Fay Gillis Wells

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Fay Gillis Wells with the plane Winnie Mae

Fay Gillis Wells (born October 15, 1908 in Minneapolis , Minnesota , † December 2, 2002 ) was an American pilot and journalist . She was a founding member of the Ninety Nines female pilots association . In 2003 she was among the top 100 women in aviation .

biography

childhood and education

Helen Fay Gillis was born in Minneapolis on October 15, 1908, the daughter of a mining engineer and foreign correspondent . Her parents took her with them on their visits abroad to over four continents. After graduating from Battin High School in New Jersey in 1925, she first decided to study journalism at Michigan State University . Her fascination with flying, which has existed since childhood, and her great dream of sitting in the cockpit herself , made her leave the university in her first year of study.

First career as a pilot

Wells took her first flying lesson on August 1, 1929 with the small airline Curtiss Flying Service in New York City . During a flight with a biplane in aerobatics class , turbulence arose which forced Wells to disembark, pull the ripcord of her parachute and jump over Long Island , New York. This episode, triggered by the great interest of the media, made her the first woman to join the Caterpillar Club, which was founded in 1922 . Membership is open to all pilots who have saved their lives by parachuting.

One month after her parachute jump, she received her pilot's license on October 5, 1929 , making her one of 117 American women who had a license to fly at that time. Strongly impressed by her great skill in flight lessons, the aircraft manufacturer Glenn Curtiss (1878–1930) hired her as a demonstration pilot for his aircraft models with an open cockpit. She was the first woman ever to be employed in this profession. During this time she made the acquaintance of Amelia Earhart and other female pilots, with whom she later founded the Club of the Ninety-nine ("Ninety-Nines").

The Club of Ninety-Nine is an association of American female pilots with flying licenses. The club was dedicated to promoting camaraderie and the position of women in aviation. Fay's invitation to a first meeting on November 2, 1929 on Long Island was followed by a large number of the 117 pilots who were contacted. In total, ninety-nine of them eventually joined the association, including Wells. The number of first members became the future name of the organization. In a photo taken at that meeting, many of the pilots are wearing dresses and hats or coats with fur collars . Only Wells is dressed in an oil-spattered flying overalls, helmet and goggles because she had recently worked on her plane.

In the following years she was very committed to the association, for example by designing clothes for female pilots and from 1934 as a fashion editor for the organization's magazine, called "Airwoman".

Second career as a journalist

Due to the business of their father, Julius H. Gillis, the family moved to the former Soviet Union in 1930 and stayed there until 1934. Wells was able to gain new experience there. During this time she wrote freelance as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and the Herald Tribune, as well as for a large number of Russian aviation magazines.

In 1932, Wells became the first US woman to fly a Soviet civil aircraft. In the following year the American pilot Wiley Post (1898–1935) asked them to take over the logistics for the Russian part of his solo flight around the world . She took care of landing permits and refueling in Novosibirsk and Irkutsk . Wiley promised her to take part in his next flight, which was to go to the Arctic . During her work as a foreign correspondent, however, Wells met the pilot and journalist Linton Wells, later married him and decided against the Arctic flight. Wiley Post and Will Rogers, who stood in for Wells, later crashed on that flight and were killed.

Fay and Linton Wells spent their honeymoon in Ethiopia to report on the local war against Italy . He was sending reports from the north and Fay Gillis Wells was reporting in the south. So it happened that the couple often made headlines on the front pages of the newspapers at the same time.

Upon her return to the United States, Fay Wells was a Hollywood correspondent, reporting for the White House for 13 years under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson , Richard Nixon , Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter . She traveled to Vietnam with the White House Press Department and was one of three female correspondents chosen to accompany President Nixon on his 1972 trip to China .

Your work for the Ninety-Nines and other aviation projects

With immeasurable courage, enthusiasm and the will to achieve something, she was always an inspiration for others to contribute to the advancement of aviation, no matter how big or small it was.

In 1941, she helped set up the Amelia Earhart Fellowship Fund in memory of the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane. For the 15th anniversary of the Club of the Ninety-Nine, she wrote a book about its history. Her project in 1963 was to approve the Amelia Earhart airmail stamp.

The "International Forest of Friendship" initiated by Fay in 1973 was officially opened on July 24, 1978 next to Lake Warnock in Atchison , Kansas on the birthday of Amelia Earhart . This forest was started in collaboration between the Ninety Nines and the City of Atchison. It is a memorial for women and men in the aerospace industry. Each tree has its own flag and represents an American state or one of the countries from which the honorees come. On a path through the forest there are granite slabs on which the names of more than 1,200 famous people from the aviation industry can be found - among them Amelia Earhart, the Orville brothers and Wilbur Wright .

For the 40th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's solo flight from Honolulu to San Francisco , she planned the Ninety Nines celebrations in 1975. From 1976 to 1991, Fay hosted the annual Ninety Nines meeting in Atchison.

honors and awards

Fay received not only the 99s Award of Inspiration, but also the title of Honorary Citizen for the cities of Atchison and Birmingham. In the people encyclopedia Who’s Who she was included in the categories “America”, “American Women” and “Aviation and Aerospace”. She received the Katherine B. Wright Award - an award in honor of Orville's sister and Wilbur Wright - in 2001. The following year she was the recipient of the Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award. Part of the award is a $ 10,000 scholarship that the award winner was allowed to award to an educational institution of her choice.

In 1995 the asteroid (4820) Fay was named after her.

literature

  • Ernst Probst: Amelia Earhart - The first woman who flew twice across the Atlantic (GRIN Verlag, 2010). ISBN 9783640571437
  • Ernst Probst: Angelika Machinek - A world-class glider pilot (GRIN Verlag, 2010). ISBN 9783640736300
  • Ernst Probst: Queens of the Skies in America (GRIN Verlag, 2010). ISBN 9783640671472
  • Paul French: Through the looking Glass (Hong Kong Univ PR, 2009). ISBN 9789622099821
  • David J. Shayler / Jan Moule: Women in Space - Following Valentina (Springer Verlag, 2005). ISBN 1852337443

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of The Ninety-Nines Association, accessed January 24, 2013
  2. ↑ historical photo, with Fay Gillis Wells, right ( memento from April 24, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 24916

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wells, Fay Gillis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pilot
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 2002