Jerrie
Cobb, Solo Pilot
Introduction
By Dena
Hall, Editor
This is a true love story. A story of a woman and the world into which she quite literally plunges, a world that swirls around her and beneath her, that loves her, ignores her, breaks her heart, and honors her.
Overlook the pigtails, they will be pulled back into a blond ponytail. Forget the slight stature, she will grow tall. Ignore the lisp, the shyness, she will learn to hide them. Jerrie Cobb becomes a woman and falls in love as a woman falls in love when she climbs into the open cockpit of a 1936 Waco bi-wing airplane. She leaves the planet Earth for the first time and, in a way, forever, never looking back. She is twelve years old.
Determined to devote her life to the sky, Jerrie enters the male domain of aviation by working at small country airports, where she learns the basics of flight and mechanics. She spends the summer of her sixteenth year barnstorming across the Great Plains in a circus Cub. At nineteen she's teaching men to fly. By twenty-one, she's delivering military bombers and fighters around the world, well on her way to becoming one of the world's top pilots.
Never one to go slow, Jerrie falls head-over-heels in love with another pilot, and their romance covers the world.
In her twenties Jerrie sets new world aviation records for speed, distance, and absolute altitude. She is honored by the government of France. Her fellow airmen name her Pilot Of The Year, and award her the Amelia Earhart Gold Medal Of Achievement. She is one of nine women selected by Life Magazine as the "100 most important young people in the United States."
In the infancy of the space age as America begins selecting her first astronauts, Jerrie is chosen as the first woman to undergo astronaut testing, in 1959. Passing the tests with flying colors, Jerrie trains to become the first woman to fly in space.
Promising her an early space flight, NASA appoints her a consultant to the space program, but keeps her grounded for three years when politics enters the space race.
In 1963 a Congressional hearing is called for Jerrie to testify about women astronauts. When space hero John Glenn testifies at the hearing that "men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes," and women are not astronauts because of our social order, she finds it unbelievable. A few months later, Russia astounds the world be sending the first woman into space.
Believing that there is much more to life, Jerrie turns her back on fame and fortune when she is thirty-two. Her spiritual adventure leads her to the Amazon jungle of South America where she delights in the challenge of flying over the enormous uncharted jungle, serving the primitive indigenous people.
Fame follows Jerrie as she is honored by South American governments for pioneering new air routes across the Andes and in the Amazon jungle. President Nixon awards her the Harmon Trophy as the top woman pilot in the world. For her humanitarian work in the Amazon jungle, she is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jerrie finds contentment living in the isolation of the jungle, and happiness as she brings seeds, help, and hope to her rain forest friends, while flying in spectacular jungle skies..
This fast-moving dramatic story of one woman's love is told with sensitivity and passion. It is a story of dreams and reality, the constant contrast of the naïve child, the innocence, really, with the reality of a perilous life of high adventure in fields dominated by men and politics. In the end, shy Jerrie is the real "winner" in life.
For more information contact:
Ruth Lummis, Director
Jerrie Cobb Foundation Inc.
19834 Lions Gate Ct.
Humble, TX 77338The book "Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot" is available
from the foundation ( $23.00 paperback )E-mail: JCF12JC@aol.com
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