Fighting for Space

by Amy Shira Teitel

  Chuck was struck by Jackie. He hadn’t expected the restaurant owner to bow to her as they walked in, nor had he anticipated that she’d send back every course of their meal before finally going into the kitchen herself to give the chef hell. She peppered Chuck with questions about his X-1 flight but somehow still managed to work into the conversation the awards she’d won and committees she served on. She bragged that Hap Arnold loved her scrambled eggs and Tooey Spaatz was a drinking buddy but didn’t hide the chip on her shoulder. “If I were a man,” she told him as they ate, “I would’ve been a war ace like you. I’m a damned good pilot. All these generals would be pounding on my door instead of the other way around. Being a woman, I need all the clout I can get.” Chuck doubted that between her career and Floyd’s connections she was lacking in clout. He could hardly even imagine she faced prejudice on account of her sex. Talking to Jackie was like talking to any other pilot, and it was clear she not only knew her planes, she was as crazy about flying as he was.

  As they parted ways that afternoon, Jackie urged Chuck to keep in touch. She liked him off the bat and suspected he was both a professional and personal friend worth maintaining.

  * * *

  Still in high school, Jerrie took any job she could find to earn enough money for flying time in pursuit of her private pilot’s license. She picked berries, typed for a publisher, ran the cash register at a movie house, and made deliveries for a local drug store. She drove around the city on a three-wheeled motor scooter, dressed in white coveralls with blond pigtails sticking straight out behind her, collecting scavenged automobile parts for a local garage.

  The odd jobs paid off when the weekend came. Jerrie took a short bus ride to the town of Moore, stopped at a gas station to buy five gallons of gasoline, then walked the last three-quarters of a mile to the grassy field where Coach Conger’s Aeronca was tethered. She filled the tank with the gas she’d bought, then flew until she had nothing left but fumes. She reversed the route to go home, dropping the empty container off at the gas station on her way. Hour by hour, she filled out her logbook.

  On March 5, 1948, Jerrie handed her logbook to the towering young man who would be taking her up for her exam. She could tell from his demeanor that he was what one might call a “by the book” examiner. He seemed impressed that she had 200 flight hours in her log, far more than the thirty-five she needed, but he didn’t say anything as he folded his long body into the little Luscombe airplane. The all-metal aircraft had a more powerful engine than anything Jerrie had ever flown, but she wasn’t nervous.

  What should have been a two-hour flying exam lasted only forty-five minutes. Confident in her abilities, Jerrie was sure the examiner was just eager to stretch his legs. He had, in fact, seen enough of her flying to know she was good. He awarded her a private pilot’s license. It was the best seventeenth birthday present she could have asked for.

  * * *

  On the night of Saturday, May 22, 1948, Lyndon Johnson stood before a small crowd at a rally in Wooldridge Park near downtown Austin, Texas. The congressman was ready to take his political career to the next level. A wartime tour with the US Navy had raised his profile, and he had cemented his reputation as a politician focused on modernity and equal opportunity. He also knew his constituents wanted to be left alone to drink beer and make money while staving off the growing concern about the spread of communism. The Soviet Union had indeed become America’s main adversary. Both countries were developing nuclear weapons, and growing tensions were making the fear of a new war increasingly real. This changing stance had forced Lyndon to reverse his earlier position of pursuing Soviet-American cooperation in favor of a policy of confrontation, and he was determined that Texas wouldn’t be treated as some backwater state like Kansas or New Mexico. He would make sure Texans would have their say in the budding Cold War. As he declared his candidacy for an open Senate seat that night, Lyndon’s every move was planned. His kidney stone, however, wasn’t.

  Lyndon had both a fever and chills, but he refused to call off the rally. Dressed in a smart suit and in excruciating pain, he managed to run to the stage after his introduction and rile the crowd up with a speech advocating preparedness, praising the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan before condemning the abuse of big business and big labor. He earned a standing ovation from the crowd, many of whom lingered afterward for a chance to shake his hand.

  The next morning, Lyndon boarded a flight for Amarillo with speechwriter Paul Bolton and campaign worker Warren Woodward in tow. The mini campaign crew stopped in San Angelo, Abilene, and Lubbock along the way to call local journalists and local politicians. It wasn’t a particularly warm day, but Lyndon was sweating so profusely Warren called the Johnsons’ home to ask their maid to send more shirts.

  On Tuesday afternoon, May 25, the trio boarded an overnight train bound for Dallas. Sleeping in the bottom berth of an open Pullman car, Lyndon alternated between having bone-rattling chills, during which he’d call for more blankets or for one of his companions to get into the berth to warm him with body heat, and feverish sweats, when he’d have all the car’s windows opened. Delirium eventually set in, but he remained convinced that the stone would pass on its own. The next morning in Dallas, Lyndon dressed and took a car to the Baker Hotel. He met with Stuart Symington and General Robert J. Smith about making Sheppard Air Force Base a permanent installation, but the meeting took all his energy. By the end of the day, Lyndon couldn’t make it down the hallway in his hotel without throwing up. Despondent over the campaigning days he would lose while recovering, he finally had to admit the stone wouldn’t pass on its own. That evening, he consented to go to the hospital.

  The next afternoon, following a last-minute invitation from Stuart Symington, Jackie arrived in Dallas for an Air Force Association luncheon. When she arrived fashionably late for the pre-lunch cocktail hour, she spotted Stuart; he was so tall she could easily pick him out above the crowd.

  “I thought you’d never get here,” he said by way of a greeting as she approached him.

  “I told you I’d be here in time for lunch!”

  “Well now, Jackie, I’ve turned out to be your mailman.” He handed her an envelope. She slipped it into her purse before ducking into the hallway to see what was so secret. “Jackie,” the letter began, written in Stuart’s handwriting. “Lyndon is in hospital. Go to the back of the hospital where you’ll find some steps. Walk up, and on the second floor…you’ll find him. Please don’t announce yourself. Just go and find him. I don’t want you to be recognized.”14 It hadn’t escaped her notice that Lyndon was absent from the luncheon, and now she knew why. She also thought she understood why her invitation to Dallas had been so last-minute: Stuart knew she always traveled in her own plane, and also knew it would be a discreet way to get Lyndon to a specialized clinic.

  Jackie’s first thought was discretion. If she left right now, so soon after her arrival, it might arouse suspicion, and that was the last thing she wanted. So she reentered the hall just as lunch was served. She sat through the whole meal before excusing herself with a headache just as the speeches were beginning. Leaving the hall, Jackie realized for the first time that she was anxious. She hired a car, looked up the hospital address, grabbed a map, and set off. The promised steps at the back of the hospital were some kind of off-limits emergency stairwell, but the door had been left ajar. She pushed her way inside and followed Stuart’s directions to Lyndon’s room.

  “Stuart Symington sent me,” Jackie told Warren Woodward, the campaign aide, as he opened the door to reveal Lady Bird Johnson sitting in a small room. Jackie registered how exhausted they both looked as Warren wordlessly led her through to the connecting room where Lyndon Johnson lay. Jackie was shocked at how pale he was and how bad the room smelled, a mix of stale sweat and vomit. In a flash, Jackie’s long-ago nursing training kicked in. She instinctively reached for his wrist. She felt Lyndon’s pulse fluttering underneath his clammy skin.

  “Either you get proper m
edical aid for this man or he’s going to be dead within twenty-four hours,” Jackie muttered to Lady Bird as she reentered the anteroom. “Listen,” she continued in a whisper, “there’s a doctor up at the Mayo Clinic who has fantastic success with a special new procedure to remove these stones without surgery.” Dr. Gershim had cleared up one of Floyd’s worse kidney stones, and Jackie suspected the same physician might be able to save Lyndon.

  “Lyndon is so stubborn,” Lady Bird replied, visibly frustrated that her husband was willing to risk his health rather than disrupt his Senate race. “Make him do something,” she implored. “Let’s get the Mayo Clinic on the phone.”

  Jackie called Dr. Gershim, who told her he couldn’t get down to Dallas himself. The best option was for her to fly him up to Mayo as soon as possible. Just the thought of transporting a sick friend terrified Jackie.

  “What if he dies en route?” she protested.

  “Jackie, moving him can’t really do that kind of harm,” the doctor told her over the phone. “In fact, the movement might make the stones move, and that could only be good.”

  The doctors in Dallas compiled everything the Rochester, Minnesota, doctors would need to know about the stone’s location—it was between his kidney and bladder—and gave Jackie some painkillers she could administer by injection during the flight. Meanwhile, Jackie figured out the flight plan. She decided to leave after midnight. Flying through the colder air, she could get more power out of her engines, just enough that she wouldn’t have to stop for fuel en route. She had her maid, Ellen, who’d come to Dallas with her, buy pillowcases, big soft bath towels, a large plastic pan, two quarts of rubbing alcohol, and blankets, and load everything into the plane.

  Just before three o’clock in the morning, Jackie returned to the hospital. “Lyndon,” Jackie spoke in a low voice, “you’re going to the Mayo Clinic, Lyndon. We’re taking off now in the middle of the night so no one will see us and no one else will ever know.” He squeezed her hand in reply. Dressed in a bathrobe and dragging his feet with every shuffling step, Lyndon bit through his lip on the short trip from the hospital to Jackie’s Lodestar. Once on board, she settled him into the bed along one side of the fuselage, strapping him in as tightly as she dared and placing an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Ellen took the seat at the table across the aisle while Lady Bird and Warren took seats farther back, where the extra blankets and pillows awaited them. Walking up to the cockpit, Jackie stopped by her patient. “Lyndon, are you okay?” He didn’t reply. Settling into her seat next to her young flight engineer, Steve, she was suddenly acutely aware of the lives in her hands.

  She took off through a low ceiling, and when the first hint of sunlight appeared through the clouds, she felt calm. She engaged the autopilot. Just as she relaxed into the rhythm of the flight, a bloodcurdling scream ripped through the cabin.

  “Watch it, boy,” Jackie told Steve as she jumped from her seat.

  She found Lyndon drenched in sweat. Again her old nursing instinct kicked in as she ripped his clothes off and, with Ellen’s help, swabbed him with a sheet soaked in alcohol, hoping the evaporation would cool him off. Then she brusquely turned him onto his stomach to give him another shot of the painkiller, and he was immediately sick all over her. She grabbed the dishpan and shoved it closer to his face to catch any more vomit, checking that Steve was keeping up with everything in the cockpit. The crisis passed, and she and Ellen swaddled Lyndon in clean blankets and waited as he fell asleep. Glancing toward the back of the plane, Jackie was amazed to see Lady Bird and Warren had slept through the whole episode.

  After the most stressful six hours she’d ever flown, Rochester came into view. She landed to find an ambulance waiting with a crew who took Lyndon straight to the hospital. There, doctors filled his bladder with water and crushed the stones. After seven days under observation, the candidate was cleared to resume his campaign.

  Lyndon won the election with an eighty-seven-vote margin. When a reporter asked “Landslide Lyndon” who had done the most for his campaign, he answered simply, “A woman—not my wife.”

  14Recounting this story in her memoir, Jackie writes that the note read “Lyndon is in XYZ Hospital” and in “room number such and such.” Though she doesn’t give these details, it’s safe to assume Stuart’s actual note contained all the information she needed.

  Chapter 9

  Oklahoma City, Fall 1948

  “No college.”

  Jerrie, now a senior at Classen High, should have been thinking about continuing her education. Instead, she was thinking about flying, and her family didn’t take the news well. Three voices shouted back, demanding to know what she would do without an education, without school dances or a thriving social milieu. The University of Oklahoma was right next door, and Carolyn could give her an introduction to sorority life. But Jerrie wanted none of that.

  “Look,” she began, “you all know that I want to get my commercial pilot’s license…” Three heads nodded in agreement. “And it takes a lot of money…” Three heads nodded again. “Which means that either I’ll have to keep doing a lot of little jobs, or get one big job as soon as I can.” There was no nodding this time, just patient waiting to see what would come next. “Well, it just happens that I’ve been offered a job—one that pays very well. Of course, it means a lot of traveling, with a girls’ softball team. The Sooner Queens.” Women’s softball was a popular spectator sport, but working as an athlete was the last thing Jerrie’s family expected of her.

  “Unthinkable!” Helena cried. “Now I’ve heard everything! First horses, now airplanes, now baseball. Geraldyn,”—Jerrie hated the use of her full given name—“you’re already seventeen. When are you going to stop thinking about hobbies and games and start thinking about your future?”

  “My future!” Now it was Jerrie’s turn to explode. “Mother, I’ve thought about nothing else since I was twelve. All I’ve ever wanted to do was fly. That is my future. The only reason I want to do this is to earn enough money for my commercial pilot’s license.” Then she turned to her father, hoping to find an ally. “Dad…”

  “Now, Jerrie, the field today is overrun with highly trained men back from the war. A girl doesn’t have a chance. Your mother and I don’t want to see you break your heart trying to find a place in aviation that isn’t there.”

  “But, Dad, how will I know until I’ve tried? All I want is a chance!”

  The Cobbs reached a compromise. Jerrie was allowed one year for her chance, one year playing with the Sooner Queens before she would have to go to college.

  Life with the Sooner Queens was anything but glamorous. Jerrie played as first baseman under the hot sun, dressed in a little satin skirt and blouse. The team traveled from town to town in two station wagons loaded with all their gear. As one of the rookies, she was responsible for lining the base paths, raking and rolling the field, and cleaning the clots from spiked shoes. In spite of some missed signals and failed plays, she earned enough money between her salary and bonuses to cover the additional flight time she needed to qualify for her commercial license, which she earned on her eighteenth birthday.

  Unfortunately, Jerrie found that her father was right. When she started looking for work as a pilot, no one was interested in hiring an eighteen-year-old woman. “It’s like this, honey,” one flight operations manager told her. “I’ve got pilots running out of my hangar doors. I can actually choose ’em by the services—ex-Navy, ex-Marines, ex-Coast Guard. These,” he said, picking up a manila folder, “are all the applications for jobs I don’t have. Pilots are a dime a dozen today, and they’ve had thousands of hours in fighters and bombers—not just a few hundred civilian hours like you puddle jumpers. You’d be about forty-sixth on the list if you still want to apply.” It was the same everywhere. Unable to find work flying, she walked like a condemned woman off to the Oklahoma College for Women the following fall, a school she chose because it was close to the Chickasha Municipal Airport.

  To s
tay close to planes, she got a job at the airport as a general flunky and grease monkey. Occasionally she worked with a local crop dusting service, taking a new pilot up for a checkout flight in the company’s open-cockpit Stearman biplanes and even flying the odd job herself, though she needed a hand getting the hundred-pound bag of insecticide into the aerial bin. Still, given the choice between three more years of college and a life of crop dusting, she preferred the latter. She knew it, the college knew it, her parents knew it, and her first year of college became her last.

  Jerrie returned to the Sooner Queens for the summer season. While traveling around in her little satin skirt she found a plane in Denver, a little maroon-and-yellow Fairchild PT-23 trainer the airport manager assured her was in good shape. The color reminded her of her father’s old Taylorcraft, and she absolutely had to have it. The five-hundred-dollar price tag, however, was out of reach for a girl with eleven dollars and change between her purse and bank account. So she put herself into hock to the Sooner Queens: she agreed to play the remainder of the season for the exact sum needed to buy the PT-23.

  The deal turned out to be better for Jerrie than the Sooner Queens. She struck out in the last game of the season, keeping her team from going to finals but clearing her to resign. She bought the PT-23 and flew it to Ponca City, Oklahoma, where her parents were now living. She worked at her father’s Pontiac-Cadillac dealership part-time while flying occasional missions for an oil company, passing low over pipelines sniffing for leaks. It wasn’t much, but the hours built up in her little logbook. She barely made enough to keep the plane fueled, so she worked on maintenance herself. She took apart the instrument panel, much to the delight of the other pilots flying out of her local airport.