Page:The Fun of It.pdf/196

162 During the last few years a dozen or more Amer­ican women have been doing progressively fine fly­ing. Much of it has been true pioneering, for a number of those who are most active are really pro­fessionals and make their living from aviation.

What are women flyers like? What do they do when not flying? How do they look? These ques­tions are still asked so often that I am going to de­scribe a few of those I know.

Of course, they are not different as individuals from any other group. There are slim ones and plump ones and quiet ones and those who talk all the time. They’re large and small, young and old, about half the list are married and many of these have children. In a word, they are simply thor­oughly normal girls and women who happen to have taken up flying rather than golf, swimming or steeplechasing.

Ruth Nichols is one of the most active record holders among women flyers, yet flying does not fill her time by any means. She lives at Rye, New York, not far from my own home, so I see her driv­ing her car, swimming, riding, and doing just about everything you would expect a modern young woman to do outdoors as well as in. She is a gradu­ate of Wellesley College and during her college career majored in Bible History and Literature. In her third year there she approached the dean with the idea of flying.

“Miss Blank, I think I should like to learn to fly.”