Whyte, Edna Gardner (1902–1992)

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Whyte, Edna Gardner (1902–1992)

American pioneer aviator, flight instructor, and nurse who won over 120 racing trophies in the course of a nearly 60-year flying career . Name variations: Edna Marvel Gardner. Born Edna Marvel Gardner on November 3, 1902, in Garden City, Minnesota; died in Grapevine, Texas, on February 15, 1992; daughter of Walter Carl Gardner (a farmer and railroad laborer) and Myrtle (Marvel) Gardner (a schoolteacher); graduated from West Salem, Wisconsin, public school; married Ray L. Kidd, in 1935 (divorced 1940); married George Murphy Whyte, in 1946 (divorced 1967); children: one adopted daughter, Georgeann.

Awards:

Woman of the Year, Women's National Aeronautical Association (1966); OX-5 Pioneer Pilots Association's Tiny Broadwick Award for promotion of women's aviation (1967); inducted in CurtissWright Hall of Fame for Pioneer Pilots (1975); Jimmy Kolp Award Trophy for outstanding devotion to women pilots and 99ers (1977); inducted in Memory Lane Memorial Park, Amelia Earhart home, Atchison, Kansas; inducted into Texas Women's Hall of Fame (1984); inducted into Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame (1985); inducted into Texas State Hall of Fame (1985); Charles Lindbergh Foundation, Life Time Achievement in Aviation Award (1986).

Father killed (1910); mother's illness led to family's dissolution (1912); began nurses' training, LaCrosse (Wisconsin) Hospital (1921); was certified as a registered nurse (1924); was a staff nurse, University of Wisconsin (1924), Parkland Hospital, Dallas (1925), and Virginia Mason Hospital, Seattle (1925); took first flying lesson (1927); was a staff nurse, University of Wisconsin (1927); received student pilot license (1929); joined U.S. Navy's Nursing Corps (1929); soloed and received pilot's license (1931); assigned to Newport Naval Hospital (1931); assigned to Naval Hospital Washington, D.C. (1934); resigned commission (1935); opened Southern Aviation School with husband at Shushan Airport, New Orleans; opened New Orleans Air College, Wedell-Williams Airport (1937); sold business, moved to Meacham Field, Fort Worth, as instrument instructor for U.S. Army (1941); joined Army Nursing Corps (1944); became instructor, Roy Taylor Flying School, Meacham Field (1946); was a saleswoman for Harry Pennington Channelcrome Co. (1955); built Aero Valley Airport, Roanoke, Texas, and created last flying school (1969); sold airport and retired (1988).

An aviator at a time when most women were excluded from the everyday life of airports and flying, Edna Gardner Whyte helped break down those barriers with her ambition, determination, skill, and intelligence. Her contribution was not as publicized as that of her friend Amelia Earhart , but it was substantial enough that she was well known in aviation circles by the 1930s and remained prominent in them until her death in 1992. Said her friend, actor Cliff Robertson, "She flew with the heart of an eagle."

Whyte was born Edna Gardner in 1902 in Garden City, Minnesota, but moved frequently during the first half of her life. When she was ten, her father Walter Gardner was killed in a train wreck in Oregon; soon after, her mother Myrtle Gardner was stricken with tuberculosis. Placed in a sanitarium and unable to tend her children, Myrtle was forced to shift them from relative to relative. Whyte was reared by an aunt and uncle. Lacking money for college after her high school graduation, she did the practical thing, learning nursing on the job at the local hospital in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Uncomfortable in the cold north, Whyte moved to Dallas, Texas, soon after completing her training in 1924, and then to Seattle, Washington, to practice nursing. While in Seattle, she met Bob Martin, an amateur pilot and Canadian bon vivant, and took her first flight with him in 1927, at age 25. Edna had been fascinated as a child with newspaper accounts of Katherine Stinson and her sister Marjorie , who trained military pilots at Dayton, Ohio, during World War I, and even though Martin was not an accomplished flier and announced after a rough ride that Edna owed him $7.50 for the 15 minutes aloft, she was hooked.

But wanting to fly and learning to fly were difficult matters for women in the 1920s. Matilde Moisant , having been given the opportunity to learn, was told by her teacher to arrive at the airfield "at the crack of dawn dressed in men's clothing and have a hood over your hair so nobody can know you are a woman." Whyte was not subject to that demand, although her first instructors only reluctantly provided basic lessons in how to fly. They gladly tried to discourage her, convinced that aviation was for men only. (One of these teachers, Jim Peterson, flew in the movies Wings and Hell's Angels.) Edna started training in Seattle and then later in Madison, Wisconsin, but failed to progress as rapidly as she wished until she met Guerdon ("Guerd") Brockson at the Waukegan (Wisconsin) Flying Club. Having enlisted in the U.S. Navy Nursing Corps in 1929, she was stationed at the time at the Naval Hospital, Great Lakes Naval Training Station, near Chicago. Whyte had joined the flying club to practice at convenient times and to lower the price of instruction: flying time cost between $30 and $35 an hour, and her salary as a nurse was about $75 a month.

Guerd became both teacher and lover. In early 1931, Whyte flew solo; that May, she received her pilot's license. Though the government had begun certifying pilots in 1926, the official who tested Edna had never confirmed a female aviator. He showed his bias by sending two men up for tests before her, even though she had arrived first and had finished the written portions of the exams ahead of them. Fixing her with a stern gaze, the examiner asked, "Why do you want to fly? I've never given any woman a license and I'm not at all sure that I want to now." With tears and voice breaking, she begged for a chance. The examiner relented and found her skills such that he could not withhold license no. 20000 from her. Ultimately, this license would include the right to operate single and multi-engine land aircraft, seaplanes, rotorcrafts, and gliders. She would also hold certification as a flight instructor, instrument instructor, and ground instructor (Link Trainer).

Exuberant after receiving her pilot's license, Whyte entered a challenge race at Waukegan, piloting an OX-5 Robin monoplane 30 miles to victory. It was the first of many winning races.

Before her career ended, Edna Gardner Whyte would hold more than 100 trophies for closed course and cross-country racing, aerobatics, bomb dropping, spot landing, and the like. She entered the Powder Puff Derby, Angel Derby, Fair Lady Derby, the Sky Lady, Dallas Doll Derby, and a few that featured both men and women in head-to-head competition. Her most prestigious wins were The Men and Women Race (Curtiss-Wright Field, Baltimore, 1934); two Alcazar Trophy Races (1937 and 1941); two U.S.A. Rally, Men and Women Races (1964 and 1965); and four Women's International Air Races (1953, 1958, 1960, 1961). The latter were also among the most dangerous, in part because of the greater distances between countries and in part because of climatic variations.

Because it came early in her career and was followed by near tragedy, her most memorable victory was the Kate Smith trophy race, National Charity Air Pageant, at New York's Roosevelt Field in 1933. She flew a borrowed Waco 10 and won $500. On her way home to Newport, Rhode Island, a heavy fog bank over Long Island convinced her to turn back to Roosevelt Field, but still she could not land. She had to circle the area until her fuel tanks were empty and then crashed on the lawn of the Woolworth estate on Oyster Bay. The Woolworths welcomed her, but the damage done to the aircraft cost the $500 she had won in repairs.

At the time of the Kate Smith race, Whyte was working at the Naval Hospital in Newport, having transferred there from Great Lakes in 1931. The move had temporarily interrupted her love affair with Guerd, but he joined her in 1932, opening an airfield on land owned by the Vanderbilts at Coddington Cove. Before this, Edna had purchased her first airplane, a Travel Air that was powered by an OXX-6 engine, and kept it at an airport owned by Colonel Ned Green, the disabled playboy son of Hettie Green . Green's Round Hill Airport was north of Newport, near New Bedford, Massachusetts, and although he did not fly, he knew a great deal about flying and shared his experience with Edna. She unwittingly became involved with bootleggers who paid $20 per trip to fly off Martha's Vineyard and report the color of flags flying from a designated ship there. The flags told when and where shipments of booze were to be landed. When Edna realized her complicity, she quit.

The publicity that she received as a racer, coupled with her profession, caused writers to begin calling her the "Flying Nurse." When in 1933 she heard that Dr. Leon M. Pisculli was organizing a "medical flight" across the Atlantic to Italy and that he intended to take a nurse as copilot, Whyte contacted Pisculli and arranged an interview. At journey's end, the nurse was to parachute into Italy to commemorate Florence Nightingale 's birth in Florence. A year earlier, Earhart had soloed across the Atlantic. Whyte was sure this trip could make her "as famous as Amelia." During the interview, Guerd, who accompanied her, repeatedly pointed out problems evident in the plan. Fearing that her companion's objections would hurt her chances, she became angry and cut the meeting short. Later, when she was not chosen, blaming Guerd seemed natural, although she knew the Navy was the true reason; it had given her the option of resigning her commission or not taking part in the publicity stunt. Before she could decide, Pisculli chose another pilot-nurse, Edna Newcomer . Whyte was bitterly disappointed, but her attitude changed when the Bellanca carrying Pisculli, Newcomer, and others was lost at sea near the Azores. Nonetheless, ever confident, Whyte told Guerd, "I'll bet you anything, if I'd have been flying on that airplane it never would have crashed."

In March 1934, Whyte transferred to the naval hospital in Washington, D.C. By then, in addition to racing, she had begun to teach, scheduling students to fly at Congressional, Beacon, and Capital airports, and at College Park in Maryland. The move also required another separation from Guerd, which this time became permanent. In 1935, she met Ray Kidd, a writer for the U.S. Information Service, who promised to provide her the publicity she lacked in her quest for fame and recognition. They became close friends and eventually married. "Kidd held promise of being my G.P. Putnam," said Whyte. George Putnam, the head of a major publishing house and a first-rate publicist, had helped boost the careers of Charles Lindbergh, Admiral Richard Byrd, and Amelia Earhart, whom he married.

Whyte recognized Earhart as an aviation pioneer, "kind of a leader, helping to prove that women could do it," but she resented what she considered Earhart's lack of flying experience. In 1938, when Look magazine did a survey of the flying hours of female pilots, Whyte topped the list of Americans; Earhart would have been fourth had she not disappeared the previous July during her attempt to circle the globe. Earhart, who had been the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an aircraft as a passenger in 1928, had set a record in 1932 when she made the trip alone in 14 hours and 56 minutes. She also had broken several North American transcontinental crossing records in the 1930s. All her feats were promoted by Putnam. Whyte despised Putnam, "the heel," because of his alleged mistreatment of Earhart. Just before leaving on her ill-fated journey, Amelia and George had dined with Edna and Ray Kidd in New Orleans.

In 1935, Whyte resigned her commission in the Navy and took a job as an instructor at the Maynard Air Service in New Orleans. She soon quit and opened the Southern Aviation School at Shushan Airport with Ray. A mishap and trouble with governmental authorities caused them to move operations to an older facility, the Wedell-Williams Airport, where they renamed their flying school the New Orleans Air College. Whyte continued teaching and racing until 1941 when, following her divorce from Ray, she had the opportunity to sell most of her air service investment to the Army, which was acquiring such facilities to train military pilots.

With her newfound wealth and a friend, Mary Dickey , Whyte moved to Fort Worth, passed her certification for instrument flying, and served as an instruments instructor and examiner for the War Training Service until 1944 when the program at Meacham Field was terminated. Before this, she had trained men and women who flew for various branches of the military, including WASPs (Women's Airforce Service Pilots). In 1944, she joined the Army Nursing Corps and was posted to the Philippines where she served for two years. She then returned to Fort Worth to teach flying at a Veterans Administration-approved school owned by Roy Taylor.

In 1946, Edna met and married George Murphy Whyte, a former Army pilot and a fellow instructor. During the early 1950s, she and George were something of itinerant teachers, working in flight programs in Aberdeen, Mississippi, and Flint, Michigan, but always returning to Fort Worth. Whyte intensified her racing and won the bulk of her trophies in the next 20 years. In 1955, she became a sales representative for the Harry Pennington Channelcrome Company, the only such saleswoman in the United States. Assigned a territory extending from Central America into Canada, she sold various aircraft parts, especially chrome plated cylinders, logging thousands of flying hours and also representing Channelcrome in many air races.

While Edna flew for Channelcrome, George started his own Flying Base Operation, a school at Meacham Field called Aero Enterprises, in 1953. At times she worked with him, saying that he was a "terrific instructor and manager." But as had happened in her first marriage, her ambitions interfered with family life, and in the late 1960s she and George divorced. At the time he was suffering from cancer, having lost a leg to the disease. Earlier, she had helped rear George's daughter from his first marriage, and when Georgeann Whyte married and began having children, Edna, in addition to being known as the "Flying Nurse," and the "Flying Flapper," became the "Flying Grandmother." She and Georgeann piloted aircraft in races until the younger woman became more interested in a family than a career.

Edna left Channelcrome in 1969 and, at age 67, when most people would be planning retirement, founded an airport. Using her life savings and money borrowed from a local bank, she opened Aero Valley Airport on 85 acres of land near Roanoke, Texas, 20 miles northeast of Fort Worth. She started with 3 planes and a hangar but within 15 years had a facility that included 14 hangars and 126 aircraft. She owned six of the planes and leased two more for her flying school, which included several part-time instructors. In 1985, Whyte boasted of 240 pupils in various stages of training. Of her many achievements, the airport may have been the most unique. She began it without government aid and continued that way until she was forced to sell in 1989, following heart by-pass surgery.

Whyte knew she suffered from heart problems; she had tried to secure permission to fly in an Air Force jet but failed to pass the required physical. She regretted missing this chance almost as much as she rued never having been an airline pilot. In the late 1930s, she had tried to fly for Braniff Airlines, but the company president was incredulous. "Miss Gardner," he asked, "do you really think that passengers will get on the airplane if they saw a woman pilot up front there?" She did; he didn't.

Edna Gardner Whyte trained over 4,000 aviators to fly a variety of aircraft and logged more than 25,000 hours in the air over her lifetime. She had won many honors. In 1931, she joined the earliest women's flying sorority, the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots, serving as its president from 1956 to 1957. She was one of the original ten members of the Whirlygirls, an international organization of women helicopter pilots, and held additional memberships in Silver Wings, OX-5 Club of American, Women's National Aeronautical Association, Pioneer Pilots, and a variety of racing associations.

Whyte spent the last five years of her life lecturing in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex area. Her message was simple. Give women a chance, she said. A wall-hanging in her office at Aero Valley read: "A woman has to do twice as much as a man to be considered half as good. Fortunately, that's not too difficult."

sources:

Baxter, Gordon. "Iron Edna," in Flying. Vol. III. May 1984, p. 108.

Dallas Morning News. April 29, 1970, sec. F, p. 1.

Dallas Times-Herald. October 31, 1974, sec. C, p. 4.

Fort Worth News-Tribune. December 6, 1985, sec. A, p. 12.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram. October 20, 1974, sec. I, p. 12.

Grit. December 15, 1974, p. 15.

"Interview with Edna Gardner Whyte by Floyd Jenkins, February 8, 1979," North Texas State University Oral History Collection (Business Archives Project) No. 28, Denton.

Obituary, in Dallas Morning News. February 18, 1992, sec. A, p. 13.

Obituary, in Fort Worth Star-Telegram. February 17, 1992, sec. A, p. 19.

O'Connor, D.C. "Flying High," in Good Housekeeping. Vol. CCI. September 1985, pp. 94, 96, 100.

The Washington Times. April 29, 1985, sec. B, p. 3.

Who's Who of American Women. 12th ed., 1981–1982.

Whyte, Edna Gardner with Ann L. Cooper. Rising Above It: An Autobiography. NY: Orion, 1991.

"Woman on Wings," in Scene: The Dallas Morning News Sunday Magazine. Vol. VIII. April 10, 1977, p. 17.