After many successes and honors in her chosen field, Shirley came full circle and returned to her home state and the University of Oklahoma. After awarding her an honorary doctorate and then recruiting her as associate dean of the engineering school, it seemed apparent that Shirley’s college had grown in enlightenment.
POWDER PUFF DERBY
The 1929 Women’s Air Derby, nicknamed by Will Rogers the Powder Puff Derby, continued for a few years into the Great Depression. The war years were coming, and the women’s race fell by the wayside. By 1947, postwar aviation was booming, and general aviation airplanes were rolling off the assembly lines. A Florida group of Ninety-Nines was holding an air show and contacted the Los Angeles group, inviting them to fly down for it. Dianna Bixby said, “Let’s make it a race!”
Weather prevented a Santa Monica start, so the two entrants, Carolyn West in an eighty-five-horsepower Ercoupe and Dianna Bixby in her Douglas A-26 Invader, started from Palm Springs. Timing was on the honor system. Carolyn West and her copilot spent the first night at El Paso, stopping early because of sandstorms—shades of the 1929 derby! The second night was at Monroeville, Alabama, then they arrived at the finish in Tampa, Florida, having flown nearly 22 hours at an average 102 miles per hour. Only upon their arrival did the winning pilots learn that their competition had never taken off due to engine trouble. Their cash prize was enough for their fuel.
The Florida women wanted to try it again in 1948, and this time, the race drew six entries. Jacqueline Cochran sponsored the race, which finished at Amelia Earhart Field in Miami, Florida. Mother Earhart, as the women called Amelia’s mother, greeted the winners and congratulated Fran Nolde, who won in her Navion.
Gathering steam, the 1949 race from San Diego to Tallahassee was now called the All-Woman Transcontinental Air Race (AWTAR) though invariably, through the years, it was always the Powder Puff Derby to the public. A dozen airplanes were entered. Rules tightened up with airplanes impounded and inspected and Simplex time stamps employed. Again Jackie Cochran donating the $1,500 purse. They were off and running.
For an added element of humor and camaraderie, costumes and themes appeared. For the fourth derby, in 1950, Dottie Sanders obtained sponsorship from Chicken of the Sea tuna. The two tuna pilots wore matching capeskin jackets and hats shaped like a tuna, with colored tassel tails and ping-pong balls for eyes. Their sponsor was so taken with their costumes and good showing in the race that the two women spent three weeks after the finish making costumed tuna appearances. Costumes and themes proliferated thereafter. Another successful sponsor promotion was for Armstrong Wax. Everybody noticed, and photographed, the airplane that said in big letters across the fuselage, “These women have more exciting things to do than scrub floors!”
Racers habitually stripped anything extraneous off themselves and their airplanes to lighten the load and gain speed any way they legally could. They paid great attention to upper winds, and polished their airplanes until they gleamed. Some thought the obsession with speed might be a little excessive. The 1966 race was the longest ever, from Seattle to Clearwater, Florida—2,876 statute miles—and was to prove that an additional knot or two here and there meant everything. Bernice “B” Steadman and Fran Bera were flying the same model airplane, a Piper Comanche 260, with slightly different equipment, making their individual handicaps ever so slightly different. At the end of 2,876 miles, Steadman’s average speed was 208.71 miles per hour (22.71 above her handicap), and Bera scored 208.54 (22.54 above handicap). After flying clear across the United States, they were that close!
One of the famous tales of the Powder Puff Derby was when Joan Steinberger answered a distress call from a racer who was lost and low on fuel. Steinberger turned around to help, which, needless to say, ruined her good score. Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon comic strip included a girl pilot named Bitsy Beeckman. Caniff picked up Steinberger’s generous act, and she joined Bitsy in the comic strips.
Over the years, Fran Bera became the supreme derbier. Bera won the Powder Puff Derby seven times and placed in many more. Though a fierce and successful competitor, Bera generously helped novice racers and was equally accomplished in the business world of aviation, selling airplanes.
Many of the women who flew the Powder Puff Derby and the more recent Air Race Classic save their money all year for their annual vacation—racing their airplanes. The Air Race Classic includes everyone from ninety-year-olds to college girls. In one Powder Puff Derby, there were actually fifty-five grandmothers racing.
There are other races with not quite the longevity of the Powder Puff Derby and Air Race Classic but offering women pilots the same challenges: to get the most they can out of the airplane, learn from more experienced racers while enjoying their company, experience the beauty of our magnificent country, and understand the ever-changing weather. Possibly the only thing better would be to view it all from a little higher—say, out in space.
The glue forming the bond among women pilots comes from an unknown source. However, its enduring adhesion is obvious. Louise Thaden would call it a spiritual bond. Amelia Earhart would perhaps say it’s “us against the elements.” For Cornelia Fort it would be patriotism. No matter how serious a woman pilot’s purpose might be for flying airplanes, the words Amelia Earhart chose for the title of her book probably say the best reason of all: For the Fun of It.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As a female pilot myself, I was quite taken with the histories of our pioneers. I’m a fanatic for historical accuracy, so I gave myself nearly ten years to research the story thoroughly. It was my great good fortune that some of the 1929 air racers were still living as I researched, and they generously shared their stories, particularly Louise Thaden, Bobbi Trout, and Mary Haizlip. In fact, when I was flying for the Beech Aircraft factory, walking by Mrs. Beech’s office revealed a photo of Louise Thaden, who happened to be an early, dear friend of Walter and Olive Ann Beech.
Since Mrs. Beech was quite sentimental about Walter’s first airplane, the 1929 Travel Air, she also named a much later model the Travel Air. I flew all dozen Beech models in production in the sixties, including the more modern Travel Air, thirty plus years after the 1929 Travel Air flown by the racers.
Another fantastic resource for the book was Oklahoman Will Rogers, a great admirer of women pilots who, in fact, named their race the “Powder Puff Derby” and carried their luggage to Cleveland. The women pilots mourned along with crowds of admirers who ran into the streets crying upon the news of Will’s death flying with Wiley Post in Alaska.
Sky Girls talks about the Ninety-Nines organization the racers developed under the grandstands at the finish of the 1929 Women’s Air Derby. The Ninety-Nines purchased the 1929 Air Race–winning Travel Air in the late eighties, and it’s displayed near their headquarters building in Oklahoma City. The organization remains to this day a thriving organization for female pilots, and it provides professional opportunities to women in aviation.
The Ninety-Nines treasures our ninety-nine original founders and their stories. We are now worldwide. Today women pilots fly everything, even into space exploration. The 1929 Women’s Air Derby story documents our heritage.
Gene Nora Jessen, 2018
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Page Shamburger
Bob Jessen
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
Bonnie Robinson
Judy Hambley
Loretta Gragg
Tony Hulse
Pat Thaden Webb
Bill Thaden
Glenn Buffington
Willis M. Allen Jr. of Allen Airways Flying Museum
Bobbi Trout
Mary Haizlip
Pete Hill Jr.
Verna West
Julie Castiglia
Prof. Richard W. Kamm, St. Louis University
Kansas City Public Library
Ted Nott
Tershia d’Elgin
Star Photo Service of Boise
Jim Cross
> Will Rogers Memorial and Birthplace
The Howard Hughes Corporation
Purdue University Library
Lisa Cotham
PHOTO CREDITS
Allen Airways Flying Museum
The Glenn Buffington Collection
Thaden family collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Glenn Buffington Collection
Will Rogers Memorial Commission
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
Allen Airways Flying Museum
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Stansberky Collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
John Underwood
Allen Airways Flying Museum
The Glenn Buffington Collection
Thaden family collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Howard Hughes Corporation
The Glenn Buffington Collection
Thaden family collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
Thaden family collection
Thaden family collection
Thaden family collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
Thaden family collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Glenn Buffington Collection
Thaden family collection
Allen Airways Flying Museum
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
Allen Airways Flying Museum
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
Thaden family collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
The Glenn Buffington Collection
The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Jean and Margaret Kimball. “Heroines of the Sky.” Books for Libraries Press, 1942.
Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce. Aircraft Year Book. New York, 1929–1930.
Bierman, Brad (publisher and president). Aviation Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1974).
Bird, Nancy. My God, It’s a Woman. Air Facts Press, 1973.
Carter, Joseph H. Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like : The Life and Writings of Will Rogers. Avon Books, 1991.
Douglas, Deborah G. United States Women in Aviation 1940–1985. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978.
Faherty, William Barnaby. “Parks College, Legacy of an Aviation Pioneer,” S. J. Harris and Friedrich, 1990.
“Flying—Aviation: Past, Present and Future,” Flying Magazine 50th Anniversary Issue (September 1977).
Grun, Bernard. The Timetables of History. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.
Hart, Marion Rice. I Fly As I Please. The Vanguard Press, 1953.
Hoehling, Mary. “Thaddeus Lowe America’s One-Man Air Corp.” Julian Messner, Inc., 1958.
Josephy, Alvin M. Jr. The American Heritage History of Flight. American Heritage Publishing Company, 1962.
Kessler, Lauren. The Happy Bottom Riding Club. New York: Random House, 2000.
Ketchum, Richard M. Will Rogers: His Life and Times. American Heritage Publishing Company, 1973.
Lauwicke, Herve. “Heroines of the Sky.” Frederick Muller Ltd., 1960.
Markham, Beryl. West with the Night. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1994.
Moolman, Valerie. Women Aloft. Time-Life Books, Inc., 1981.
Noggle, Anne. A Dance with Death. Texas A&M University Press, 1994.
Oakes, Claudia M. United States Women in Aviation 1930–1939. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
———. United States Women in Aviation through World War I. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978.
Phillips, Edward H. Travel Air: Wings over the Prairie. Flying Books International, 1994.
Sacchi, Louise. Ocean Flying. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979.
Schultz, Barbara Hunter. Pancho. Little Buttes Publishing Company, 1996.
Shamburger, Page and Joe Christy. Command the Horizon. A. S. Barnes and Company, Inc., 1968.
Thaden, Louise. High, Wide and Frightened. Air Facts Inc., 1973.
“Time Capsule/1929,” Time Inc., 1967.
Veca, Donna and Skip Mazzio. Just Plane Crazy. Osborne Publisher, 1987.
NEWSPAPERS CONSULTED
The Abilene Reporter-News
The Arizona Republican
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Columbus Dispatch
The El Paso Herald-Post
The Fort Worth Star Telegram
The Kansas City Star
The Kansas City Times
The Los Angeles Times
The Midland Reporter-Telegram
The Pecos Enterprise and Gusher
The Phoenix Gazette
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The San Bernardino Daily Sun
The Tulsa Tribune
The Wichita Beacon
The Wichita Eagle
READING GROUP GUIDE
1.Sky Girls is about only a short event in history, but its implications are immense. Which part of the story affected you the most and why?
2.Is there a pilot in Sky Girls who resonates more strongly with you than the others? If so, what part of her story or character stood out to you?
3.The women’s flight across America carried the shadow of possible sabotage, and although Louise Thaden denied its existence, it was never proven to be completely above board. Do you believe someone tampered with the planes, and if so, what reasons would he or she have had to do so?
4.The Women’s Air Derby followed closely behind the stock market crash and was at the beginning of America’s Great Depression. The period surrounding the derby was filled with experimentation and glamour, but also fierce sexism. What do you think it must have been like to live in a time filled with such success and triumph and also such darkness?
5.The women pilots were constantly reminded of their feminine place: Powder Puffs, Ladybirds, Sweethearts of the Air, etc. Where else do you see women being taken down a notch in their profession, in history or modern day?
6.At the end of the 1929 air race, the women gathered to form an organization to support each other for jobs flying airplanes. Women pilots today fly everywhere, including in the military, space, and airlines. Nevertheless, of all the pilots flying commercially, less than 6 percent are female. How would you suggest introducing
more girls to career opportunities in aviation?
7.How were you inspired by the women of the 1929 Women’s Air Derby, and how can you carry that onward to incite change in your own life?
A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR
What inspired you to write the fascinating story of the first Women’s Air Derby in Sky Girls?
I’m interested in history, and as an aspiring pilot I was curious about the women who went before. What kind of women would undertake the adventure of climbing into those fragile, undependable airplanes and race across the country?
It was surprising to see a story featuring Amelia Earhart where she’s not the only pilot! The other women had just as many, if not more, accomplishments. Why do you think they aren’t written down in the history books as frequently?
Amelia Earhart had a very wealthy husband, a publisher and public relations expert. He was able to provide her with the airplanes she wanted (and attendant costs), and he was married to a popular and famous woman—each benefitted. Then the mystery of her disappearance perpetuated interest in her. There are continuing Earhart “search” excursions—annually visiting the areas where she had been “sighted.” Of the unending theories, my favorite is that she’s living in New Jersey under an assumed name. Her sister thought she’s in the trench, the deepest part of the ocean. I’d go with that one.
While researching the book, you became friends with some of the original racers; additionally, as a woman pilot yourself you must have felt a special connection to their passion. Did this relationship to the subject matter make it easier or harder to write the book?
Easier, of course. They were an inspiration!
When and why did you get involved in flying, and does it remain an important part of your life?
My older brother heard about the Civil Air Patrol and told me about it. They had a youth program so I joined in 1954. My family didn’t have a car, so on Saturdays I’d catch a ride to PalWaukee Airport in Chicago and get an airplane ride with a senior member who gave me “stick time.” One day he told me, “You’re a natural.” As a flight instructor, I know that you say things to encourage a student, but I believed that and he planted the seed that perhaps one day I could be a pilot. Some ten years later, while I was flying for the Beech factory and on a trip, I stopped in Chicago and gave that man an airplane ride. We both got a kick out of that. Over sixty years later, I still fly.
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