Walking on Air

by Janann Sherman

  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.

  82. Washington Daily News, 1 January 1935.

  83. The National Air Races were held in Los Angeles 4–7 September 1936. Cleveland, the traditional site of the Air Races, was undergoing an airport expansion.

  84. Don Dwiggins, They Flew the Bendix Race: The History of the Competition for the Bendix Trophy (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1985), 60.

  85. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 109.

  86. When Phoebe was home in June, they planned the fishing trip to begin with his arrival in Washington on August 11. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 7 August 1936; New York Times, 7 August 1936.

  87. She wrote him again a month later to say that she had learned that the City of Memphis could request her “services in an advisory capacity on their airport work from September first until after the election” and thereby avoid her having to resign. Crump declined, saying he couldn’t “figure out anything for you.” She resigned September 15. Letters, Phoebe Omlie to E. H. Crump, 27 May 1936 and 1 July 1936; E. H. Crump to Phoebe Omlie, 8 July 1936, Crump Papers.

  88. Letters to and from Molly Dewson in 1936 indicate that in the event of a reorganization in the new FDR administration and/or the expected resignation of Eugene Vidal, Phoebe should be considered for assistant secretary of commerce (the position she had tried to secure in 1933). Letters and memos in Democratic National Committee, Women’s Division, folder 151, Correspondence TN Omlie 1936–1937, FDRL.

  89. “How and Why,” Omlie Collection.

  Chapter 6

  1. New York Times, 7 August 1936.

  2. Story here recapped from numerous newspaper articles published after the crash, including those in the New York Times, Washington Daily News, Time (17 August 1936), Commercial Appeal, Memphis Press-Scimitar, Syracuse (NY) Herald, and the Edwardsville (IL) Intelligencer.

  3. Phoebe filed a death claim against Chicago & Southern Air Lines that was settled for $5,000 a year later. Commercial Appeal, 15 July 1937.

  4. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 6 August 1936; Commercial Appeal, 7 August 1936.

  5. Foreword, The Omlie Story.

  6. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 7 August 1936.

  7. Longtime friend and associate, W. Percy McDonald donated a portion of his family’s plot to the Omlies; Phoebe was later buried beside her husband in another McDonald plot. Crawford McDonald, interview with author, October 2006, Memphis.

  8. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 10 August 1936; Commercial Appeal, 10 August 1936.

  9. Dedication and Foreword, The Omlie Story.

  10. John Faulkner had obtained his pilot’s license shortly after his brothers Dean and Bill, though he did not join the Flying Faulkners. As manager of Mid-South Airways, he continued to offer flying lessons, charter work, and run the agency for Waco airplanes until his brother Bill bought a farm called Greenfield in 1938 and wanted John to run it for him. John Faulkner, My Brother Bill: An Affectionate Reminiscence (London: Trident Press, 1963), 176; see also Boltner, Faulkner, 353, 392. Copy of stock certificate, issued to Maud Falkner, 15 September 1936, Omlie Collection. After Faulkner left, Harry T. Wilson, who had worked for Omlie for many years, took over management of the company. See Lydia Spencer and Cathy Marcinko, “Father of Mid-South Aviation” Old Shelby County Magazine, No. 32, 2001, 5.

  11. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Louise Thaden, 12 August 1974, Omlie Collection.

  12. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 117.

  13. Ibid., 119–121.

  14. Washington Post, 1 September 1936.

  15. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to George Lewis, 26 August 1936, Personnel File, Omlie Collection.

  16. Letter, J. F. Victory to Phoebe Omlie, 28 August 1936, Personnel File, Omlie Collection.

  17. Because of her unfamiliarity with the program, Blanche confronted some serious problems working with the WPA. In early 1937, Phoebe was obliged to return to Washington to try to save the program. She later convinced President Roosevelt to support legislation to make air marking a permanent part of the CAA. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Louise Thaden, 31 August 1974, Omlie Collection.

  18. By the end of the war, only about 3,500 of the original markers remained and Noyes’s postwar responsibility (she was now employed by the CAA) was to raise money to reconstruct the markings. However, with the advent of technological developments like radio navigational beacons, air marking became much less important and eventually evolved into airport marking, painting large numbers and letters on runways. Noyes remained with the program until she retired as chief of air marking in 1972. Today, Ninety-Nines continue the tradition of airport marking. Jefferson City (Missouri) Daily Capitol News, 30 July 1938; Jenny T. Beatty and Ellen Nobles-Harris, “99s Then and Now: Airmarking,” International Women Pilots Magazine, May/June 2003, 6.

  19. Phoebe and Stella were close personal friends. In an article discussing the lack of domestic skills of both women—“Mrs. Omlie pays virtually no attention to her home” and “Miss Aiken [sic] admits that she can’t boil water”—they discussed frequently dining together. Emma Perley Lincoln, Washington Post, 24 August 1935.

  20. Susan Ware, Partner and I: Molly Dewson, Feminism and New Deal Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 307.

  21. “Taking to the Air,” Democratic Digest, December 1936, 17; Memphis Press-Scimitar, 2 November 1936; New York Times, 5 September 1936.

  22. St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3 October 1936.

  23. “Taking to the Air,” Democratic Digest, December 1936, 17.

  24. St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3 October 1936.

  25. Phoebe Omlie report to Max Cook, “Aviation Training Prospectus,” Omlie Collection.

  26. This ensured Blanche Noyes a permanent position in the CAA; the agreement also led to the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program modeled on the Tennessee example. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to H. Glenn Buffington, 16 October 1973; letter, Phoebe Omlie to Louise Thaden, 31 August 1974, Omlie Collection. A similar letter is referenced in Ann L. Cooper, How High She Flies (Arlington Heights, IL: Aviatrix Publishing, 1999), 67.

  27. Exchange of letters between Molly Dewson and J. M. Johnson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, 17 December 1936 to 23 December 1936 respectively, Democratic Nation
al Committee-Women’s Division, Correspondence, Tennessee, Omlie, Mrs. Phoebe, 1936–1937, Box 151, FDRL.

  28. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Molly Dewson, 23 December 1936, FDRL.

  29. Letter, Phoebe Omlie to Molly Dewson, 31 December 1936, FDRL.

  30. Letter, Molly Dewson to Eleanor Roosevelt, 14 January 1937, FDRL.

  31. Telegram and follow-up note in FDRL.

  32. Letter, Molly Dewson to Eleanor Roosevelt, 7 April 1937, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Section 213, FDRL.

  33. Letter, Eleanor Roosevelt to Molly Dewson, 21 April 1937, Eleanor Roosevelt, White House Correspondence, Box 1537–1539, FDRL.

  34. Photo of Amelia and Phoebe in Miami before her last flight published in the Memphis Press-Scimitar, 11 June 1937; copy of the photo in the Omlie Collection. See Carol Ankney article in Sturgis (Michigan) Daily Journal, 2 July 1970; see also letters to Glenn Buffington, 28 December 1974, and to Louise Thaden, 31 August 1974, in which she describes her visit with Amelia in Karl Voelters’s hangar at Miami and the photograph taken at the time, Omlie Collection. Phoebe also describes this meeting in a letter to Mardo Crane, 28 March 1974, Omlie file, Ninety-Nines Museum.

  35. Tennessee General Assembly, House Bill No. 1709, Chapter No. 305, Public Acts, 1937, 1190–1203.

  36. Facts on Aviation for the Future Flyers of Tennessee, booklet published by the Tennessee Bureau of Aeronautics, 1941; Curriculum for Memphis City Schools ground school, 1938; Exhibit “B,” Personnel File, Omlie Collection.

  37. The cost of learning to fly in 1938 as revealed in Phoebe Omlie’s report: 15 hours of dual instruction at $7 per hour and 35 hours of solo guidance at $5 per hour. Total cost: $280.

  38. Nashville Tennessean, 11 December 1938.

  39. Roosevelt Letter to the National Aviation Forum, 24 January 1939, available at The American Presidency Project, www.Presidency.ucsb.edu.

  40. Dominick A. Pisano, To Fill the Skies with Pilots: The Civilian Pilot Training Program, 1939–1946 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 58–59.