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Meet Wally Funk, the 82-Year-Old Woman Joining Jeff Bezos in Space: 'No One Has Waited Longer'
If you've been living in a cave, that's Wallace "Wally" Funk posing next to a NASA S-3B Viking at the Glenn Research Center adjacent to Cleveland Hopkins airport. NASA retired the aircraft last week. Wally says she's not retiring and I believe her. Wally Funk finally made it into space, unlike Jerrie Cobb, Jacqueline Cochran and a whole host of worthy 20th Century female aviators who were overlooked simply because they were women.
Decades ago aviation was a notoriously masculine career; they call it a cockpit for a reason. And perhaps because of that, it attracted the most atypically unique women to the Ninety-Nines female flying club. Any male who dared cross one up did it at his own peril. I had the good fortune (or misfortune) to have gotten my instrument flight training way back when from a famous aviatrix in Southern California named Fran Bera. At the time she was in her sixties and stood around 4' 10"-- plus or minus. She strutted around the tarmac with supreme confidence as-if she had a package hanging between her legs. My youth and foot-and-a-half height advantage was of little psychological benefit to me as her flight student.
One day I was flying "under-the-hood" with Fran in my father's Cessna 310 light-twin. I recall we were practicing over the ocean near Catalina Island when, in an entry turn into a holding pattern, out of the corner of my eye I caught the unmistakably colorful sunburst fuselage of an Air Cal Boeing 737-300 flying a couple thousand feet above us. They say one peek out of a hood was worth a dozen instrument panel scans and I wasn't at all sure that Fran could see over the top of the instrument panel, even in her booster seat. So I warned her of the airline jet. Seconds later I felt a tap on the top of my head and a stern female voice: "You stick to flying. I'll watch-out for traffic!"
A couple months later I took my instrument checkride down at the Long Beach FAA with an equally gruff and intimidating male examiner known as "Fail 'em" Frank Porter. Of course I passed with flying colors.
When I raced back to tell Fran, she grunted "good" as-if I had just eliminated a successful bowel movement. She and untold number of her aviation sorority are now gone. They'll be missed.
Fran Bera - Wikipedia
If you've been living in a cave, that's Wallace "Wally" Funk posing next to a NASA S-3B Viking at the Glenn Research Center adjacent to Cleveland Hopkins airport. NASA retired the aircraft last week. Wally says she's not retiring and I believe her. Wally Funk finally made it into space, unlike Jerrie Cobb, Jacqueline Cochran and a whole host of worthy 20th Century female aviators who were overlooked simply because they were women.
Decades ago aviation was a notoriously masculine career; they call it a cockpit for a reason. And perhaps because of that, it attracted the most atypically unique women to the Ninety-Nines female flying club. Any male who dared cross one up did it at his own peril. I had the good fortune (or misfortune) to have gotten my instrument flight training way back when from a famous aviatrix in Southern California named Fran Bera. At the time she was in her sixties and stood around 4' 10"-- plus or minus. She strutted around the tarmac with supreme confidence as-if she had a package hanging between her legs. My youth and foot-and-a-half height advantage was of little psychological benefit to me as her flight student.
One day I was flying "under-the-hood" with Fran in my father's Cessna 310 light-twin. I recall we were practicing over the ocean near Catalina Island when, in an entry turn into a holding pattern, out of the corner of my eye I caught the unmistakably colorful sunburst fuselage of an Air Cal Boeing 737-300 flying a couple thousand feet above us. They say one peek out of a hood was worth a dozen instrument panel scans and I wasn't at all sure that Fran could see over the top of the instrument panel, even in her booster seat. So I warned her of the airline jet. Seconds later I felt a tap on the top of my head and a stern female voice: "You stick to flying. I'll watch-out for traffic!"
A couple months later I took my instrument checkride down at the Long Beach FAA with an equally gruff and intimidating male examiner known as "Fail 'em" Frank Porter. Of course I passed with flying colors.
When I raced back to tell Fran, she grunted "good" as-if I had just eliminated a successful bowel movement. She and untold number of her aviation sorority are now gone. They'll be missed.Fran Bera - Wikipedia
