cited in Crouch, “An Airplane for Everyman,” 173. See also Corn,
Winged Gospel
, 99; Courtney, “Wings of the New Deal,” 49.

21
. Komons,
Bonfires to Beacons
, 247.

22
. Corn,
Winged Gospel
, 99.

23
. Crouch, “An Airplane for Everyman,” 173.

24
.
Memphis Press-Scimitar
, 12 June 1934.

25
.
Los Angeles Times
, 11 July 1934.

26
. Undated clipping,
Washington Times-Herald
, Omlie Collection.

27
.
Minneapolis Tribune
, 5 August 1934.

28
. “Memorandum for Mrs. Omlie,” from G. W. Lewis, Director of Aeronautical Research, NACA, 12 February 1934. A memorandum from the NACA, 7 February 1934, listed the “General program of tests to be made on experimental airplane built by Fred E. Weick and associates” including wind tunnel tests: tests for lift and drag: angles of yaw; control handling; performance tests of speed, climb, and glide; tests of stability and handling. This memo was attached to Phoebe's orders to work with both agencies, NACA file.

29
. Tricycle landing gear later became standard on most of the world's aircraft. Much of the discussion that follows comes from Phoebe Omlie's essay, “How and Why I Happened to Lead the Fight for the Return of the Tri-Cycle Landing Gear for the Airplane,” Omlie Collection.

30
. Phoebe described her model as “more streamlined and comfortable looking than the flying model.” It now hangs in the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis; “How and Why,” Omlie Collection.

31
. “How and Why,” Omlie Collection.

32
.
New York Times
, 27 May 1934.

33
. Ibid., 19 October 1934.

34
. Ibid., 28 August 1934; Crouch, “An Airplane for Everyman,” 178–179.

35
.
New York Times
, 19 October 1934.

36
. Her pilot log book, dated 18 November 1930 to 15 May 1936, lists 1 hour and 5 minutes in Hammond NS73. Log book in Omlie Collection.

37
. “How and Why,” Omlie Collection.

38
. Gore Vidal wrote about this incident in several pieces, including, “Love of Flying,”
New York Review of Books
, 17 January 1985;
Point to Point Navigation
(New York: Random House, 2006), 165; and
Palimpsest
:
A Memoir
(New York: Random House, 1995), 13.
Pathe
newsreel film of Gore Vidal flying the Hammond is available for viewing on YouTube.

39
. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “Stearman-Hammond Y,”
http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/stear-ham.htm
.

40
. Mary Margaret McBride,
Washington News
, 25 May 1934.

41
.
Washington Herald
, 25 November 1933. Corn dubbed this way of thinking “aerial domesticity,” an emphasis on traditional womanly roles when speaking of women in the
air age, which on some level aided in domesticating the image of flying in the popular imagination. Corn,
Winged Gospel
, 81.

42
. The races that year were controlled by the men-only Professional Racing Pilots' Chapter of the National Aviation Authority, which governed civil aviation. Richey's friend, Frances Marsalis, was killed in an accident at the National Women's Air Meet when her biplane crashed after being caught in the backwash of five other planes in a pylon race.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, 4 August 1934; Planck,
Women with Wings
, 89.

43
. Quoted in
Charleston Daily Mail
, 27 January 1935.

44
. Ibid.

45
. Not until 1973 did a U.S. airline hire another woman pilot. Susan Ware,
Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 76–78; Corn,
Winged Gospel
, 80; Butler,
East to the Dawn
, 313–315.

46
. Helen Welshimer,
Ironwood Michigan Daily Globe
, 12 December 1935.

47
. Journal cited in “Memorandum to Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt,” 10 October 1934, in Eleanor Roosevelt, White House Correspondence, 1933–45, Box 271, FDRL.

48
. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Louise Thaden, 31 July 1973, Omlie Collection.

49
. Phoebe strongly resented the Ninety-Nines' later claiming credit for the defeat of the proposed limits on women's licenses. In numerous letters, she reiterated that she broke with the organization in “1934 when they flatly refused to help in fighting the Bureau of Air Commerce whose chief of regulations was trying to limit the hours and times a woman could fly.” See letters, particularly those to Louise Thaden in Omlie Collection. The Ninety-Nines continue to claim credit for getting the first female medical examiner appointed to the Department of Commerce and fighting the menstrual issue on multiple Web sites today.

50
. Kessler,
The Happy Bottom Riding Club
, 103–104; Barbara Hunter Schultz,
Pancho: The Biography of Florence Lowe Barnes
(Lancaster, CA: Little Buttes Publishing Co., 1996), 118, 122.

51
. “Memorandum to Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt,” FDRL.

52
. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Louise Thaden, 31 July 1973, Omlie Collection.

53
. Phoebe was ordered to interview physicians in connection with “the medical research program of the Bureau of Air Commerce” in letter, J. F. Victory to Phoebe Omlie, 22 September 1934, NACA file.

54
. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Louise Thaden, 20 July 1973. Louise's letter to Phoebe, 28 July 1973, indicates her role in the matter. She wrote that she didn't know about Phoebe's role, and had always thought that “AE and I were responsible for squelching it. Gene Vidal had told AE what that dumb medical guy was considering; she called me; we took ourselves to DCA and talked with him; then the two of us kept a ‘research log' for 6 months or so together with several others we enlisted … not too long thereafter the thing died.” Letter, Phoebe to Louise Thaden, 31 July 1973, Omlie Collection. Researchers continue to study the issue, however. A 2001 study tested twenty-four female pilots during their menstrual cycles as they performed a seventy-five-minute simulator flight. The researchers found “no significant differences in overall flight performance between the menstrual and luteal phases.” Martin S. Mumenthaler et al., “Relationship between variations in estradiol and progesterone levels across the
menstrual cycle and human performance,” in
Psycho-pharmacology
155, no. 2 (May 2001).

55
. There is little evidence of these. One article says she seldom saw her husband “except week-ends” and this is the Mary Margaret McBride article that describes her in cloyingly domestic terms. McBride,
Washington News
, 25 May 1934. An occasional clipping from Memphis mentions her being home for a visit; Flora Orr, writing in
Holland's, The Magazine of the South
, September 1935, noted Vernon was in Washington with Phoebe for the Christmas holidays. Gene Scharlau asserts that during these years Vernon “and Phoebe saw each other often, either by his coming to Washington or her flying down to Memphis.” Scharlau,
Phoebe
, 95.

56
. Quoted by Mary Margaret McBride,
Washington News
, 25 May 1934. Given the dearth of evidence, it is impossible to accurately characterize their relationship beyond this. Only one letter between the Omlies survives, Vernon to Phoebe, 18 July 1936 (probably his final letter). Addressed to Dearest Phoebe, the letter is chatty about business and friends, and signed with “Loads of love, honey.” Letter, Vernon to Phoebe, 18 July 1936, Omlie Collection.

57
.
Memphis Evening Appeal
, 12 April 1933.

58
. Joseph Boltner,
Faulkner: A Biography
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 60–67.

59
. Boltner,
Faulkner
, 141.

60
. The circus also sometimes featured a jumper named J. M. “Navy” Sowell. Boltner,
Faulkner
, 330–353; see also Dean Faulkner Wells, “The Man Who Walked in the Sky,”
Parade
, 25 October 1981, 27.

61
. Boltner,
Faulkner
, 338.

62
. William Faulkner,
Pylon
(New York: Random House, 1935; Vintage Books Edition, 1987).
The Tarnished Angels
, a 1958 film starring Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, and Jack Carson, was based on the novel
Pylon.

63
. Faulkner,
Pylon
, 42.

64
. Ibid., 41.

65
. Ibid., 197–200.

66
. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Roger Q. Williams, 8 February 1973, Omlie Collection.

67
. Vernon quoted by Phoebe in letter to author Carvel Collins, an authority on William Faulkner's work, who had written to ask how true the characters were in
Pylon.
She did not comment in this letter upon Faulkner's portrayal of Laverne. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Carvel Collins, 6 June 1971, Omlie Collection.

68
.
Commercial Appeal
, 11 November 1935; David Dawson, “The Flying Omlies: A Barnstorming Legacy,”
Memphis
, December 1980, 44–49; Boltner,
Faulkner
, 353–356.

69
. Appropriations for the air-marking program reached $1,122,388.
New York Times
, 16 August 1936.

70
. For one example, see
Washington Post
, 5 October 1935.

71
. United States Department of Commerce, Aeronautics Branch,
Annual Report of the Director of Aeronautics to the Secretary of Commerce for the Fiscal Year Ended June 20, 1929
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1928), 35–36. See also Annual Reports from 1927, 19 and 1929, 58–59.

72
. Earhart,
The Fun of It
, 91.

73
. Phoebe describes this meeting and their joint efforts to lobby the new auditor for the WPA, Corrington Gill, by inviting him to her “country-place on the South River” to meet with aviation people. She also wrangled an invitation to the National Air Races for Gill. This lobbying was apparently successful in securing the funds for the air-marking program. See essay, “Air Marking,” Omlie Collection.

74
. Memo, Eugene Vidal to John S. Wynne, 25 March 1936, Omlie Collection.

75
. Memo, Phoebe Omlie to Robert Lees, WPA, undated, Omlie Collection.

76
. “Three Women Mark the Airways,”
Democratic Digest
, November 1935, 12–13. After Harkness left the program to get married, Phoebe immediately hired Helen Richey, who had recently resigned from Central Airlines. After Dewey Noyes was killed in a plane crash, Phoebe hired Blanche Noyes to join the team. Noyes joined 13 August 1936 when the project was essentially completed and Phoebe was ready to resign.
Washington Daily News
, 13 August 1936.

77
. Thaden notes she occasionally got the use of a bureau plane but they were in such disrepair that she had a series of near-disasters flying them. She relates, for example, a Stinson in which she made five forced landings in one afternoon, a Monocoupe whose windshield blew in and hit her in the face, a Curtiss-Wright Sedan whose landing gear collapsed, and another borrowed plane that blew a valve over San Francisco Bay. Thaden,
High, Wide and Frightened
, 100–104. Phoebe also had only ground transportation authorization. Letter, J. F. Victory to Phoebe Omlie, 25 November 1935, NACA file.

78
.
Nashville Banner
, 1 November 1935; “Air Marking,” Omlie Collection; for a detailed report on the air-marking program, see Louise Thaden, “Five Women Tackle the Nation,”
N.A.A.
[National Aeronautical Association] magazine, August 1936, 14–16, 24. See also Helen Welshimer, “The Women Who Mark the Air Lanes,”
EveryWeek
, 18 July 1937, 15.

79
.
Newsweek
, 22 August 1936, 25.

80
.
Time
, 24 August 1936, 48;
New York Times
, 16 August 1936. See also six-month report, Phoebe Omlie to J. F. Victory, 1 April 1936, NACA file.

81
.
Commercial Appeal
, 9 March 1935.