i could walk up the door and knock on doors i could do something. here, what can i do? i've a feeling of unbelievable anxiety. i cannot sleep. can't go away, i'm in pain and trying to exercise but i can't. i was lost because adam smith with his book lost and broken. on c-span q and a. nicholas and q and any and all of our podcasts on a free c-span now app. >> watched video on demand any time online at c-span.org. try our points of interest speaker at a time until it to quickly guided to newsworthy of our key coverage rate watch points of interest any time online@c-span.org. >> good evening everybody. and a welcome to tonight's lecture.

like girls. what a pleasure it is to welcome a live audience once again. [applause] for the first time in a almost o years. to those of you streaming the program tonight welcome to you as well but incidentally i will tell you i plan at this point subject to change, need not save a current plan is tong offer the remaining programs this year both in person and via live streaming. you can always consult our website for updates concerning the venue. our sponsor for this evening's program is one of her oldest who had been with this for many years and we are extremely grateful to them for their continuing generous support. this might be a good time to encourage any of you who may be

so inclined to make a contribution to great lives as a continuation of the program depends on this kind of individual corporate support. you can do this by once again going to our website for information how you may contribute. our speaker this evening is keith o'brien author of phibro's biggest subtitle have five dairy women defied all odds inmate aviation history. keith was born in cincinnatihe graduated from northwestern university. his former staff writer for both the boston globe and the new orleans times. as a newspaper reporter he won multiple awards that medal for meritorious a journalism. he'ses also written for the "new york times", the nearest times magazine, the "washington post", political, slayton esquire among others. this book on national public radio for more than a decadero

including programs such as npr all things considered.en in addition i'm the weekend edition. he has written two books the most recent of which is the aforementioned fly girls third scheduled publication this april entitled erdos falls the true story of an environmental catastrophe. phibro's has received widespread acclaim including two assessments i will mention from authors have spokeny previously. they remember one is jonathan who set up that book quote if you like the boys in the boat or unbroken and i suspect they did like them, you will love fly girls. this story carefully research and expertly written offers an irresistible cast of characters in high octane drama. karen abbott who is also a speaker offered a similarly glowing evaluation rating quote

this is more than history it is a powerful story for our times. it has all adventure, tragedy, and heroes who overcame cruel prejudice to rule the air. phibro reads like a heart stopping novel. but the story isng all true and thoroughly inspiring. some of you may remember keith was originally scheduled as part of the 2020 great life series. but that talk was canceled because of the pandemic. we have looked forward to having him for two years now. so it is a special pleasure site defilement welcome keith o'brien. [applause] >> thank you for that introduction. really appreciate it. he did have two years to work on it though. i y don't want to say thank youo

all be coming out tonight for thank you to the university of mary washington. thanks for the lecture series. and thanks to allie who works here at the university. for two years we've been trying to make this network. it was on, then it was off everything is on, then it was off. as recently as yesterday i thought this event was going to be live streamed. i was told he would not have a crowd tonight and i would be standing behind this podium in this beautiful room all by kmyself. hand in these times we have all had to learn how to adapt and learn how to roll with the punchess. the store might close early. the restaurant might not be open. the spirit we like might not be available. i was willing to do whatever it took to finally make this event happen. of course is little upsetting a

little depressing and disappointing i was coming here to fredericksburg city i've been before and do really enjoy it and i was goingng to be in this empty room. i said to my wife yesterday before i got on the plane, should i even bring nice shoes? should i even plan to wear pants up there? it's fortunate really for all of us that my wife told me yes. [laughter] so it's really great to bee he. i'm going to be speaking tonight about my book. and i'm really excited to finally share with you. but before we get into that i wanted to start with a confession of sorts. and that is i don't really like to fly. i don't like turbulence. i do not like the little sounds a plane makes for inexplicable

reasons in the middle of a flight and they really don't like takee off. that moment where you're barreling down the runway so fast that i should take off into theou air you can feel the weigt of the air in the plane on your chest as you move further and further away the ground. i really do not like that feeling at all. i do like to travel for pleasure in normal times. and i do travel for work. so not flying for me is not an option. which means that from time to time you will find me in the 29th row of coach white knuckling the armrest as if i alone am holding up the plane. a few years ago i was on a flight like that is flying from new orleans to chicago on a hot summer night. it was one of those flights for the pilot comes on before you even take off and said folks, it's going to be a bad flight. and he was right.

in the middle of the nights in the summer storm there we were bouncing around in the sky. and there i amm trying to curl p into a tiny ball but resisting the urge to do that because that would be an insane thing for a grown person to do on a plane. and that woman next to me totally noticed. she finally couldn't take it anymore she turned to me and said honey, i think i can help you. i have xanax. [laughter] that is a true story. that is me as a flyer. sort of begs the question was somewhat like this, someone like me would spend two and half years researching and writing about planes at a time when playing travel was exponentially more dangerous than it islf tod. why would i do it to myself?

why? the answer is really that has nothing to do with planes. i was drawn to the story that ultimately became fly girl because it is the story of an epic quest. populated by characters who were willing to risk everything for the thing they loved. it would face adversity after adversity entrenched discrimination on the death of their friends and still they would keep flying but still they would keep going only to triumph over the men in 1936 and one of the most epic erases of them all. that is a story i would hope anyone would want to tell. it certainly one i'm excited to share with you here tonight. so, whenever i am writing whether it's for magazine, or radio, or book i like to think about my stories in terms of

scenes. in terms of moments. to identify early on what are the most important moments here and build on those. so i thought i would begin tonight with you, with the moment. i want you to imagine 1933. but waning days of summer. labor day weekend in chicago. city had been struggling in the depths record unemployment redline down the street, flop houses as they were known at the time so filled with people would sleep on your shoes so no one would steal them. but that weekend, labor day week in chicago 1933 was going to be different. the city was preparing for a crush of visitors, 500,000 people living about a real card automobile. they're coming for an exciting

event. they were coming for the erases. we need to forget what we know about modern-day airshows. yet those events with the world's most modern planes. erasing the 20s and 30s was a real sport nurse and losers. enormous crowds and jackpots of money for theim victors. in this little of time between 19207po and 1936 air racing was one of the most popular sports in america. it was baseball, it was boxing. it was horse racing. and as air racing. he was definitively also the most dangerous. inevitably pilots flying at a high rateas of speed low to the ground would crash.

these pilots would sometimes die right the grandstand. what to make sure it wasn't just erasing that was dangerous and dubious it was flying itself. book i did a ton of research and read a lot of news coverage 1920s and 30s. none of these stories was an exposé on the chicago tribune what they turned wild flight cap school. these are flight schools in the chicagoland area in 19207 where one could get a pilots license in the matter of 90 minutes. that summer in chicago theri chicago tribune ran a series of stories about this obvious problem for this one late in the story that really jumped out at

me. i went to share with you now. officials should furnish each school one or more coffins with each diploma. this is 19207 in chicago. this is how people felt aboute flying. because of these risks, because of these dangers, because of the crowds at the erases because of the money involved. because of the stakes many men believed air racing and indeed flying was no place for a woman. and obviously wrong. but at the time come at the time women were banned from doing all sorts of things. the waiting tables after 10:00 p.m., working in the

factory, from working night shifts. on the east coast united states in late 1920s women were banned from driving taxicabs in every single major americana city. if you were a married woman in particular if you are a married schoolteacher it was even harder for you. you are a single female teacher in the late 1920s in america right here in virginia perhaps right fredericksburg, you had the audacity to decide over the course of that school year toat get married, at the end of the year at your local school board or superintendent almost always men would force you to resign if your job at the school. it was believed by these men the women could not handle the rigors of teaching our children

all day only to go home and raise her own. so women are denied access to jobs. women are denied basic rights. and they were denied other basic things too. in the late 1920s my story begins there is a major tragedy in washington d.c. a theater roof collapsed under a heavy weight of a blizzard snowfall. it was national news it was a realg calamity. many people died including a young boy. the boy's mother you wish to sue for negligence a case she likely would have one but the law denied her that right. only a father at the right to sue in a wrongful death of a minor child at that time.

on this boy's father was already dead.. being the mother in question had no husband, no child and no recourse. women hoping to fly planes faced similar challenges. the presidential electioner of 19208, there were 29 million women who are eligible to vote. 29 million women a voting age out of that d number 29 million fewer than 12 had a pilots license on file at the u.s. department of commerce which was a regulating agency at the time, the faa of its era. that really made the few women flying planes renegades real radical. the radical it's almost hard to imagine today.

in september 1933 labor day weekend in chicago one of those women was about to do the most radical thing of all. she was going to race her plan against the men. whipping around pylons placed in a triangle or course from the airfield, 55 towers. she was 29 years old this woman. divorced and afraid of nothing. a plane that day called agb was so fast it's known to be dangerous as model plane affect had killed many men before. but she knew what she was doing, she knew how to fly it. she reached the home pylon that flabor day this it sent out in front the grandson the crowd not too. screaming into thehe pilot of 220 miles at roughly 50 or 60 feet off the ground she

banked that plane so hard so perfectly around the tower that it stood up on its wing. just look at that grill the announcer said. those were his words. look at that girl have you ever seen such a beautiful race? she was trailing the two leaders but was in third place she was right there. that on the eight turned at the home pylon a problem. the right wing over speedy agb began to disintegrate in midflight. the wing built out of spruce and linen began to fall apart and flood the ground like confetti. with the wind not whistling to the holes in her wing the woman in the cockpit did exactly as she was supposed to she peeled off course with her fellow competitors ind the crowd south

toward the city of chicago over glenview road in lake avenue. she was trying to save the people on the ground and she was struggling to gain altitude to save herself. when now at the airfield in chicago was little red plane in the sky. knowing one of two things was about to happen. she was going to bail out for a dangerously altitude or she was going to crash. either way it probably is not going to end well. that woman's name was florence appeared to see her here pictured with the millionaire part one year earlier 1932 after florence when the first ever all-female speed air race theu amelia ehrhardt trophy. probably have not heard of florence, most people have it. we0s think about women in aviatn

in the 1920s and 30s, we tend to think about one or two women. bussey coleman, the first blacke female aviator ind this country and the other when he died in a plane crash in florida 19206. or of course amelia ehrhardt. should we think about emilio we like to think about her all alone.. a load that plane over the ocean. alone flying into those cultural headwinds. but at the time emily was flying other women were flying with her. each of them was brave. each of them was bold. some of them arguably, objectively or perhaps more talented in the cockpit than amelia. today we have forgotten almost everything about them. their battles and their losses. their friendships in the rivalries.

eight fought for, how hard they fought. we have forgotten the seemingly impossible victory over the men in 1936. with this book, with fly girls i set out to change that. reminding readers of this time in these characters. women who stood up for themselves and each other again and again. defiant in the face of rules that were intended to keep them in their place. and also confident in the knowledge of who they were. now i want toen be very clear here. this is not intended to be a comprehensive history of women in aviation in the 1920s and 30s. sort of textbook history for each woman gets her own chapter. that is not that kind of book at all. if you enjoyed that textbook history of women in aviation at that time you need 25 or 30 chapters.

my story is really an narrative about a group of friends. amelia ehrhardt and her friends. i like to introduce you to them now. ruth elder was 24 years old in the summer of 19207. already on her second marriage and living p in lakeland, floria where she was answering phones at a dentist office. it is not the life ruth had imagine for herself growing up in alabama. she was obviously a beautiful woman she had an electric personality. a certain charisma about her. to be frank she was bored and the dentist office. so the summer of 19207 ruth elder crafted a bold plan. she knew how to fly a plane. she decided she wanted to be the first woman to ever fly across the atlantic ocean.

she was inspired of course by charles lindbergh that spring mate 19207 lindbergh had flown the ocean, arriving in his now famous spirit of st. louis on long island, roosevelt field that mate. and i want to be clear lindbergh was not flying exactly the pioneering spirit of it all. he was flying free jackpot of money. $25000. about quarter of million dollars in today's money was put up for the first man it was believed to be a mano who would fly nonstop from new york to paris or paris to new york. many men had tried to win that prize and had failed in spectacular fashion before lindbergh arrived in new york that me. these men crashed on runways and planes loaded down with too much fuel. they burned up in infernos right there on the airfield.

or they disappeared over the ocean never to be found or heard from again. lindbergh himself nearly crashed on takeoff r inmate 19207. it had rained all night in long island. his fellow competitors who were also trying to win this price decided not to fly that david lindbergh's complaint which was quite small sank into the clay runway as it eased out onto that morning. this set up a flag about three quarters of the way down and told lindbergh if he is not off the ground by the time hede reached that flag lindbergh reach that flag still on the ground and kept going. flying straight into a crowd of about 500 people who inexplicably had gathered at the end of the runway. lindbergh screaming toward that cloud really gets off the ground before he reaches them.

he is so low to the ground at that moment the people who wered standing there could see his face to the cockpit glass and would tell the "new york times" the next day this young man was suddenly aged by worried. lindbergh was worried because he was flying directly into a wall of trees which he narrowly missed flitting through the open hole in the canopy and then disappearing into the morning mist not to be heard from again for 33 and half hours which is how long it took to fly across ocean in 19207 in the single while t airplane. i don't them going to ruin the story by telling you lindbergh will make it. he will. when he does he's going to win that 25000-dollar prize. he's going to win a book deal in all the fame that comes with it. he's going to fly back to america and take the spirit of

st. louis around the country that summer and fall. ninety-two cities in all a goodwill tour which stretched across america. it was in this moment the moment of the post lindbergh afterglow that air fever was born in america. that's what they called it at the time. air fever itne had a surprising side effect of at least one mail aviation officials had not expected. women now wanted to fly across the ocean unlike lindbergh and the men they were willing to do it for free. ruth elder will leave five months later in this plane right here. in october 1, 9207. it was a red plane, bright red with yellow lettering down the side and a script you can sort of make out there. the plane was aptly called the american girl per this plane was

32 feet from nose to tail. 46 feet across the wing. obviously a single while airplane with a top speed of 10. just for reference when you are barreling down the runway at take off at reagan these days to take a flight, you are already going 105 miles an hour. this plane had no radio. no way for ruth elder to contact the outside world. this flight in october she would earn headlines on two continents and become by the end of 19207 arguably the most famous woman in the world. before this flight with her copilot here george, ruth elder would also pay really awful personal price. amelia ehrhardt is a social worker from boston who comes next in our quest to remember

ehrhardt or to the mystery of how she disappeared we seem to have forgotten almost everything about how she actually lived. the fact of the matters in 19207 and 19,208,000,000 ehrhardt was not a famouss pilot. she was a licensed pilot. by your own admission she wasn't doing much flying anymore. she was working at a settlement house on tyler street in boston not people now called chinatown. she is helping new immigrants to this country learn how to speak english. learn how to get a job. it was here at the settlement house in 19208, six months after ruth elder's flight connected east coast businessmen would discover her. including your future husband george putnam of putnam publishing. they would pit amelia ehrhardt on a seaplane sitting in boston harbor flown by men.

planes that were going to be going across the atlantic. on this first flight and meal he to sit behind the two men who were at the control intake notes. for a book that she would write for george putnam if they made it, if they survived. of course they do the seaplane lands safely in the water off the coast of wales in june 1, 9208. by the time they open the door that plane and amelia steps out she has already become one of the most famous women in the world. but to her enduring credit amelia new that what she had done on that flight was really nothing. pshe would say that summer i ws a sack of potatoes on that plane, i was cargo. she would spend the rest of what would be a very short life just nine years in the spotlight

making bold flights in answer to her critics. it would surprise us to think about it now but even million ehrhardt and critics. ruth nichols was the daughter of wall street wealth. ort on the upper eastside in new york and raised in westchester county. more than any other woman it is ruth nichols who will challenge amelia ehrhardt for the title of most accomplished female aviator in this time 1920s and 30s. for ruth it is a journey that really begins when she is just a young girl. not much older than the students right here on the campus at mary washington. when she graduates from high school in 1918, her parents want her to get married. and they want her to marry well

so the story of her marriage might appear in the "new york times"se. the first bold decision ruth nichols makes him or herself as is not going to do that. she defies her parents wishes and instead she goes to college. this is ruth nichols graduation photograph , 24 at wellesley college in massachusetts. schoolur for women that of coure still exist today. it was here at s wellesley ruth nichols decided not only did she want to choose your own path. not only did she want to live her own life, she wanted to fly planes. and in 1930 she would acquire this plane here. this was a vega undeniably the fastestla most modern plane of s time. she named it the akita i had borrowed it from a businessman that some of you may recognize,

his name was powell crosses the owner of the cincinnati reds. within a matter of months ruth nichols was flying this plane into the record books. she quickly had the altitude record. a transcontinental speed record for the short land speed record. and in june , 31 she will attempt to fly this plane right here over the ocean trying to be the first woman all alone at the controls of an aircraft flying over the atlantic. it is worth pointing out this is one year, a full year before a million ehrhardt would ever dare to make such a flight. when were it not for happenstance and bad luck the kind of happenstance and bad luck ruth nichols might have made it. and if she had, then maybe it would be she hit we remembered today and not amelia.

lawrence who i mentioned before is the daughter of a farmer in northern minnesota. race on a plot j of land just across the river from fargo, north dakota. just like ruth elder 19207, florence was not satisfied with her lot in life. she was not doing anything exciting. she was working at a drycleaners in downtown fargo starting and pressing shirt. what she really wanted to do was fly planes. but like a lot of us in life she had no clear and obvious path to her dreams. her parents had no money, no connections in this world of aviation. i'm so florence in the on thing she could do. she enrolled at mechanics go which is now modern-day hector field the airportrt in fargo for those of you who have been

there. she was one women out afforded men. learning to build and fix airplane engines. and it was here at hector field that a young florence began to press her casee to connected businessmen in fargo. she wanted one of them to help her learn how to fly and help her by her own plane. finally one man relented so if you are willing to risk your neck i am willing toe risk my money and he gave her $3000 to buy a plane. floor institute was quickly flying into the record books. her special skill was air racing that act of whipping a plane around pylons placed on a course in a city or at an airfield. it was an incredibly difficult thing to do. a skill that would require the use of both your left and right hand. your left and your right foot as she workedd the throttle and the

flap to get yourself around the pylons at a high rate of speed. the reason why she was invited 93to race the men in chicago at liberty 1933 she had proven herself to be one of the most talented erasers b in america bh man or woman. and for her flight that day in chicago it would really change life for women both in the air and on the ground. and finally there is louise. louise to me is the rarest kind of flyer and these days. she was not just a woman who flew and raised planes. louise was a mother. she had her first child a son in 1930. and her second child, a daughter in 1933. and at a time when culture and

society and indeed many husbands expected their wives to stay home and raise children, louise did a very modern thing. she wanted to have it all. she believed she could juggle her responsibilities at home and her love for her children with her personal goals and ambitions. the really is only because of the sacrifices louise made in this little window of time that we wrongly erased her from this picture in the story. so now that it introduce you to them individually want to say a few things about theman collectively and then i'll be happy happy to take any questions you might have. i want to talk to about who they were. what they overcame and why they still matter today because they do.

we simply cannot overstate how dominated aviation was by men in particular white men in the 1920s and 30s. planes were built by men for men. these planes were often too large for most women. in fact many of my characters in my book would have to modify the cockpit with padding and pillows just so they could reach the pedals or thean controls. and when these women flew across the country transcontinental as they all did it stop to refuel in wichita, st. louis, or kansas city they would walk inside these airfield buildings find there is only one kind of restroom. it was a men's room. and when the modern erasers began in the summer of 19208 the

women were not invited to compete. those first air races are put on by this man here. his name washe cliff henderson. he was an incredible salesman a car salesman in los angeles. he decided to stage the first modern national air races that summer and this being an barley field just south of downtown l.a. by the way, we have this being an barley field today by three letters, that is lax. for these air races cliff henderson wanted amelia to come and louise to come and the others. and indeed amelia and louise were there. but they were not invited to race. there were not invited to compete. indeed the only job for women at this first national air races was to hand out the trophies to the men if they so chose to do

that. probably would not surprise you to know that theset conditions did not sit well with the female aviators. in particular these three here amelia ehrhardt and ruth nichols and louise. they were the triumphant of this time. they quickly realized they could compete against one another in the sky. they can try to fight one another across the ocean. indeed amelia and ruth nichols light to one another about their transatlantic plans. both of them did notno want the other to know they were hoping to do. each of them understood the first woman to cross the ocean solo in a plane would have that key to the room of immortality. but on the ground they recognize right away that they had to stick together. and indeed they would become good friends.

because who could understand ruth nichols better than amelia ehrhardt? or louise other than ruth nichols? i've often thought about louise in the early 1930s and what it would have been like to drop your kids off at kindergarten and preschool. how little she would've had in common with the other mothers there. they did become really close prevent a lot of evidence of that in my research. you know, in 1932 amelia of course will fly the atlantic solo. i did 1935 she wants to add the match set. she was to fly the pacific solo flight from honolulu to oakland, california. this is a flight some of you mightto have made a very common flight today. but atll the time fly in a singe

while plane all alone across that stretch of ocean was very dangerous. indeed many men had gone missing over that stretch never to be found again. aviation officials gave and millie about a 50/50 chance of making it. she does of course. and when she lands at oakland 10,000 people are waiting at the airfield having waited all night not knowing when she might arrive. not knowing her timeline or her itinerary. no one was life tweeting anything at the time. when she doesn't land amelia receives accolades from around the world but not from her friend louise. that week louise who is back home in arkansas writes amelia a letter. and louise had a very specific kind of way of speaking. kind of ad folksy charm about her. and spoke with the little bit of

a country twang. she told amelia in this letter and quoting here she says daunt your hide i could spank your pants. some date you have to tell me why you do things like this. and in this letter louise goes on to tell her friend, amelia, she wished amelia would rest on her laurels. and there very prophetically louise tells her few are worth more alive than dead. this is of course two and half years before amelia will go missing and another very dangerous ocean flight. and you know, the same is true of amelia and ruth nichols. they had a bit more complicated friendship t. maybe each of us has had this kind of friendship in our lives where we understand someone and we appreciate them but we are also sort of competing against

them all of the time. that was ruth and amelia. and yet i found evidence of their closest too. that summer 1935 after amelia had flown the pacific ocean ruth nichols has a terrible crash in upstate new york. not in an airy scum that anything fantastic just on a flight the kind of flights that went down in those days. the next day's paper across the country front page news says ruth nichols is in critical condition and might not survive. at that time and milliee is at the peak of her fame her husband then is keeping her out on the speaking trailed today, after day, after day. when ruth crashes and millie is on the road in michigan. but she took time away from whatever speaking engagement she had that day it went down to the western union office.

she wrote ruth nichols a telegram. i was not really what she says in a telegram but how she says it.. for starters amelia does not refer to ruth by her name. she calls her by her nickname. she says dear rufus, we cannot bear to have you on the sidelines for long. get well soon ae. i clearly meant a lot to ruth nichols. because she stated her entire life. until i found that telegram in the windowless cinderblock storage room with old dusty air race trophies at a regional airport in cleveland, ohio were that letter and all of ruth nichols papers have been sitting unnoticed for decades. so they overcome much.

they are good friends. they really will change the world. some of you have probably heard of the women's air service pilot the wasps. the 1000 women who flew airplanes during world war ii for the military. not in combat but from factory to base. the wasp from time to time or in the news these days because the last of them sadly are dying off. were it not foror these women he the wasps never come to be. these women had accepted the rules that were stacked against them but if they had accepted their lot in life. at they had listened to what the men wantedld them to do there would have been no platform for which the women could have argued to fly in the military during world war ii. and i really do believe that

every female pilot that comes after really stands on their shoulders. and yet there are still challenges and great deficits today. in america today, just 7% of licensed pilots are women. when you go to major airlines that number gets even lower. it is just 2%. in fact some airlines have even fewer than that. now we could have a long conversation about why that mighto t be. i do think there are many factors at play. but one undeniable factor is the entrenched discrimination that women faced in aviation. not just in the 20st and 30s. but for the bulk of the 20th century. at the time my story takes place

the first woman was hired at an airline. if light as a pilot her name was helen. she was from pennsylvania. and it did not go well for helen. this airlines now-defunct was called central air. by rule at central air you had to be a union pilot in order to flight. but that all men in that union would not admit her. so helen ritchie is hired at central air to do a job because she's good at doing a job. and then told she cannot do that job. after about 10 months she quit because she was not doing anything. and as a journal scum as an author, as a historian you are always asking yourself questions. one of the questions i have never learned the story of helen ritchie was when was the next woman hired as a pilot at an

airline? i was stunned to learn it will be 39 more years , 73 until women were hired at an airline again. that summer 1973 frontier air hired a woman. it was very small regional airline at that time. and american airlines hired this woman here. she was 24 years old from florida. a pilot's daughter. she been struggling for years to get hired at any kind of flying outfit. cargo or passenger and she had failed. some airlines in existence today denied her and told her do not bother applying again, we do not hire women. but she persisted. in the summer of 1973 american

airlines hired her to be a pilot. a grand ceremony that august the president of american airlines pinned the wings on the lapel of that jacket right there. the first ever airline pilot jacket tailored specifically for a woman. and still she faced adversity. remarks from her colleagues. insulting remarks from passengers. at times the 1970s when the men would get on a plane and see a woman in a cockpit he would refuse to flight. instead of removing the mail passenger from the plane the airline sometimes remove the female cockpit from the plane. perhaps most surprising to me as she faced died and remarks from the press. the same press that at times had

dogged my flyers back in the 1920s and 30s. they pin the wings on the lapel of thatad jacket. american airlines made a big deal out of that event as they should have. invite all the national media to come . and that weekend the los angeles motimes the los angeles times wn the most prestigious papers both then and now rent a feature story about this woman. it ran under a very unfortunate headline. here, i was told about this headline i thought it could not be real. it had to be one of those things that had been embellished and exaggerated over time.

that is a beautiful thing about microfilm, newspaper microfilm. it never goes away. because t i knew when the woman had been b hired. because i knew when the sermon in taken place. took all of about five minutes to find them. it's a miracle for all the wrong reasons. and do you know her members at the most? the pilot herself. twenty or she flew at american rising up the ranks of seniority year after year one pilot by one. until she was flying the coveted oceans routes that ruth nichols and amelia ehrhardt once fly. drawing from new york to bahamas in new york to paris. her name isn't bonnie. she is still alive today.

she's a grandmother and a mother in new york city. i have obviously had the pleasure and honor of meeting her since this book came out. indeed i had the honor of meeting so many bold women. in fact pilots from the ages of nine -- 92. and this book still inspires me in many ways. i want to close with a few reasons why. backwardsrs it is a kind of way, fly girls and this story inspired my next book which doctor crawley mentions coming out thisth april. called paradise falls. came out of the fly girls project one thing that really bothered me was that some of

those women including louise lived long lives into the 1970s. some of them into the 1980s. ellen had found them. note writer, no author, no journalist to track them down. she talked about their days flying in the early moments of aviation. it was really kind of crushing actually. to see that. there is columbia university in new york there is a very large trove of oral histories. an incredible resource for historian, academics and others. there is a very large collection of aviation oral history there. but almost none of them were with the women who flew in this time. and so, as they came out of fly girls i thought to myself what are the stories around us right

now? populated by people who had once done something great and are still with us but may not be for so much longer. that brought me in a roundabout way to a story some of you may remember. late chemical landfill in the city of niagara falls of which an entire desirable lower middle-class starter homes have been built in 1950s or 60s. this is a desirable place to live at the time. and at a school and a playground right in the heart of it. the chemicals inside that old canal, just on the school and playground began to seep out in the late 1970s. ultimately alarming people in the neighborhood and leading to fundamental changes in our environmental policy in this

country. in this window of time between 1978 and 1980 everything will change about our own backyards how he thought about the environment. modernthought about the chemicals that we use inside our houses. it's really a story of resistance. primarily of ordinary every day stay-at-home moms. or as they were called at that time housewives. these women who are not really active orr radicalize in any way before this began to fight to escape their own homes. and in a matter of two years went from being ignored by the local officials in niagara falls to having the ear of jimmy carter and the white house and the national media. so, that book is coming out in april. i rode by the p way and that nek

of the lockdown pandemic with both of myhe kids inside my hou. so it was of the hardest thing i've ever done. and if you want i'm sure you can preorder it to the bookstore that's here this evening or my website, through any number of booksellers everywhere. so, fly girls really did in a great way inspire a story. i've also been inspired we've adapted the story of fly girls into a young readers book. taking this story, condensed it by about half. roughly eight -- 12 years old. when i talk about it people often ask me what do you think young girls should take away from fly girl? my firstst answer to that questn is i hope it's not just young

girls reading it. no, i hope voice reading it too. i say that as the father of boys. boys also need to a understand that a woman can beat just as bold, just as a brave, just as strong as they are if not more so. it's had an incredible impact on kids that i have met through the course of thisou book. it's during their front sidewalks into sidewalk chalk provide carlsberg kids in decorating their books with hearts. boys and girls reading it. and once in the spring of 2019 and those in gilded pre-pandemic days i received an e-mail from a mom just outside of boston, massachusetts. she told me she had a daughter who was a middle school girl. and herls middle school, like a

lot of middle schools was doing a >> museum. each child had to dress up as a real character from the past and write some kind of report about him or her. this is a very common activity at lots of middle schools and elementaryop schools. usually there is a list they can choose from often categorized by sports or politics. or revolutionary war. yet to women and aviation they usually only offer one woman, ameliaha ehrhardt. but this girl had read my book. she informed her teachers she did not want to dress up as an million ehrhardt. she wanted to go as ruth nichols. this mother was reaching out to hasay do you have any photos or artifacts or letters that you could share with my daughter, sarah so she could do her report? and so of course i was very

excited. i sent her what i could. and i asked her when the >> museum was going to be. she told me the dates and by total luck i was doing in the event that very day at wellesley college. which was amiri 15 minute drive from this girls school. and so of course i had too. i popped in just to say hello to the new ruth nichols. and they really do think about these women. a good bit actually. and always when i fly. i think a lot about ruth nichols. you see here under pilots license from 1930. it is signed of course by orval wright. and when this book first came

out i was in new york city for the launch for the first day. busy day. that morning was unscheduled. i decided to do something that morning that had neverer had a chance to do during the actual research for the book. and that is that left my hotel in manhattan. i got on a train. i went to the bronx to visit ruth nichols grave. she's at a place called woodlawn cemetery which is a massive and important cemetery in new york city. if you were of money or of fame in the 19th or 20th century and you lived in new york, chances are you're buried at woodlawn. i took the train up there. i got off and i went into the front office there at woodlawn. because when you do go there you're supposed to check in.

i told them who i was there to see. they gave me a map. on this and map the little icons for all the famous people who were buried at i woodlawn. i looked at it and i quickly realize there was no icon for ruth w nichols. i told them who i i was looking for. with the help of the associate there and it at they had me download it onto my phone with triangulated where she was. off i went on foot on this hot summer morning into the cemetery. when they got to the place they told meet ruth nichols grave would be it was clearly wrong. i could not find her. so using the app and the map i had to start over and walk 15 minutes in a different direction. and finally i did find her grave. it woodlawn there are ornate tombs and mausoleums built by

us to knowwanted they were important. but when i got to ruth nichols grave it was just a simple tombstone. the kind of sound that one day we might be buried under. they were just a few words on it. had her date of birth. her date of death. and found there at the bottom there were just three words. that said beloved by all. and it really stopped me. because she was beloved by all. they were all beloved by all. and i do hope they will be again. want to thank you so much for listening to me tonight. thank you for your attention but thank you for coming out into the real world i will be happy to take any questions you all might have. [applause]

>> thank you keith. we will take some questions from the audience if we have some reach her hand, kelly will seek you out. guess who has a question if it's not built. one of our regulars, bill good to see a back and the rest of you as well, bill? my question has to do with howei women aviators receive support. indicate who o had five of them there, 10 of them there. you said one lady wanted to fly in so she goes to this man who had money. he gave her money to buy the airplane. so, is that the way it works for all of the other women do that

to go to rich men to get money to do that? in the second part, i wouldn't 24, 36 or 48 women who wanted to fly with they have been able to receive support?

amelia received a ton of support. the husband and many different investors who helped over the years but she got her first break selling for a man by the name of speech and every plane she through who was we've made so they receive some support but not only different from nascar driver today seeking support from his or j her sponsor, it is difficult to purchase nascar vehicle, difficult and expensive to have your own plane.

in 1928 end of the 1930s, there e about a hundred and seventeen. sorry end of 1920s by 1930 with about 117 women. who were licensed in this country and at the end of that year december 1929? these women in my book many of them louise and emilia included met on long island to discuss should they form some kind of group some kind of advocacy group for these 117 women. and they sent out letters to every single one of them across the country. and they received responses of yes from 99 of them. so they dubbed themselves the 99s and that organization for female flyers is still in existence today. other questions kelly back i was intrigued by your talking about

finding the archive of one of the flyers in a small museum in ohio. so when you decide to write this book, did you have the five in mind at the beginning or did you say i want to write about female aviators in the early history of aviation and through your research find hey, these are the five that i was able to research and and get good information about so, how does the information versus the topic? play out as you write the book. so i actually discovered this story in a very accidental way. in the spring of 2016 i was flying from from boston to pittsburgh for a story i was doing at the time for political magazine about the unlikely possibility of donald trump carrying the state of pennsylvania that fall and for the flight, i grabbed a book that had been sitting on my bedside stand for some time, which is where my to be read pile typically piles up and this is a book some of you may have

heard of it's called the astronaut wives club by lily koppel. it's it's a nonfiction narrative of the wives of the mercury 7 astronauts. so john glenn's wife alan shepard's wife and you know. one of my favorite books of all time is tom wolfe's the right stuff, which is of course that seminal work about the mercury 7. and so i wanted to read lily koppel's book to see how she had done it, which is actually a thing that authors do i wanted to see how she had taken this story which we all know. and and flipped it around in reverse and told the sort of from the opposite perspective. and so i'm reading this book very closely on the plane. and i'm very early in the book and it mentioned that one of the wives was a private pilot. who had longed fly in an all-female airplane race that had started in the 1920s 1920s and had once featured amelia earhart.

and that's the line that just stopped me. because like most of you i had never heard of air racing. i had never heard of in all female air race. i'd never heard of amelia racing anything. i only knew that story that most of us knew she flew across the ocean. she was the first one to do it. and so because it was 2016 i was able to open my computer get wi-fi off the plane and google it instantly. and i don't know what happens when you do that now, but in 2016 when you googled this race all i really found was a wikipedia page and it just listed the 20 women who had competed in that race. and as i glanced at the list, i quickly realized that i only knew two of the names. i knew amelia earhart, of course, and i knew a pilot by the name of pancho barnes. because as some of you might remember poncho is actually a character in the right stuff. she owns the bar by the late 1950s where the the fly boys the

neil armstrongs would go and have drinks after they flew planes out there in the desert. and so, you know by the time i landed in pittsburgh, i knew there was something here, but i didn't really know much and for a little while. i i researched it on the internet and after a short time i started going to the library. i live in new hampshire in a university town. where at least back in those times the library was open until about 3:00 in the morning. and so after my kids would go to sleep. i would leave home and drive two miles and i would go to the library and i would live in the microfilm from august 1929. and you know. what i'm looking for a book idea or even a story idea. i'm looking for a few things i'm looking for. an interesting world i'm looking for characters. you can root for and root against and then i'm looking for some kind of arc some kind of

journey. and it became pretty apparent to me even from those early nights in the library. that there was an interesting world here. and at that point it was just incumbent upon me to figure out who were those key characters who who did drive the story forward. and what was that ark and that did take a bit more time. but i i do remember specifically being in the library in the middle of the night. no students there. just me at the microfilm machine. and i remember stumbling on to that story of florence klingensmith in chicago. and i didn't find the exact news story for at first i found references to it, and i had to sort of figure out what had happened and go find what had happened and when i when i found that story of florence in

chicago and what happened that day and the ramifications of it. i iii new what i had and i could really see that story at that moment, but it did take a few months. is that kelly is another question back there? because there's one day in front. go ahead. thank you. it was. interesting. i have really two questions one is did any of them have to leave their families their sacrifice their families for their their vision and their spouses must have been pretty special back then to. support them because it was probably against whatever was going on back then. you hit on something pretty important here. interestingly and maybe perhaps not surprisingly based on you know, what we discussed here tonight many of these women never married. and those that did like amelia

did not have children. and i think it's plain to me that. these women would have been very intimidating. to a man in the early 1930s you know, they could fly a plane. they could fly a 225 miles an hour in a plane low to the ground. they could fly over the ocean. that would have been very intimidating to most men. now louise did marry and and and and her husband was named herb thaden, and he was a plain builder not not really a pilot. although he fly he built planes. and i do think herb is is a very interesting character because clearly he was was very modern even allowing his wife louise to race in 1936 with two children under the age of six right there in their house in arkansas. but but a lot of them never

married and you know, i did wonder about that in particular with with ruth nichols, but it was only after i i sort of stumbled on to her her papers that i realized that she had actually longed to get married for years and simply could not find a man. hi. hi wonderful. thank you so much a friend of mine gave me your book about a year ago knowing that i was doing research on my mom. she got her pilots license in 1937. we're from chicago. she went from chicago to new york city and became a buyer which back then for a woman to do that was amazing. she got her pilots license at flushing meadows. he was a dollar sixty i have her whole fight flight love is a dollar sixty a lesson. when she's so loaded made it sounded like it was no big deal and we know it was right she

flew for so long and my question is she met my dad she prior to meeting my dad she interviewed with jacqueline cochran's all female pilots. she was accepted to that. she started with them and then decided she really wanted. overseas because jacqueline cochran's strictly on the us flying the men around from base to base. my question is all these women came from all different parts. mom came from chicago and i never understood what in nor did i ask until it was too late to say what is it that drove you gave you the backbone? gave you the nerve to go and get your pilot's license. and be able to do things like we have said men certainly held women back back then. and yet she kept all mom could say is because i wanted to and so each of these women set their being from all over the united states. where did they get the word

barnstorming in all these places? what was it that drove these women to have that love of the air? so, you know early on in my in my research before i had. really gone deep down the rabbit hole and before i'd ever really written a word. but after i knew i was going to do this book, i did try to answer that question for myself. what what did unite them because clearly demographics wasn't it? right? i mean ruth nichols comes from money florence klingensmith is a farmer's daughter, you know, you know amelia's comes from a broken home with an alcoholic father, you know, everything everybody had different kind of upbringing but there were a couple of key things that i think are important. the first is interestingly. in each of these women's cases

their fathers supported them in this endeavor from a young age. indeed. it was often their fathers who had bought them their first flight, you know a $5 flight at a state fair or a beach on a saturday or or paid for their first flight lesson. so they had their fathers support. but i think more importantly and i think more telling for for parents and for me as a parent and for all of us as a parent today is from a young age and i mean from the time. these women were little girls. first grade second grade they knew at their core that they were different. you know amelia wanted to wear her hair short. which was not allowed in her house. and not really acceptable in

society in the early 1920s. and so she would sort of sneak it by cutting off her hair one inch at a time. um, you know louise is mother was proper southern woman? and she wanted to dress louis up and in frilly white dresses and indeed. there are some photographs of louise as a young girl in these kind of dresses with a pearl necklace the kind of photo that you would have paid good money for around 1914. um, but louise wanted to wear overalls and she liked to get dirty and often when she left her house as a young girl in the dress that her mother had told her to wear. she would go to the barn behind her house change into the clothes that she had left there and then run off to play. so you know for me as a parent now, i just sort of think about my own kids and and kids in

general and and look at them a little bit differently because these women didn't know when they were seven or eight or nine or ten years old that they wanted to fly planes exactly, but they did know they were different. they did know they were unlike the girls sitting next to them in school. and that was something that really drove them their whole lives. well before the final. thank you to keith for this riveting presentation in other word of thanks to our sponsor tonight chancellor's village, but for now many thanks again to o'brien and good night to everyone from great lives. thank you. thank you.

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