Page:The Fun of It.pdf/211

Rh characteristics. Under her gentleness lies a fine courage to meet both physical and spiritual hazards with understanding. In addition to the business of the colonel’s flying, the pair have used the air for exploration, over sea and over jungle, and have had the informal fun of “sitting down” in western des­ert places and making camp where they would.

For them, aviation is essentially not a “cause.” But being asked to do all kinds of things “for avia­tion,” as if it were a charity or a patriotic duty, is an old story for the Lindberghs. Important as avi­ation is in their lives, they cannot think of it in any such light. It is a profession and a present reality and quite as much a matter of fact as any other twentieth-century development.

The first transport license issued to a woman went to Phoebe Omlie. Mrs. Omlie started her flying career in 1920 as a parachute jumper and wing walker, breaking the women’s altitude record on July 10, 1921. Later, with her husband. Cap­tain Omlie; a world war instructor who had had eleven years of flying experience, she established the largest flying school in the south, the Mid South Airways at Memphis, Tennessee.

In the early years, Mrs. Omlie did considerable flying instruction herself. Then one day a student “froze” on the controls and she wasn’t able to break him loose.

Sometimes certain types of individuals become rigid with fear and hold so tightly to nearby ob­jects that their grasp cannot be broken except by