Free Women Aviators by Karen Bush Gibson

Aviation Museum website, www.cradleofaviation.org/history/people/smith.html
    â€œElinor Smith: Born to Fly” on NASA website, www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/elinor-smith.html

EDNA GARDNER WHYTE
Nothing Could Stop Her from Flying

    M ANY EARLY WOMEN PILOTS had to fight to pursue their passion to fly. For some, the battle against discrimination and society’s expectations was just too much to overcome. Others did fight it, every step of the way. Edna Gardner Whyte was one of those women. She was an exhibition flyer, a flight instructor, and a businesswoman in aviation.

    Born on November 3, 1902, Edna had wanted to fly since she was a little girl. Unlike many early women pilots, Edna didn’t have a privileged childhood. She spent her youth on a Minnesota farm, where the only speed she experienced came from riding horses.Later, she would drive a Model T and see firsthand how fast it could go—and she even ended up rolling it over.
    When Edna was seven, her family moved to Seattle, where her father got a job with the railroad. He was killed in a head-on collision within the year. Then her mother became ill from tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitarium. Edna and her brother and sister were split up and sent to live with different relatives. The rest of her childhood was spent moving from home to home.
    When Edna grew up, she became a nurse. While in nurse’s training, she had devoured articles about Katherine and Marjorie Stinson. The sisters were pilots who had been asked by president Woodrow Wilson to train pilots to fly in World War I. One of Edna’s patients offered to take her up in his airplane. She wrote of the experience, “He showed me how to use the stick—nose up, nose down, nose sideways. We were following the roads, dirt and gravel back then, and I thought it was wonderful.”
    Edna found someone who agreed to teach her. She paid $35 per hour, half her monthly salary. When Edna went to test for her license in 1928, she received the highest grade on the written portion of the exam. But when it came time for her flight test, the government inspector refused to test her.
    â€œBut why?” she asked.
    He said, “I’ve never tested a woman, and I don’t know that I want to start now. Women don’t belong in airplanes. That’s a man’s job.”
    Edna told the inspector how hard she had worked. She even cried. He relented, and she earned her license. The next year, when she joined the Navy Nurse Corps, she was stationed at Newport’s naval hospital. In her free time, she flew, winning her first race in 1933. She also began teaching flying to others.
    The Flying Stinsons

    The Stinsons were a flying family of brothers and sisters. Eldest sister Katherine sold her family’s piano to pay for flying lessons and became the fourth American woman to earn a license in 1912. Ironically, she wanted the flying lessons so that she could earn money for a music career. Katherine was very small in size and looked younger than her 21 years when she began performing in air exhibitions in the United States and Europe. She was nicknamed “the Flying Schoolgirl.” Katherine later became the first woman authorized to be an airmail pilot.
    Marjorie Stinson followed in her older sister’s footsteps, becoming the ninth American woman pilot to receive her license two years later. She soon became the only woman in the US Aviation Reserve Corps. Although she also was certified as an airmail carrier, her talents seemed to lie in flight instruction.
    After hearing about Florence Klingensmith doing 68 consecutive loops, Edna decided to try aerobatics. She asked some male pilots how to do a loop.
    â€œWhen you’re up, drive toward the ground and build up speed. Then put your plane back over the top.”
    Edna’s first attempt was memorable. Her engine stalled, plus everything that could come out of the plane did—and landed right on Edna.