Wally Funk's Race for Space

by Sue Nelson

  Collins, mindful of their history, had invited the surviving female pilots from Lovelace’s Woman in Space programme to watch her become the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle on 3 February 1995. It brought renewed attention to the Mercury 13 as their story, once again, resurfaced in newspapers across the United States. ‘After thirty-four years, the right stuff,’ reported the front page of the 3 February edition of the Arizona Republic via an Associated Press report.

  ‘The sex barrier has been broken,’ declared Ratley.

  ‘Finally!’ said Truhill.

  Inside the paper, Wally was shown lighting the long, thin candles of an enormous Space Shuttle-themed birthday cake belatedly celebrating her birthday with Jessen and Ratley. She had turned fifty-six just two days earlier. The launch must have been a bittersweet present.

  Next to the framed photo, behind the glass, was a small metal brooch.

  ‘That’s my Ninety-Nines pin,’ she said, referring to the international organisation of women pilots. ‘It’s the only bit of me that went into space,’ she said wistfully. ‘It went up with Eileen.’

  Two years after Eileen Collins’s launch, Wally and I met for the first time. It was March 1997 and I was recording interviews for my first BBC radio documentary, Right Stuff Wrong Sex. Computers and email were not in widespread use at the time, so I had tracked down as many of the Mercury 13 women as possible, together with associated interviewees, the old-fashioned way via letters, phone calls and contacts. Several of the women had already died by then. Jerrie Cobb, the first woman to pass the tests, was working and flying in the Amazon performing missionary work. Luckily, four of the women located agreed to be interviewed: Geraldine ‘Jerri’ Truhill (née Sloan), Sarah Ratley (née Gorelick), Irene Leverton and the magnificently named Wally Funk.

  Irene Leverton, the first female crop duster in the US and a competitive racing pilot, was one of the oldest of the Mercury 13. Aged seventy in 1997, by then she had been flying for fifty-three years and continued to fly while working as a consultant for Aviation Resource Management at her local airport. She was often taken to air shows as a child and, like Wally, made model planes. Aged nine, Leverton told anyone who would listen that she was going to be a pilot.

  When the call came for the tests in 1961, Leverton was flying for a company in Los Angeles. They wouldn’t give her the week off. ‘My boss indicated if I went on this trip I was out of a job.’ Leverton went anyway and, sure enough, lost her job. She signed the papers and showed up at the Lovelace clinic. As the chairman of NASA’s Life Sciences Committee for Project Mercury, Dr Lovelace had helped devise America’s first astronaut tests. The physical tests were brutal, putting the astronaut candidates through extreme conditions in order to prepare them for the unknown environment of space. The men who took those tests were all pilots, like the women, and became known the world over as the Mercury 7.

  ‘I was either very naive or very intelligent,’ she said, ‘I can’t figure out which one. There are a couple of things I remember. One was the ice water squirted in the ears. What they were doing was testing our ability to recover from vertigo. And they time you as I’m staring at this bright light. The eyes are shifting back and forth rapidly, and they stop. Then you can focus and the vertigo is over. That hurt.’

  Leverton knew that the Lovelace tests wanted to see if women could meet the same standards as the Mercury 7 astronauts. ‘I felt this was another barrier to push on and there hadn’t been a woman in space yet,’ she said. ‘I was so egotistical, I just felt my physical condition – which was good at the time – would prove to them that women belonged in space. And if one of us could get to go, fine.’

  She confessed to feeling ‘a little angry’ when phase two was cancelled. ‘I thought, so what else is new? I thought, hmmm. Some of the gals must have done too well on this test. I always believed I could do anything. That was like the door opening, the Sun shining in, the door closing, and it got dark and it was over. Of course it was a lost opportunity, but with the ultra-conservatism in the country at the time it’s just amazing that that much got done. Thank God for Dr Lovelace and Cochran’s backing.’ The last comment referred to the woman who broke the sound barrier, Jackie Cochran, who was helping the tests financially.

  As luck would have it, Truhill, Ratley and Wally were all going to be in the same place at the same time, attending a Women in Aviation conference at the Hyatt Regency hotel at Dallas Fort Worth Airport. As a Texan, Truhill was on home turf and so, at her suggestion, we would record her and Ratley’s interview at Truhill’s home nearby. Wally was available in a separate location in the evening. Leverton’s interview had necessitated a separate trip to Arizona, something I could justify while on a limited BBC budget by writing a few freelance print pieces for British newspapers along the way.

  Despite the publicity of their presence at Collins’ launch, the Mercury 13 remained relatively unknown in the late 1990s, and their interviews had a freshness to them. The women spoke clearly, simply, with heart and passion. Proud of their ambitions and flying careers, they were thoughtful about broken promises, indignant about the injustice of it all and, in Truhill’s case, tearful. I’d warmed to Truhill instantly. Feisty and outspoken, she – like all the women – had been ready to perform her patriotic duty and become an astronaut.

  Geraldine ‘Jerri’ Truhill showed me a typewritten and signed letter by W. Randolph Lovelace II, MD, from the Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research in Albuquerque. It was dated 14 September 1960. ‘We have been informed that you may be interested in volunteering for the initial examinations for female astronaut candidates,’ the letter read. ‘These examination procedures take approximately one week and are done on a purely voluntary basis. They do not commit you to any further part in the Woman in Space Program unless you so desire.’

  At the time of her call-up, Truhill was part of several secret government programmes. She was flight testing the first smart bomb and a military infrared system in b25s and b26s, both twin-engine bomber aircraft. When Cobb called her personally to ask if she could get away for a top-secret project, the answer was: ‘Sure.’ Nevertheless, she was surprised by Lovelace’s letter when it mentioned astronaut training. ‘I was flabbergasted. I was taken aback because we weren’t doing very well, mostly blowing up rockets on the launch pad. As far as people going into space, that seemed to me like it would be years away. But I figured if they could launch it, I wanted to fly it, whatever it was. I was hoping maybe it’d be a plane like the x-15 because women weren’t allowed to fly jets at all. b25s and 26s were not to be sneezed at, but I wanted to get into jets if I could. So I volunteered.’

  Truhill gave me a copy of her confirmation letter too, dated 24 March 1961, asking her to come and take the tests nine days later, on 2 April. By then Wally had already taken and passed her tests a few weeks earlier, but Truhill would not have known that. The first time they met was at Collins’ launch over three decades later. Truhill recalled signing papers at a motel in Albuquerque. ‘I absolve the government from any responsibility for my death, being maimed or losing a limb, and there’s my name,’ she said. ‘I must have been out of my mind.’

  Truhill’s father often took her on business flights as a child and she loved being in the cockpit pretending to fly. ‘My daddy said, “Now if you grow up and be a registered nurse then maybe you can be a stewardess, Jerri, for an airline.” I said, “I don’t want to be a stewardess. I want to be a pilot.” I thought daddy was going to faint. He said: “Women don’t fly airplanes” and I said, “I’m going to.” And I did.’

  Truhill was married with young children when the astronaut testing opportunity arose, and her husband, a decorated World War II pilot, despite originally encouraging her to fly, did not want her to take part. ‘We were having some other problems at the time and this rather escalated it.’ Her husband delivered an ultimatum: him or space. Truhill headed off for Albuquerque to take the tests.

  ‘When I came back from the Lovelace F
oundation I was met at the airport by divorce papers. I think we all sacrificed a lot for that programme. It changed our lives, all of us. We all made sacrifices and all we got for our efforts and our patriotism was very bad things said about us. Janey Hart, whose husband was Senator Phil Hart, got hate mail saying, “Why don’t you stay at home with your children?” Ungentlemanly things. A lot of the girls lost jobs. I think I’m the only one that lost a husband.’

  She was also furious about a quote that she’d read in a newspaper, attributed to a NASA official who said he’d rather send a bunch of monkeys into space than women. Truhill believed it was from NASA flight director Chris Kraft. ‘That was one of the kinder things that was said.’

  Sarah Ratley had a degree in mathematics and was an accountant living in Kansas when we met. In the early 1960s, when the Lovelace invitation arrived, she was an electrical engineer for AT&T, had 1,500 flight hours, a commercial license and had worked her way through college as a flight instructor. She, like many of the other Mercury 13, had taken part in the Powder Puff Derby – the colloquial name for the Women’s Air Derby – a race across America for female pilots that began in 1947. Ratley remembered ‘the personnel at Lovelace being extremely affirmative saying, “You can do it. We want you to pass.” There was back up, support, just wanting us to accomplish this, to be in the programme. I wanted more than anything else to pass and be a part of the programme. I was young at the time, and when you’re young you think nothing can defeat you.’

  She described herself as ‘crushed’ when the planned training in Pensacola was cancelled. ‘The explanation I got was they were not quite ready for us,’ Ratley told me. ‘They felt it was more a man’s field. The women were supposed to be in the home and protected and they didn’t want them taking dangerous assignments. It was just the thinking at the time. It was like Camelot. Women were to be protected and stay and home and be more concerned with their families.’

  After our interviews, I asked whether they knew Wally. The conversation halted. It was as if neither of them wanted to utter anything incriminating. Truhill sniffed. ‘I found her a little overbearing.’

  Truhill’s comment took me aback, especially when I found Wally gregarious, animated and quick to laugh. Admittedly, Wally’s energy levels were permanently on overload. Perhaps that was the issue.

  Although in her late fifties then, Wally had a short shock of white hair. From afar she looked much older, but close up her clear skin, illuminated by a permasmile, knocked off at least a decade. There was also something about her I recognised from my own childhood after spending a large part of my youth climbing trees, riding bikes, learning how to throw stones correctly and playing any sport possible. She was a fellow tomboy. But louder. Much louder. And more American.

  Our interview took place later that day at a Dallas Fort Worth airport hotel. She had just given an aviation safety talk at the conference. ‘Is Wally short for anything,’ I asked while switching the microphone on. For a British audience, Wally was not only associated with a man’s name, it was also a comical insult.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Just Wally.’

  And that was that. It took almost twenty years before she told me both her birth name and date of birth: Mary Wallace Funk, 1 February 1939. And that was under duress, because without those details I couldn’t book her a flight. Wally’s route into the Mercury 13 was different to everyone else’s. The idea for women to take the tests was first mooted by Brigadier General Donald Flickinger from the Wright-Patterson Aeromedical Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. His tentative ‘girl astronaut program’ or Program Woman in Space Earliest (WISE) had been scrapped at the end of 1959. He wrote to Lovelace asking him to take it forward. Lovelace agreed, renamed it the Woman in Space Program, and contacted the aviator Jerrie Cobb.

  Cobb, then twenty-eight, had been flying since she was sixteen and was a perfect test subject. Her performance in February 1960 was described as ‘extraordinary’ and ranked in the top 2 per cent of all NASA’s astronaut candidates. Lovelace, chairman of NASA’s Life Sciences Committee for Project Mercury, revealed his ‘secret’ testing of Cobb at the Space and Naval Medicine Congress in Stockholm, Sweden, in August.

  None of America’s first astronauts in waiting, the Mercury 7, had gone into space yet. In fact, no human being had. But seven American men had already shown they could pass the exhaustive tests devised by Lovelace and his colleagues. Could women do the same? Here was one women who most definitely could.

  The media coverage didn’t always match up to Cobb’s achievement or treat it seriously. She was called a ‘Moon maid’, an ‘astronette’ and ‘a number one space gal who seems a little astronaughty’. Some journalists mentioned her 36-27-36 figure. The day after Lovelace’s revelation, the Washington Post reported from Stockholm via Associated Press on 19 August 1960, with a more measured and neutral response. The article was headlined ‘Woman Qualifies for Space Training’ and opened with ‘America’s first woman space pilot candidate is Jerrie Cobb, 28, of Oklahoma City, daughter of an Air Force Colonel and holder of several world records for women flier.’

  To ensure that Cobb wasn’t a one-off, Lovelace wanted other equally qualified women to take the tests and his famous aviator friend, Jackie Cochran, became an advisor. All female astronaut candidates, like the men, had to be experienced pilots so Cobb compiled a list for him. Wally was not on it. Not because she wasn’t a good enough pilot. She was a great pilot. Wally wasn’t on that list because she was too young. The minimum recommended age was twenty-five.

  Instead, in 1960, a twenty-one-year-old Wally read the 29 August edition of Life magazine. In it was the article, ‘A Lady Proves She’s Fit for Space Flight’. It featured twenty-nine-year-old Geraldyn ‘Jerrie’ Cobb, US Aviation’s Woman of the Year in 1959 and an advertising and sales promotion manager of the Aero Design & Engineering Company. Cobb was ‘the first prospective space pilot in a hitherto unannounced 12-woman testing program’.

  Wally read as it explained how Cobb had taken seventy-five tests and ‘complained less than the Mercury men had’. Exclusive Life magazine photographs showed her on a bicycle taking fitness and endurance tests or breathing into a mask to test her pulmonary function. The designated ‘space lady’ was also pictured playing tennis, swimming and kneeling in prayer.

  Cobb’s achievement ignited a flame within Wally that remains alight today. She wanted to take these tests too and go into space. She even recognised the name Dr William Randolph Lovelace II. Her father’s doctor back in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the state where she grew up and where the Lovelace Foundation clinic was located, was also called Lovelace. Wally sent a letter immediately to Jerrie Cobb, but, when she didn’t receive a reply, wrote directly to Lovelace on 5 November 1960 detailing her 600 flying hours, her Bachelor of Science in Education and commercial sea plane, commercial and instructors’ licenses, how she’d won the ‘Ninety-Nine award for the top co-ed pilot of the Nation, two years in succession’ at intercollegiate ‘airmeets’, and her willingness to act as a test subject ‘to become an astronaut’. He replied six days later:

  Dear Miss Funk,

  Thank you for your letter of November, 5.

  Enclosed is a card listing the information we would like to have regarding your background. We would appreciate your preparing a curriculum vitae following this outline. When we have had an opportunity to go over this, we will contact you further.

  Under separate cover I am sending you a brochure which describes the Foundation and Clinic organization here. Sincerely yours,

  W. Randolph Lovelace II, M.D.

  A couple of weeks later, at the end of November, Cobb wrote an apologetic letter on Aero Design & Engineering Co headed notepaper.

  Dear Wally,

  Thanks for your letter of 27 October, and I’m truly sorry for not having answered sooner, but the past three months I have been gone almost continuously on various flying trips.

  I was so glad to hear that you are interested in the research pr
ogram for women in space and you did the right thing by writing to Dr. Randolph Lovelace II in Albuquerque, since he is the one doing this research. There will a group of about twelve women pilots go through the examinations at the Lovelace Foundation within the next few months and I am sure you will be hearing from Dr. Lovelace on this.

  Thanks again for your kind letter and if there’s anything I can help you with please just let me know.

  With best personal regards, I remain cordially yours,

  (Miss) Jerrie Cobb, Manager

  Advertising – Sales Promotion

  Cobb had identified aviators for Lovelace’s privately funded Woman in Space Program via the Ninety-Nines, a national organisation for female pilots founded by – among others – Amelia Earhart. Candidates had to have a college degree, be under 5ft 11 – or they wouldn’t fit inside the Mercury capsule – and have at least 1,500 flying hours (Cobb had 10,000). However, there was one important difference between the men and women when it came to recruitment. The Mercury 7 candidates were also jet pilot graduates from a military test pilot school. As these schools did not yet admit women, this requirement was understandably dropped. It made sense to bend the rules in this case, not least because the Mercury 7 selection process also broke the rules.

  The college degree requirement was considered necessary because becoming an astronaut would involve more than great piloting skills. Astronauts would need to understand engineering too. John Glenn and Scott Carpenter did not have a college degree. Both men were obviously deemed literate enough in science and engineering to make an exception. Glenn, for instance, had been studying engineering at university but left before graduating to join the Marines. The education criteria did, however, exclude one of the best – if not the best – test pilots of that era: Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier.

  The original age specification was, as with the men, for women over the age of twenty-five and under forty. Fortunately, Wally’s experience was impressive enough for Lovelace to take notice. Even if she was four years underage, she had been flying since 1957 and was the only female flight instructor at an Army Ground Forces Air Training School on a US military base – as a civilian at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.