Page:The Fun of It.pdf/182

150 craft owner, airline operator or manufacturer, feels about a hundred times as strongly as we do.

However, one girl who has made good almost from the start is Dorothy Hester. She was taught to stunt by Tex Rankin of Portland and found to be an apt pupil. She and her instructor now give exhibitions at meets and she is developing into an excellent performer.

Those who have worked for their flying are not the only ones, by any means, who have put energy and skill into it. Some of the best pilots among women are non-professionals of whom Betty Huyler Gillies of New York is an excellent example. Her husband is chief engineer in an aircraft fac­tory and an ex-navy flier and both he and she have planes.

Maude Tait, winner of the Aerol Trophy race in 1931, is a newcomer among pilots, but certainly a skilled one. A “borderline” case is Florence (Pancho) Barnes of California. She qualifies as a sportsman pilot, I am sure, but now and then also accepts special commissions. For instance, she did some of the flying in the motion picture, “Hell’s Angels.”

With these brief histories of a few of today’s women fliers, it looks as if nearly everyone who really wants to fly somehow manages it despite ob­stacles. Perhaps what is necessary for success is a large quantity of the same kind of enthusiasm which actuates a young flying couple I met re­cently. The feminine partner confided to me her