Aviatrix Classics Intro

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Welcome to the new ‘Literary Aviatrix Classics’ series, where I discuss books written by and about our aviatrix pioneers with my venerable co-hosts, Dr. Jacque Boyd and Captain Jenny Beatty. In this interview, we get to know Jacque and Jenny, and we announce the subject of our first ‘Classics’ discussion.

Dr. Jacque Boyd is an educator and a general aviation pilot. She has a B.A. in Education, Psychology, and Special Education. In 1979 she was awarded the Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarship from the Ninety-Nines for her M.Ed. in Aerospace Education. She also holds a PhD in Curriculum Development and Supervision. Her dissertation was a study of math and science education.

Jacque’s writing expertise covers several magazine columns, including the Current Issues and Tools for Schools column for Aviation for Women. She also writes extensively for The Ninety-Nines Magazine with the latest contribution being book reviews. She currently does book reviews for several publications and has experienced the fun of ghostwriting.

Jacque is a self-admitted book-a-holic with well over 1000 volumes. The majority of the books are aviation-related and most about women’s flight. She also has all her grandfather’s education books from when he was a teacher in Kentucky in the late 1800s.

Captain Jenny Beatty is a longtime airline pilot, author, and advocate for women and others underrepresented in aviation.

Jenny’s interest in aviation’s early days stems from being in one of the few families to have three generations of women pilots. Both of her maternal grandparents learned to fly in 1930, and their daughter, Jenny’s mother, earned her pilot’s license in 1945. Following them into the air in 1981, Jenny became a flight instructor, airline pilot, check airman, and flight operations manager, and is rated to fly the B737, B747, B777, B787, DC-9, seaplanes, and gliders. In this portrait, Jenny is wearing her grandmother’s flying jacket.

To join the Literary Aviatrix Classics conversation, Jenny draws from her collection of over 350 books and magazines by and about women and other underrepresented pilots all over the world, including rare early first editions. She is a popular writer and public speaker on historical and contemporary pilot career topics.

Read Jenny’s articles and resources at www.JennyBeatty.com

Transcript:

LA_Aviation Classics_EP1_AUDIO_May 2024

[00:00:00] Liz: Hello and welcome. I’m Liz Booker, Literary Aviatrix, and I’m excited to launch a new series I’m calling Aviatrix Classics with a couple of amazing guest hosts who we’ll get to know today.

Fewer than 10 percent of pilots and aircraft mechanics are women. These are their stories of tenacity, adventure, and courage.

Stories with the power to inspire, heal, and connect. Welcome to the Literary Aviatrix community, where we leverage the power of story to build and celebrate our community and inspire the next generation of aviation.

Jacque Boyd and Jenny Beatty, welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for hosting us.

Oh, my gosh. This has been in the works for a little while, and I’m so excited to finally get it rolling. Today is our opportunity to get to know you two as our co hosts for this new project of the Aviatrix Classics books that we’re going to go through here.

We have a long list an endless probably list of books that will keep us busy for a long time if we continue to pursue it. And I’m excited about that. Before we get into a deep dive into your histories and your careers, let’s just give people the top level so they know who we’re talking to.

So Jacque Boyd, could you introduce yourself?

[00:01:30] Jacque: I’m an educator. and a pilot. General aviation background. I’ve done a lot of writing through the years. I am on the Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarship Fund with the 99s, which is a circuitous story in itself. Retired. I live in Angel Fire, New Mexico.

[00:01:57] Liz: Wonderful. And Jenny, how about you?

[00:02:01] Jenny: Yes, I’m an airline captain, and being a pilot has been my only career going on 40 years as a pilot altogether. And I’ve been a very long time advocate for women, writing about women pilots, promoting careers to women pilots. And advocating for women in a multitude of ways.

So that’s, and I live in Madison, Wisconsin.

[00:02:27] Liz: Awesome. Welcome to both of you. I am so excited to be able to talk to you and to get to know you better. Let’s start with the beginning. So Jenny, how did you get into aviation as a child or whenever that happened for you?

[00:02:42] Jenny: It’s a bit of a long story but I grew up with stories about my grandparents flying and they learned to fly it in 1930 and my mother learned to fly in 1945.

So I grew up with those stories, although no one was actively flying when I was growing up. So I was intrigued and interested and I was deterred or delayed is a better word by a high school career counselor who told me I couldn’t do it because I’m too short and wear glasses. So it. That slowed me down for a couple years but then I took a discovery flight and that was it.

I was hooked and took lessons and here I am. I just knew I needed to fly for a living. I loved flying and that’s what I wanted to do. I did not have my sights on being an airline pilot. I did not think that was possible for me and I didn’t dare to dream or hope for it. It just seemed completely out of reach because when I learned to fly, I didn’t know about women airline pilots. Later when I did hear about a couple of them, there were just so few, there was just a handful and I just didn’t know how they got there and just didn’t picture myself getting there. So I flew in general aviation as a flight instructor.

I flew for aerial photography. I flew bank checks, light charter, I flew cadavers and then passenger charter and did that for a number of years until finally some wise people kept mentoring me and I finally did decide to try for airline job. And I finally did get an airline job in 1991, only after I had achieved my ATP on my own, which was very unusual at that time.

Most pilots did not it certainly wasn’t required at that time. And also many pilots didn’t bother getting the ATP until they upgraded to captain at an airline at the time. That was the only position that required that certificate, but I got it on my own, in 1988, when only 1.8 of ATPs were women and I got my, it still took me three more years to get the job in 1991.

And then that is a whole story in itself. This I’m with my fourth airline so I have an. I say I have a uniform collection going but I’ve been with my company now for 25 years.

[00:05:08] Liz: That’s incredible. Before we get to Jacque though, you mentioned these parents and grandparents who flew. I’m so curious.

Tell us just a little bit more about them.

[00:05:17] Jenny: So my grandfather and grandmother lived in Yakima, Washington. They were very progressive minded as far as very modern in for their times. They had a small family. They had a son at the time who was 10 and my mother was 2. And they and my grandmother was 45 years old, but they in 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Now, he did it for a prize and the prize didn’t specify that you had to fly solo. There were other attempts with crude aircraft that didn’t make it. And then he made it, but he did it by himself. And he became, it’s a celebrity around the world. It’s really difficult for people now to realize what an impact that flight had all over the world.

People were captivated by him and by this accomplishment. And it prompted this huge surge of interest in aviation, including my grandparents. And so they were set to do it. They got together with some other business people in their town. They ordered a brand new airplane. They hired a guy to bring it to Yakima, Washington, and they hired this pilot to they formed a company.

My grandmother was elected president of this ‘airline’. And they had a Curtis Cardinal, which was a cabin airplane. So that was a big deal because it was an enclosed cabin. And a bigger engine than some of the aircraft around at that time. Anyway, and then instructor, that pilot taught them all to fly.

And first my grandfather and then my grandmother. And then later my grandmother owned that airplane outright. It was hers. And I have the propeller from it. I don’t have it here in this room right now. Yeah, so I grew up with a lot of stories about her and my grandparents and some of her escapades.

But I do like to point out she was 45 years old, she was a housewife, and the mother of small children. So that’s why, for example, she didn’t go into the WASP and so on. But she and my grandfather flew around together for a long time.

[00:07:37] Liz: That’s an incredible story. And what a great role model for a little girl to know what’s possible for her.

That’s incredible.

[00:07:45] Jenny: Absolutely. And my mother as well.

[00:07:48] Liz: Yeah. Jacque, what brought you to aviation? Oh, I,

[00:07:51] Jacque: I have three older brothers who were always charged with babysitting. And we use that term loosely. And so some of the things that I experienced as the little sister being babysat by brothers, they would put me on the middle bar of the bicycle and we’d go out to the airport and watched airplanes.

And my, my mother was an educator, my grandfather was an educator, all my aunts and uncles were. And quite frankly, my parents were more concerned about putting a roof over our heads and food on the table. No one ever talked about what you could do or what you couldn’t do. There were expectations for us, but it was a very different environment.

And my oldest brother always wanted to fly. The next brother did too, and I would have to buy a ticket to go into their bedroom to look at all the airplane models that hung from the ceiling and surprisingly enough, the ticket always cost what my allowance was for that week, so it was just something that was there, but nobody talked a lot about it.

I got my bachelor’s degree and my oldest brother had just gotten his flight instructor’s rating and gave me a book for college graduation that was called How to Pilot Your Own Airplane. And I thought I could do this and, there was a bit of a situation that caused some rebellion and I remember telling my mom that if she didn’t see me at school I would be at the airport and so I learned to fly in Grand Island, Nebraska Got all my ratings, did all the wonderful things to build time, and I know Jenny can identify with some of this.

I flew checks at night. I flew blood.

[00:10:27] Liz: Jenny mentioned that, too, that she flew checks. I think that all of the older ladies know what that’s about, but what was that, Jacque? What does that mean?

[00:10:40] Jacque: It was they, you wrote your checks, you took it to the bank, they put it together, And canceled it, and then you had to fly it to a regional bank for cancellation.

And so there was probably a four or five day process with getting a check through the bank. And it was flown by us little people who were building time. And I’d fly checks at night. And then I go and I teach. And so it was one of those situations where I had to evaluate just where I was going to go with my flying.

Nebraska was extremely active with NASA in aerospace education. Every summer I took aerospace education workshops, we would, the National Guard would fly us to Houston, to Johnson Space Center in C 130s. It was an extremely different environment. And so all my teaching centered around aerospace education.

And I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to go the route of the airlines, and it was, the hiring situation was very interesting. A lot of affirmative action, some things I agreed with, some things I didn’t. And so I took a sharp left turn and went into aerospace education and worked for NASA during the summers, and I applied for an Amelia Earhart scholarship from the 99s for my master’s degree in aerospace education.

And there was only one place in the United States that offered that. And it was Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. So I picked up, loaded everything in my little Honda Civic, and moved to Murfreesboro. And was there for a year. And lots of interesting things happened. And I met a short little American Airlines pilot.

And that kind of changed the trajectory of my life as did budget cuts. I lost my position with NASA. I was going to finish up at Oklahoma State. That’s where the NASA education department was housed. And I had a fellowship for my PhD and that dried up. So I moved to Texas. And everything, all my teaching has always had aviation and aerospace at its base.

And so when I got my Ph. D., my dissertation is in science and math around teachers who took an aerospace education workshop, and did they actually use it in their classrooms? So that’s been my background forever as an educator.

[00:14:23] Liz: Incredible. Now you made some reference to a short little American Airlines pilot.

Tell us more about that.

[00:14:35] Jacque: Oh, that, my, my mother was only concerned when I said, I met this guy and he’s really neat and I think I’m going to follow him to Texas because they closed the base in Nashville and he decided to go to the Dallas Fort Worth base. And she was very concerned that I would never finish my doctorate, but he was tremendously supportive of everything I did and had expectations.

It was one of those, if you can do it. No excuses. So he was tremendously supportive of what I did. And when I got my doctorate, I found out I was not tenure track mentality. So I didn’t stay at the university. But one of his first officers at the time wanted to start her family and still fly the line.

And American had not been faced with that before. And so I did some consulting and ended up starting a business where I wrote maternity policies for airlines and corporations and universities. It was a different time and place. I wish I could say everything has been solved, but the same problems surface and saying, God love Jenny, on Facebook, when something happens like that, it’s always have you contacted Jacque Boyd? So that, that took a 10 year chunk of my life. And, After my husband died, he was killed in a small airplane crash. I re-evaluated who I was and where I was going to go.

And we had bought property in this Itty bitty little mountain village in New Mexico and probably 10 years after he died, I just looked at everything in Dallas, Fort Worth and thought, I don’t want to be here anymore. And I picked up and moved to Angel Fire, New Mexico and got sucked into a little charter high school where I taught aviation and then became the director, the principal of the school, so it was full circle back to education.

[00:17:30] Liz: That’s amazing. And the impact that you had on the industry through writing those policies is incredible. I want to just take a minute with that because I’m so curious. I was somebody who advocated for women and particularly was involved in having some policy changes made in my organization the Coast Guard.

So this was something that was very important to me. Looking at the things that you implemented or that you suggested that companies implemented through the policies that you wrote back then. Are there things that from your perspective have changed like recommendations that you would have made back then that you would maybe have done differently in today’s world?

And the reason I say that is because, for example, I’ve talked about this a few times, we had this odd little comment in our policy that was referring to a 1980s army study on chicken embryos that suggested that a woman, a pregnant woman who flew in a rotary wing aircraft would potentially be putting her child’s hearing at risk, and so it’s like, we had to like debunk this, and get it removed from our policy because it was confusing commanders who were in a position of the trifecta of people who would make a decision about whether a pregnant woman would fly. And so we were able to get that out of there. And I know that science and understanding of women’s bodies has evolved.

So I’m just wondering, like thinking in that context, were there things that were strange back then that now we’ve learned and policies have changed?

[00:19:16] Jacque: You know I’ve seen it. It’s very cyclical. When I first started doing my research, I went to the 99’s Museum of Women Pilots and got all of Betty Heiler Gilley’s presidential papers out.

She was, I believe, the fifth president of the organization. And she had gone toe to toe with the CAA at the time. And, they reached the point where it was very much hands off. It was okay, we’re gonna back off, those women can fly. Nothing was ever said. And so, when I started, it was, it ran the gamut of, what do they wear?

What, how do they interact with the other people in the cockpit? How do they interact with passengers? It was almost more of a social issue than it was a physical issue. I worked with some NASA physicians who it basically came down to if you’re going to have a normal pregnancy, flying will not affect it at all.

If the pregnancy is not going to be normal, it really has nothing to do with the flight environment. And so, I remember giving a speech at a women military aviators conference, and there was a fellow there, who was an aeromedical doctor and told me that women who flew rotary aircraft would have children with learning disabilities.

One airline I observed which was a freight operation, and I said do you have uniforms? And he went no. I think they just get up to altitude and unzip and let it all hang out. And I thought, oh, really? So it’s run from a social issue to more of a physical issue. Bob Barris, years and years ago, and I did a presentation at ISA.

And it was on the difficulties of radiation

[00:21:54] Liz: right, yeah

[00:21:55] Jacque: and pregnancy. And his recommendation was if you’re a guy and you want to have kids flying that North Atlantic route, you should be just as concerned as a woman. So it’s been very cyclical. And every time something comes up. About a company not being supportive or a company putting in barricades to a woman flying when they’re pregnant, that hasn’t changed. And I started my work in 1991, so I wish it would become commonplace. And I think for a lot of women it has, but it really depends on representation and how open the company is to working with a woman.

[00:23:05] Liz: Thank you for that history, Jacque.

I find that fascinating. And Jenny, I know that you have so many issues that you’ve advocated about, and we will talk about those soon. But I want to just talk briefly about any challenges that you either of you personally faced in the field of aviation and how you overcame them. And Jenny, you can start us off.

[00:23:31] Jenny: One of my biggest issues was. It really does help if you have a family member or a close mentor, it might be an aunt or uncle, if it’s not a parent who is in the industry. And I really see in the industry pilots who are able to progress more quickly because they really know where to go. They, they just know all the shortcuts and they’re not, I mean, bypassing all the milestones that we all have to cross, but they just know what to do in the, at the right time.

And because they’ve got a close advisor to help them. And as I said, I did not have anybody in my family actively flying. And so I had to figure it out on my own. And one of the things I identified is that you really need mentors then. And I did have mentors in different ways and at different times in my life.

And what I identified was just to speak about one area of activity in, during my career is that women really need mentoring because there aren’t a lot of women in this profession. And for a long time anyway, and so one of the things that I did was help create mentoring programs specifically for women pilots, especially the one in the 99s, which was launched after 9 11.

So that’s one of the things that I went hindsight or even at the time I identified that is a challenge. It was just knowing how to do things to navigate this career. And then the other big challenge, which I experienced and women to this day still experience is there is bias and there is harassment of women and it doesn’t serve any purpose other than to discourage women and to try to keep them from progressing, in my opinion.

And we also see this happening to black pilots, Asian, Latina pilots, other. Pilots who are, don’t fit the traditional model of the white man, and it’s saying this is our club and we don’t want you in the club. And that was certainly true for me early on in my career, less so once when I, once I got to a major airline and got and progressed at a major airline.

But what broke my heart was seeing it still happen to younger women coming in on an ongoing basis. And so that’s what led to a lot of my other work in advocacy and really highlighting these issues and speaking about it in a big way.

[00:26:14] Liz: I mean, to, to some of the things that you just talked about so I had the privilege of sitting in on one of your panel discussions at the recent Women in Aviation International Conference.

I thought you did an excellent job of laying that out. I, you, what you have your, I’m going to get the title wrong, but

[00:26:37] Jenny: Calm comebacks to rude remarks.

[00:26:40] Liz: Calm comebacks to rude remarks which has been something that I have been trying to help educate people on, like being prepared for those so that they can shed that in the moment, deal with it and leave it with that person who said that thing to them instead of carrying that with them for 20, 30 years, like the rest of us have had to and wishing that we could have said something different.

I think that your work is amazing. While at the WAI conference, I hosted a reading, an author reading, and I just talked about how I think a minority coming into a majority organization or culture, the way in which women came back to aviation post WWII, when they had been told to get back in the kitchen and that was their job, we no longer needed them to do other things that the white men were coming home to do for them.

When we came back in, we came back in, in isolation, really, like in small numbers and isolated. And so our main survival skill was really assimilation into the culture. Whether the culture aligned with our personal sensibilities and ideals or not, if we wanted to fly, we had to adapt to this culture. And so until we get these larger numbers, we needed. So, you, a woman in a male dominated environment, you’re already an, they don’t know how to deal with you. They naturally mentor the other men around them because they feel comfortable around those guys. And so I experienced that myself of like not having mentors.

So I think that, yeah. That is an important point, an important challenge. And I love the way that, you know, people like you who are challenged by something want to fix it. And so they create processes and systems to fix those problems. And you have been a huge hardworking example and leader in that way.

Jacque, what about you? Did you face any challenges that you needed to overcome in aviation?

[00:28:50] Jacque: I’ve had conversations with a lot of women who learned to fly when I did. I got my license in 1975, and it was almost as if we put up and ignored and became smart alecks to deal with some of it.

And I do think having three older brothers affected the way I dealt with a lot of the discrimination. But it was very much a different time. And I think a lot of us figured out what it was we wanted and what we were going to put up with, or not, to be able to get where we wanted to go.

And so, the handling of some of the discrimination, I’m there’s another woman here in Angel Fire who flew charters in the Caribbean for years. And there have been some conversations we have on our Saturday morning coffee, where everybody who flies shows up and a lot of the men have been very taken aback with our stories and our reactions to what was done back in the 70s and early 80s.

And so listening to that difference in perception and what, how some of the younger women handle things now. And I do believe the mentoring is such a necessary part of it. And I found that through my Nintey-Nines chapters, a lot of people who were not professional pilots, but had the same sort of discriminatory stories as the rest of us.

I will never forget taking a cross country to a small airport and the manager looked at me and went, now sweetie, you follow those sticks with the blue lights on top until you get to the sticks with the white lights on top and then you take a right turn and I thought I know what taxiway lights look like and I know what runway lights look like but you gauged okay how much trouble am I gonna get if I open my mouth and say what I really think. I think people like Jenny are giving an approach, an alternative to the frustration that some of us felt years ago.

And the camaraderie of a lot of the women’s groups. People can say whatever they want about Facebook, but, gee, there is some wonderful conversation that goes on. So, I, it’s, I’ve seen it’s like everything else. I’ve seen this come around. It’s very cyclical. But I think we have healthier ways to deal with that kind of discrimination than we ever did before.

[00:32:39] Jenny: And I think that the younger generation is different in other ways because, so women who are in their twenties and thirties now, many of them grew up with mothers who worked versus our generation and and that it was commonplace. You’re going to have a career.

[00:32:59] Liz: As did the men, which changes their attitudes as well.

Right. Yeah.

[00:33:02] Jenny: Right. But the other thing I saw in my own experience I got interested in soccer and played pickup soccer starting at age 15. I loved it. You know what? It didn’t become a sport at my high school until I was graduating and, but nowadays, so my point being the younger generations, many of these young women were able to be very athletic and be jocks or jock-ettes, captains of their teams, which.

Is empowering, and they learn leadership. They learn teamwork. They learn about their own skill and power and strength. So they’re different than some of these other generations where that was true, maybe individually for different individual women, but not as a cohort as a generational cohort.

[00:33:50] Liz: And also, I think one of the things that Jacque mentioned where you tell these stories in front of men who maybe aren’t the perpetrators of this, and when you have a generation of men who grew up alongside these girls who were captains of soccer teams they don’t think that it’s a problem anymore.

But you could educate them to know that these things still happen and they can be informed allies and support us in constructive ways as well. So it’s all good. And Jenny, I’ve heard you, you did a podcast talking about this specifically about how to to help men be supportive in the aviation environment as well.

[00:34:37] Jenny: So that’s what it’s going to really take. And I think we’ve seen this because as you mentioned earlier, certainly the more women and representation that we have in raw numbers percentages, that makes a difference. And we’ve seen that in other professions as well, that once that we reach a critical mass, there will be more of a shift where some behavior that is, tolerated or ignored or people just look away or sweep it under the rug, it won’t be tolerated anymore.

But the other thing that really will make a difference is when men hold other men accountable. And for behavior in the workplace and in the educational training environment as well.

[00:35:21] Liz: Now, so I’m curious to know if there was one thing that you would say was your proudest moment or your greatest accomplishment in your aviation related careers, what would that be?

Jacque, let’s start with you.

[00:35:40] Jacque: Oh, gee. I say my greatest accomplishment is survival. I there have been so many little highlights that, that I can’t say there’s one thing that, that has capped anything off. It’s just it’s the little things. And I’ve had a kid in my aerospace class here used to make me crazy, made my hair this color, and he was the base commander at Miramar of the V 22 Osprey Squadron. And I hear from him a lot.

The kids that I’ve had through the years that somehow get involved in aviation and there have been several it’s just those little things that give me the pleasure that I’ve had in my life not one certain thing, there have been some awards along the way that have been wonderful, but it’s the culmination and the combination of all those little things.

[00:37:05] Liz: That’s wonderful, Jacque. How about you, Jenny?

[00:37:09] Jenny: I echo what Jacque has experienced where when you have mentored people, help people, and it might even have been literally one conversation with a person, but when you hear from them years later about what a difference that conversation had and what a shift, it made for them that they were able to either continue with their job, continue with their career and succeed.

And for them to acknowledge your part in that, however small, is incredibly gratifying. And I appreciate that a lot. As far as my own personal accomplishments like I said, when I, was set on flying to be a professional pilot, I didn’t expect to be an airline pilot. So becoming an airline pilot, being able to fly the aircraft that I have all the way up to the triple seven and the 787 fly around the world.

That’s a pretty big deal. So I’m pretty proud of that. Yeah. And two flights stand out at my prior company where I flew out of Reno, Nevada. I got to fly a charter flight into Yakima, Washington, where my grandparents learned to fly and where my mother learned to fly. And so that was a big deal for me.

And then with my current company we were getting new 737s from the Boeing company. And I put together this whole project to honor the women at my company. And saw this whole project through where we flagged one 737 coming off the assembly line to be delivered to American Airlines.

And we had a woman captain. I was the 1st officer at the time. So I flew as the 1st officer. Our entire crew was women and we invited a lot of prominent women from the company to be there. Also women from the Boeing company were the test pilots. Trish Beckman was involved. So, and then we flew the aircraft out of Boeing Field.

We were taking it to Chicago and we flew, oh, and my mother, we were able to invite, because it was a private flight and not a commercial flight, we were able to invite our friends and family. And so my mother was on the flight with me. And we flew past Yakima and we were able to look out the window and see it.

And she, again, because it was a private flight and under a different part of the regulations, they were able to visit the cockpit. So my mother was able to be in the cockpit and observe us observe me flying. And so that was a real highlight of my career.

[00:39:52] Liz: Those are such neat experiences. Now, I want to kind of transition here a little bit because there’s a reason that you two are here. So Jacque, so I came on the scene a few years ago after I retired from the Coast Guard and needed to get reconnected with the aviation community. And this is I started the book club. I reached out to W.A. I. who I’d had a relationship with asking if I could, I’d written articles for them highlighting the Coast Guard as being an employer of choice for women. And so I reached out to the current magazine editor and asked if I could write an article just to get the word out about the book club and everything that I was doing.

And that turned into a longer term relationship where I have been writing sort of book features under the Authors Connect column for WAI. Both of you are very prolific writers and have written for many magazines, including WAI, but Jacque, you have been reviewing books for the The Ninety-Nines magazine for far longer than I was even thinking about any of this.

And so when I. When I thought about the way that I structured the book club and my interviews was that I promised myself that I would only feature books in the book club for which the interview would grant, or the author would grant me an interview. But what that did was it limited me from being able to read the source material, to read the books that were written by our pioneering women in aviation.

And I really wanted a way to do that. And I wanted to talk about them. And so I thought who better to do that with than Jacque. But also from the beginning when I started this project, Jenny has inundated me with her lists of books, her personal, like, she has a list of her entire library annotated with which edition it is, what year came out, all of this stuff.

And so When I talked to Jacque about it and

[00:42:13] Jenny: Nerd alert, nerd alert.

[00:42:15] Liz: I know. So when I talked to Jacque about this idea of like, Hey, let’s do an aviatrix classics thing. Naturally Jenny’s name came up but. It’s not just because you’re a book nerd. It’s because you two have this relationship and I know you two were like snickering when I came on the scene.

They’re like, Oh, isn’t she cute. She just discovered books. That’s sweet. But you guys have been so supportive and I want, let’s hear about this. Let’s, I want to hear how you guys met and how this whole, you almost have a competition, your book competition got started. So tell, talk to us about that. What was it?

[00:42:54] Jacque: It was a Women in Aviation conference in Las Vegas in 1992, and I was going out to the airport to pick up my best friend, Judy Tarver, who was head of pilot hiring at American and out she walks with this young woman beside her. And Jenny you can finish how that happened.

[00:43:25] Jenny: Yeah, so I was flying for a small regional, they, we called them commuter airlines at the time.

And I’d applied to American and I was jump seating on American Airlines to go to this conference. And at the time just due the rules at the time to jump seat on another airline. And each airline had its own rules, still do, they all still do. But the rules then were a little different and American had a rule where you had to be in uniform and you sat in the cockpit, even if there were open seats in the cabin, you couldn’t seat, sit in the back.

So I sat up in the cockpit in my uniform to Las Vegas. And along the way, the first officer went up to use the restroom and he came back up and he said, Oh, my gosh, you wouldn’t believe who’s in the in first class Judy Tarver. And she remembered me and Judy was amazing because she hired thousands of pilots at American Airlines as the manager of pilot recruitment, but he was really impressed that she remembered him.

And so that’s Judy. And anyway, I was like cause I wanted to work for American Airlines and he looked at me and he said, you need to meet Judy. And so I went back there. I was able to introduce myself to Judy. I had just made business cards for the first time.

So this is where I later, I gave a lot of talks on networking to college kids and other people. And I was able to give Judy my business card, brand new. And she said, Oh, Hey I and I said, I was going to the women in aviation conference. She said, I’m going to. So she said you need to meet my friend and we’ll ride to the hotel together.

And that’s when I met Jacque. So Judy is still a friend, but I really just hit it off with Jacque where we just, I don’t know, we had a meeting of the minds. It was just instant, it seems like.

[00:45:09] Liz: And tell us about the books, you two.

[00:45:14] Jacque: I think readers tend to find other readers and it’s one of those where you compare what you’ve read and Jenny and I would, we had this certain site at the time ABE books And you could find some wonderful books and Jenny would go I just found this book and I bought it.

And you’d think I’m gonna buy that book, too. Or, it was, have you seen how much this book is going for? It was just that constant good natured, competitiveness and every winter when I get snowed in, I keep thinking I need to put my books on an Excel sheet like Jenny does. I haven’t done it yet, but

[00:46:17] Jenny: There’s a reason for the Excel sheet.

It’s because then I would see a book and I would buy it and then I go home and I’m like, I already have a copy.

[00:46:22] Liz: Yeah, I have that problem.

[00:46:25] Jenny: So that was like, no, I’m spending money. Twice. I can’t do this. And then the other reason, sorry, sorry to interrupt Jacque, but when you get into the collecting and become a collector, now the value is different if it’s a first edition, with the dust jacket. Autographed. So then it also became sometimes I do have a copy, but then here’s a first edition that’s autographed. But with the Excel file, it helps to track that.

[00:46:59] Liz: And now you guys have me in on this very expensive game.

[00:47:04] Jenny: You don’t want to know what I’ve spent altogether because I’ve tracked that too.

But I mean, honestly, and so I don’t know how big Jacque’s collection is now. I do know she is definitely has books that I don’t have. And but the other thing is you can really get into collecting in aviation. You can end up collecting kiddie wings and little model airplanes and on and on and on and on . . . silverware off of every airline TWA trademarked and Pan Am trademarked forks and knives from first class service.

You can collect it all. I mean, it’s all out there. And I decided I’m focusing on books because, and I think Jacque and I are of the same mindset here. These women are amazing and they are fascinating. They have fascinating stories to tell. We’ve a lot we can learn from them and they live on. And I wanted to know about them.

And so most of my books are nonfiction and I do have a few that are fiction, but anyway, so that’s where I focused and so I don’t have a lot of other aviation stuff collectors’ items or memorabilia. It’s books for me.

[00:48:23] Jacque: And you do find with book reviewing and being a beta reader, for someone who is developing their book or their memoir, that expands the books too.

If I were home, I would show you the background of what I have, but it’s, it becomes, it’s such a window into who some of these women were. It is just fascinating, and I’ve found that going back and reading some of them with where I am now, my perception of that first read has changed. A lot. And so it’s I very rarely go back and re-read something.

But this project has chunked that rock in my pond. And I have gone back and re-read. And my perception now is different than it was before. Based on where I am and who I am. So it’s been fun.

[00:49:45] Jenny: So I, I just wanted to pull out again, because I have a spreadsheet what’s my oldest book and I got this book.

So this is from it’s The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings. It’s part of a series. Jacque is the whole series. I think I have two of them and Jacque, wow. Yeah, but, and so it’s fiction, but what I want to point out. is when we complain, like we wish there were more women in this industry.

And then the response is women just don’t want to do this and you need to promote this more to women and girls. This is a book promoting aviation to girls in 1911. Don’t, so don’t, this is, ’cause this is a book for girls. This is not a memoir or a book for adults. So don’t tell me that hasn’t happened.

Hasn’t been happening for over a hundred years.

[00:50:39] Liz: Exactly. But again, like if you look at the wave of women in aviation and you look at the influence that World War II had on that and. The post World War Two sort of backlash that really affected the numbers of women in aviation because if you look through the twenties and thirties we have all of these incredible women these pioneers who were doing great things.

[00:51:07] Jenny: So I recently wrote a concise summary of that, which goes like this. Women flew in the WASP, in the A. T. A. in the WASP. They flew every aircraft model that the military produced. They flew them all. And the Tuskegee Airmen, who were black pilots, they were four black squadrons of black pilots. They flew and distinguish themselves in World War II.

What happened after the war? All the women were sent home and women were barred from military flying and airline flying for almost 30 years because it wasn’t until so from 1945 to 1973. Women could not fly for the two biggest part, segments of aviation, military and airline. None. Zero.

And black men were barred from airline flying, none were hired until one took his case to the Supreme Court, a discrimination case to the Supreme Court where he prevailed in 1964. So 20 years for black men, and 30 years for all women. And that is a big reason behind our numbers as well.

[00:52:24] Liz: Exactly. And so we’ve been I look at it, I come into it in 1996 and, or 98 was when I was in flight school with the Navy, and I’m like, what’s the big deal? I don’t understand why I just did not . . .

[00:52:43] Jenny: The combat exclusion had only just been lifted and marine pilots only allowed women in 1994. Correct.

[00:52:53] Liz: Exactly. Right.

[00:52:54] Jenny: Two years before you learned to fly.

[00:52:55] Liz: I know. It’s crazy. So you have just summed up so much about why this, why I’m so passionate about my project to not just, I mean, we’re looking at historical books.

That’s what we’re going to be discussing. In the Book Club we discuss a wide range of books. This month in May, I am pushing children’s books because that’s really where my passion lies. Like you talked about Jenny we need to we need to expose our young people to what’s possible and pull out these historical.

Maybe we can get some of these back in print. She’s holding up for those who are listening. She’s holding up Wins her Wings by Dorothy Wayne. I wonder,

[00:53:40] Jenny: Dorothy Dixon Wins Her Wings that’s from 1933.

[00:53:45] Jacque: And there’s a whole series.

[00:53:46] Jenny: And Linda Carlton, Air Pilot, 1931. These are children’s books for young girls.

Children’s books. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And the Golden Annual Book for Girls. 1936.

[00:54:02] Jacque: I’ve stocked the airport here with those books because this is where when we had the fire two years ago and several others, all the helicopters based out of angel fire. And so there are some wonderful older books.

Oh my gosh, I am so impressed with what’s coming out now. It, I’m having a ball reviewing the new books.

[00:54:34] Liz: I know we just we really do. I think what the changes in publishing are allowing us to have a much stronger voice. And then as you know, I want—even though you can publish anything I would like us collectively to spit and polish our work so that it can reach as broad an audience as possible and be more accessible to people outside of aviation so we can educate them. So all of these things are so good. So we should talk about the first book we’re going to discuss. And there’s a I feel very, I felt very strongly about doing this book for a variety of reasons, but Jacque, what are we going to start off with?

[00:55:25] Jacque: Louise Thaden’s memoir, High, Wide, and Frightened.

[00:55:30] Liz: It’s so exciting. And Jenny just got up to go get her copy. Which copy is this?

[00:55:36] Jenny: Three copies. I’ll just start. So just, we’ll talk about it more, but it actually was originally published in 1938. This was my grandparent’s copy. And then another version came out in 19, sorry, 75, I believe it was.

Slightly changed. And then this version. So what’s this version?

[00:55:56] Liz: What was the publication date on the new version? This is the one that people if they go to buy it, they’re most likely they’re going to get

[00:56:02] Jenny: this one. I’m sorry. 2004.

[00:56:05] Liz: 2004 was that print of it. Highlights.

[00:56:07] Jenny: And it’s the one with the forward by Patty Wagstaff.

[00:56:10] Liz: That’s right. It has a forward by Patty Wagstaff, which is awesome as well. It’s going to be so fun to talk about this book and the list that we have of books is just it’s just a matter of picking which direction to go from there. But the reason we started with on, so I will give my reasons as we know the most well-known name in women in aviation is Amelia Earhart.

And with all of the respect in the world that she deserves she wasn’t the only one. And not only that, she, even though she was the founding president of the 99s, it was Louise Thaden, I believe, who instigated this whole thing. And so they were, they both reached out to all of the women in aviation at the time who were licensed and invited them to be part of this organization.

She also won the Bendix, which was awesome. So she’s a fabulous pilot and an important historical figure that I don’t think comes into the spotlight enough. So what about you guys? Do you have anything to add to that?

[00:57:26] Jacque: I was brought back into that realm with a friend who lives in Bentonville, Arkansas, and they have a charter school that is the Louise Thaden Charter School.

And so she got me sucked back into looking more closely at Thaden, and that was 10 years ago. And so there’s just a lot of serendipity with this woman for me.

[00:57:59] Jenny: So for me, cause I’ve read the book and then done some more research, which we’ll talk about when we do the actual discussion of the book at a later interview.

But the, one of the reasons that I think it’s the perfect choice to launch this series is because she wrote and published her book contemporaneously. She didn’t wait until she was older to sit down and write her memoirs. She did it right in the year, right after she did the most amazing flying.

And when I looked into it, hers is one of the very earliest memoirs published by a woman pilot, so it was very timely and about those times, and, of course, about, what we call the golden age of aviation and a little bit about the pioneering age. So she, it’s just the perfect book to launch the series. So well done, Liz.

[00:59:01] Liz: I know. Oh you guys, thank you. I mean you had input in that as well. And I cannot wait to talk about it. I’m going to, I’m going to restrain myself, but all I’m going to say is that anybody listening to this look forward to our discussion about it, but I can absolutely highly recommend this as a fabulous read for any pilot.

Everybody should read this as part of our history. I think I’ve gone around saying things like West with the Night by Beryl Markham is ‘the classic’ book. Featuring a female aviator. I am definitely going to be schooled on this. I can tell already just by, by having read this book.

And so that list is going to get much longer and I can’t wait for that.

[00:59:48] Jenny: Yeah. She’s amazing pilot and she’s a brilliant writer. It’s very well written. It’s, and it’s poignant. It’s gripping. And it’s really, I can’t wait to read it. A good book. So yeah, I recommend it highly.

[01:00:04] Liz: Yeah. I can’t wait.

So that’ll be in our next session. Ladies. Do you have anything else that you’d like to share? Any parting thoughts?

[01:00:14] Jenny: Thanks for inviting us. This is going to be a lot of fun.

[01:00:16] Jacque: And I’m all on board.

[01:00:18] Liz: I am so excited to be doing this with you two. Your enthusiasm is contagious and your tenacity to get this interview done, which has been a saga.

And so it’s been such a pleasure to actually get to hear your stories so that we can prepare ourselves to delve into others. Thanks so much, ladies. Looking forward to it.

Thanks so much for listening. Check out the Literary Aviatrix website for this and hundreds of other books by or featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.

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I’d like to thank Michael Wildes of Massif and Kroo for his help producing this interview and his support of all things, Literary Aviatrix. Blue Skies and happy reading.