Omlie, Phoebe Fairgrave (1902–1975)

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Omlie, Phoebe Fairgrave (1902–1975)

American aviation pioneer . Born Phoebe Jane Fair-grave on November 21, 1902, in Des Moines, Iowa; died of lung cancer on July 17, 1975, in Indianapolis, Indiana; daughter of Andrew Fairgrave (a saloon keeper) and Madge (Traister) Fairgrave; attended Madison School, Mechanic Arts High School and Guy Durrel Dramatic School (St. Paul, Minnesota); married Vernon Omlie (a pilot and flight instructor), on January 22, 1922 (died 1936).

Set 15,200-foot parachute-jumping record (1922); with husband, opened airport in Memphis, Tennessee (c. 1923); was the first woman to be issued a federal pilot's license and first woman to receive aircraft and mechanic's licenses (1920s); was the first woman to be granted a transport pilot's license by the U.S. Department of Commerce (1927); was the first woman to complete a Ford National Air Reliability Tour (1928); appointed first woman government official in aviation (1933); worked for the Civil Aeronautics Administration (1941–52).

The only daughter and second child of Andrew Fairgrave and Madge Traister Fairgrave of Des Moines, Iowa, Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie was born on November 21, 1902, and as a young girl fell in love with aviation after seeing an air show. Unhappy with secretarial work following her schooling in St. Paul, Minnesota, she took four plane rides at Curtiss Field and used a $3,500 inheritance left to her by her grandfather to purchase her own plane. To justify the venture to her parents, the 17-year-old found work as a stunt performer for the Fox Moving Picture Company's popular serial starring Pearl White , The Perils of Pauline. The job required her to wing-walk. Her pilot during filming was Vernon Omlie, a World War I veteran and flying instructor at Curtiss Field. He also taught her how to fly, although his fellow instructors thought her too young and diminutive (and possibly just too female) to become a pilot. She made her first parachute jump at this time, and in 1921, after she joined the Glenn Messer Flying Circus, set a 15,200-foot parachute-jumping record.

As a member of Messer's troupe, she developed and performed the "double parachute jump." The feat involved jumping from a plane, deploying a chute, cutting it loose and then, after free falling, deploying a second chute. She later noted that these stunts were performed to satisfy a public that saw flying as a mere novelty; she preferred to put aviation, and her bravery, to work in practical ways. The same year she joined the flying circus, she and Vernon acted as spotters during a forest fire in the northwest, and six years later, when Mississippi River flooding ravaged Little Rock, Arkansas, they airlifted supplies, rescued stranded residents and ferried the mail.

In 1923, Phoebe and Vernon (whom she had married the previous year) opened the first airport in Memphis, Tennessee. There they also opened one of the country's first flying schools, which she ran while working as an instructor and competing in airplane races. She became the first woman in America to be granted a transport pilot's license by the Department of Commerce in 1927, and the following year was appointed assistant to the president of the Mono Aircraft Corporation, under whose sponsorship she toured until 1931 to promote both the company and aviation throughout the United States and South America. Also in 1928, with a month-long tour of 13 states in 5,000 miles, she became the first woman to complete a Ford National Air Reliability Tour. On August 18, 1929, flying a Monocoupe, Omlie completed the 2,350-mile Women's Air Derby, traveling from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, in 24 hours and 12 minutes. She set an altitude record of 24,500 feet and went on to set more records at the 1929 and 1930 National Air Races in Cleveland. In the 1931 National Air Races, women and men competed together for the first time; with the highest number of overall points of all competitors, Omlie won an automobile and $2,500. She also won the Transcontinental Handicap Air Derby that year.

During the campaigns for the 1932 presidential election, she became a confidante of Franklin Roosevelt when she suggested the use of aircraft to facilitate his campaign. Roosevelt took her advice, and Omlie would eventually log 5,000 hours in the air delivering speakers to that year's Democratic National Convention. Her successful counsel to the president-to-be resulted in her appointment by Roosevelt to a liaison position between the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the Bureau of Air Commerce, making her the first woman to hold a federal aviation post.

Omlie retired from that position in 1936, after her husband died in a commercial airline crash. She returned to Memphis, determined to enact reforms she and her husband had formulated for the aviation industry, including the establishment of state-sponsored schools dedicated to the training of civilian pilots. The proposal was successful, and later Omlie's flying school became the model for the national Civilian Pilot Training program. She was also successful in introducing a preparatory aviation course into Tennessee's high schools, which later was copied by other states.

Omlie returned to Washington in 1941, during World War II, to work as a senior flying specialist for the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA). She also helped to train 5,000 airport ground personnel as part of a joint Works Progress Administration and Office of Education initiative. When women were forced from Civilian Pilot Training programs, an irate Omlie received permission to return to Tennessee to set up a school to train women flight instructors. The school was so successful it became a model for other states, and many of its students became instructors at Civilian Pilot Training schools; she was awarded a citation by the National Education Association in 1942 for this work.

Omlie rejoined the Civilian Aeronautics Administration in Washington the following year and remained there until 1952, when she quit in distress at what she considered the "socialization" of the aviation industry. She lost her life savings in a cattle ranch venture and then crusaded to stop federal involvement in citizens' private lives, lobbying Washington for state control of school systems and other initiatives in 1967. Despite shrinking assets, she worked to bring various conservative groups together until just before her death from lung cancer in Indianapolis on July 17, 1975.

sources:

Olsen, Kirstin. Remember the Ladies: A Woman's Book of Days. Pittstown, NJ: Main Street Press, 1988.

Read, Phyllis J., and Bernard L. Witlieb. The Book of Women's Firsts. NY: Random House, 1992.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980.