The Santa Maria Valley Chapter of the Ninety-Nines, an all-female flying group, broke ground on the project last August, with the goal of creating a memorial that honors the achievements and contributions of women in aviation.
The memorial celebration coincided with the Southwest Section meeting of the Ninety-Nines and drew more than 100 women from California, Arizona and Nevada.
A 28-foot-wide wall mural depicting the accomplishments of women pilots throughout history was designed by chapter vice chair Sunni Gibbons, who wanted the garden to highlight a century of female aviators. The memorial is located near the Santa Maria Museum of Flight, at 3015 Airpark Drive.
The late Wilma Poage, a local Ninety-Nine and director of the Museum of Flight who died in 2009 from breast cancer, broached the idea for a memorial to Gibbons, who started working on the design of the mural in January.
“This museum is committed to honoring military Veterans and the history of Allan Hancock Field, which was a very significant part of World War II, because a lot of military training took place here,” Gibbons said. “Poage noticed there weren’t many places where women were honored, and for me it’s been a labor of love to see that vision come to fruition.”
Gibbons initially planned to hand-paint the mural, but because of its size she opted for computer layouts of the photographic images of historic women she collected. Signs of Success, a Santa Maria company, converted those files into the mural designs.
The memorial honors “The Pioneers,” which includes Blanche Stuart Scott, the first American woman to solo in a fixed wing, heavier-than-air plane in 1910; “The Record Setters” of the 1920s and ’30s, including most notably Amelia Earhart, who were the first to be accepted on their own merits as pilots; “The National Heroines” of the 1940s, also known as the Woman Air Force Service Pilots (WASP), who during World War II flew as test pilots, towed targets, and flew cargo, top-secret weapons and personnel stateside; “The Risk Takers” who were among the first women to wow people in air shows and aerobatic competitions; “The Warriors,” who served in the U.S. Navy and the Air Force, even when women were barred from combat missions; “the Standard Bearers,” who comprised the first commercial airline pilots; and “The Explorers,” who consisted of the first women female astronauts, including scientists Dr. Sally K. Ride, the first American female astronaut to fly in space.
“Joining the Ninety-Nines made me aware of the extraordinary and talented women that paved the way for women aviators,” said pilot Lynn Meadows, who got her pilot’s license in February 1978.
Started in 1929, the Ninety-Nines – so called because of 117 licensed pilots contacted about joining the organization, 99 responded – includes as its members novice pilots to airline pilots to astronauts. What they all share is a love of flying.
Meadows, 66, discovered small planes when she was 34. She joined a flight training school and was the only woman among 25 students in her class. Her only goal was to fly for the fun of it, and that passion continues to the present.
“My instructor, a World War II pilot, urged me to take a pinch-hitter course in case my husband had a heart attack when he was flying,” she recalled. “I guess if I was a shrinking violet, I would have walked out the door. But as a pretty Type-A person, there was no talking me out of it.”
Fran Bera’s love affair with flying began at the age of 12, when her brother-in-law, who was then a pilot, took her on a cruise in his car and pulled back on the steering wheel to simulate a plane in take-off. “I guess that planted the seed,” she said. “I wanted that thing to fly.”
Bera started flying in December 1940 at Grand Rapids, Mich., while attending high school in the small town of Lake Odessa. She skipped school and hitchhiked her way to a nearby airport for flying lessons. Her parents learned of her exploits when she had to get their written permission to fly solo. Back then, it cost $80 to do so, but her parents didn’t need to check their finances because she had been saving her lunch money since the age of 12 to cover the expense.
To her friends in the Mission Bay Ninety-Nine chapter, Bera is a trailblazing matriarch, and her record explains why: She holds an Airline Transport Pilot License, is rated in single- and multi-engine land aircraft, single engine sea, helicopter, hot air balloon and is CE-500 type rated. She was one of the first women in the 1940s to become a Federal Aviation Agency Pilot Examiner. As a flying instructor, she has licensed more than 3,000 pilots and has more than 24,000 hours of air time under her belt. She set the altitude record in 1966 for flying at 41,000 feet, which is higher than the peak altitudes of most commercial airliners.
At the age of 87, she is still active in the skies (these days in a Piper Comanche) and has no immediate plans of crawling out of the cockpit for good. Although women pilots were regarded with suspicion during Bera’s early aviation years, she never thought she faced barriers. “I was too stupid to realize I wasn’t liberated,” she joked. “I became a chief pilot over nine male instructors and was hired over men many times because I had all the ratings and experience.” Bera said her goal of joining the Ninety-Nines was to inspire other women to fly.
“This girl here is now a captain on the airlines,” Bera said, pointing to Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet Captain Dorothy Norkus. “When I was young, they would hire a man with two heads before they hired a woman.”
“She’s been a mentor for so many of us,” said Norkus, who became a pilot after ditching her less ambitious plans of becoming an airline stewardess. “It’s time for the rest of us to pick up the slack.”
“For all the generations,” she added, “it was the women before them that enabled them to get where they are today.” jfoster@syvjournal.com