OKLAHOMA CITY – From the moment Wally Funk took the stage Friday afternoon inside a packed airplane hangar at AAR Corp, adjacent to the Will Rogers World Airport, as part of the Fifth Annual Oklahoma Women in Aviation and Aerospace Day Luncheon, she had the audience in the palm of her hand.
As she would cheerfully tell the audience, “Don’t sit on a pile of negative,” her positivity was positively infectious. As the keynote speaker, she was accompanied by emcee John Herrington, a native of Wetumka, Oklahoma, and a noted NASA astronaut and member of the Chickasaw Nation who flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station in 2002, performing three spacewalks.
Funk, the pioneering female pilot who worked hard to be a female astronaut in the early 1960s, recently fulfilled her dream of blasting on a rocket into space when Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had Funk ride aboard a Blue Origin rocket into space over the West Texas desert where the capsule safely landed.
Pointing to a photo in the slideshow, Funk laughed as she pointed to Bezos dousing her and the three others with champagne after the successful landing.
Sixty years earlier, Funk had been a member of the Mercury 13 in the early days of the NASA-led “Space Race” to beat the Soviets to the Moon, as President John F. Kennedy had promised in 1961. Funk was coming of age at a heady time and even though NASA ultimately turned Funk and the other female astronaut candidates down, she kept her flying closer to the Earth’s surface, at least until she went to space in July.
At the age of 82, Funk was the oldest woman to have gone into space. Three months later, Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk – actor William Shatner – was the oldest man to go into space at age 90.
With an accompanying slideshow, Funk had a blast talking about her life, from a little girl – “not a girly girl,” as she repeated throughout her presentation – growing up in Taos, New Mexico, in the shadow of Taos Mountain where she was always looking up into the blue skies over her hometown while spending a lot of time enjoying the outdoors. Funk said she desired to fly and the spirits in that region of the Land of Enchantment where she lived let her know that flying would be in her future.
Funk recalled training in Russia at one point and the Russian cosmonauts and their team were impressed with Funk’s abilities as a spacefarer.
“You did better than our guys,” Funk recalls one of them saying. She replied, “Well, I’m a girl. What did you expect?” That memory elicited a lot of clapping and laughter from the audience. Funk admitted to being a “tomboy” who just wants to hang out with the guys.
In fact, there was just a lot of joy and excitement coming from Funk on that hangar stage. Even at the age of 82, she seemed to have a childlike fascination with just about everything she talked about. When she took a flight in a helicopter belonging to Bezos’ girlfriend at the West Texas spaceport, she was stunned at how much land the noted entrepreneur had amassed.
“I couldn’t believe the amount of territory he owned,” said Funk, who attended Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, drawn to the “Flying Aggies” program at the college. She later moved to Fort Sill where her aviation skills led to Funk being the first female flying instructor on a military base.
And she talked about her July launch aboard the Blue Origin spacecraft and praised Jeff Bezos for his intelligence and getting the craft up and down perfectly.
GETTING WOMEN INTO AVIATION AND AEROSPACE
But Funk’s main reason for speaking at this annual event, was to inspire women to get into the fields of aviation and aerospace, to get women to pursue their dreams, just as she did years ago.
And with aviation being the second largest industry in the state of Oklahoma, $44 billion of economic impact and 120,000 direct jobs in the state, Funk wants women to know that they can have an exciting and well-paying career in this field. There is still much work to be done, organizers explained, with statistics showing that only eight percent of pilots were women. Women made up only five percent of airplane repair crews and a miniscule two percent of women are airplane mechanics, according to Women in Aviation International.
Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt presented Funk with a key to the city, which the playful aviator and astronaut thought was very exciting.
And Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt – known as the state’s “pilot-in-chief,” for his aviation skills – was also on hand to praise Funk and all the women in aviation and aerospace who have moved the industry forward and helped it become a powerful, economic machine in the Sooner State.
“Oklahoma would certainly not be a pioneer in aerospace without the contributions of women,” Stitt said, and noting Funk’s presence, he said it was women like her that led to aviation becoming such a powerful sector of the economy, not only in Oklahoma, but across America. “Aviation is exploding in Oklahoma,” Stitt noted, while aerospace is the state’s “fastest-growing sector.”
December 9 is Pearl Carter Scott’s birthday. The State of Oklahoma also recognizes that date as Oklahoma Women in Aviation & Aerospace Day.
Scott was a Chickasaw from Marlow, Oklahoma, who learned to fly at age 13 from fellow Oklahoman Wiley Post, leading Scott to become the youngest pilot in the U.S., with her first solo flight taking place in September 1929. She would later become a stunt pilot and, later, a legislator in the Chickasaw Legislature.
Stitt reminded the audience that Scott “paved the way for women in aviation.”
And when Funk excitedly ran through her slideshow, she concluded by telling the audience how great it was to be back in Oklahoma and talk to everyone about her exciting life and experiences.
LAWTON’S BARBARA McNALLY
One of the women in aviation recognized was Lawton Regional Airport Director Barbara McNally. Her drive and ambition led McNally to “attend night classes to complete her degree in Airport Management in 1995.”
The following year, McNally was recognized by Lawton Regional Airport officials as having “innovative problem-solving abilities and strong leadership skills.” The recognition of these skills “led to McNally’s promotion to Airport Director, where she continues to serve.”