AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2008 - 110

Birds of a different feather Women have made signiﬁcant contributions to the history of aviation, and the number of women in aviation has grown signiﬁcantly since the early days. The ﬁrst women pilots’ organization, The Ninety-Nines, was formed when 99 of the 117 then-licensed women pilots in the United States organized in 1929, and the organization is so-named for those 99 ﬁrst members. By the 1960s, there were 12,400 women pilots in the United States, 3.6 percent of the nation’s total of approximately 345,000 pilots. Today the FAA estimates there are 36,580 women pilots, six percent of the total of the approximately 700,000 pilots in the United States (a number that has doubled since 1960). Women in Aviation International was formed in 1990 to promote aviation interest and careers for women. The organization now has more than 17,000 members (up from 7,000 when the organization was formed). In 1943, at the height of World War II, nearly 32 percent of the aviation workforce was female. In the military today, 690 of the 27,000 ﬁxed wing pilots are women and of the 40,000 employees of the FAA, 12,000 are women. AOPA has approximately 17,000 women members. The AOPA Pilot staff includes ﬁve certiﬁcated female pilots and two female student pilots. —JSW Ruby Caldwell Kinard (above) and Patty Taliaferro (right) were two of the founding members of the Abilene unit of The Ninety-Nines. sick, but he didn’t manage it with me,” she says. “He was a great sport and a gentleman.” Cree and her husband owned first a Cessna 172, then a 182, and finally a Cessna 210, which they sold four years ago. “There are so many active air bases in Texas, our airspace got regulated pretty heavily. It took the fun out of it,” she says. Ruby Caldwell Kinard Ruby Caldwell Kinard started flying when she was 24 in order to accompany her then husband James Caldwell on business trips to the couple’s musical instrument facilities in Fullerton, California. The pair had businesses and homes in Abilene and Fullerton and regularly flew back and forth between the two. Her husband had learned to ﬂy in World War II and recognized the utility of general aviation aircraft. Kinard learned to fly as his copilot in a Cessna 170. She soloed in nine hours. “We flew to get someplace,” recalls Kinard. “It was very challenging and very necessary. It was not feasible for us to rely on the airlines.” Over the years the couple had a Bonanza, a Cessna 182, and a series of Cessna 310s. The final aircraft had the range to get them from Abilene to Fullerton in less than six hours without stopping. The couple adopted a daughter who was born in California. They flew the baby home in their Bonanza. “She was a good little passenger,” Kinard remembers. “People thought we lived a strange life, living in two places. But it AOPA PILOT • 110 • MARCH 2008 wasn’t strange to us. Our babies had a lot of ﬂying time.” Patty Taliaferro Patty Taliaferro started flying lessons when she was 17 because she “was in love with a pilot.” That relationship didn’t pan out, but her love of flying did, and she eventually introduced it to the man who did become her husband. After earning her certificate at 17 and the doomed love affair, she had stopped ﬂying but renewed her certiﬁcate at age 24. “I was pregnant but I didn’t tell them that; it was a little tough to pull back the stick,” she laughs. The pair ﬁrst owned a Cessna 180. Of it, Taliaferro says, “It was tough to ﬂy; all my friends had easy aircraft to ﬂy and I had that 180.” Taliaferro, on the advice of her husband, suggested that the group of flying friends who met monthly should share advice. So in addition to the flying, fun, and camaraderie, the group learned from one another. They also helped other pilots. “We took these big ten-foot letter templates and climbed up on the roofs of the hangars and painted the airport name to help pilots who might get lost,” she remembers. “We probably wrote on 25 or more roofs. People couldn’t believe we climbed up there and did that.” She eventually became multiengine rated and over the years she and her husband—they owned a drilling company in Laredo—owned a Cessna 310, two Mitsubishis, and ﬁnally a Cessna 340. Of ﬂying today, she agrees with Amber Cree— it’s “so complicated now”—but those were “the most wonderful times.” E-mail the author at julie.walker@ aopa.org.

AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2008