Nancy Roe Pimm - The Jerrie Mock Story: The First Woman to Fly Solo around the World

THE JERRIE MOCK STORY

The First Woman to Fly Solo around the World

THE JERRIE MOCK STORY

Nancy Roe Pimm

BIOGRAPHIES FOR YOUNG READERS

Ohio University Press

Athens

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

ohioswallow.com

2016 by Ohio University Press

All rights reserved

To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).

Printed in the United States of America

Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1

: In preparation for her flight around the world, Jerrie Mock obtained her passport on January 28, 1964. Susan Reid collection

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pimm, Nancy Roe, author.

Title: The Jerrie Mock story : the first woman to fly solo around the world / Nancy Roe Pimm.

Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2016. | Series: Biographies for young readers | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015040787| ISBN 9780821422151 (hardback) | ISBN 9780821422168 (pb) | ISBN 9780821445587 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Mock, Jerrie, 19252014Juvenile literature. | Women air pilotsUnited StatesBiographyJuvenile literature. | Flights around the worldJuvenile literature. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Biographical / United States. | TRANSPORTATION / Aviation / History.

Classification: LCC TL721.M58 P56 2016 | DDC 629.13092dc23

LC record available at http://lccn:loc.gov/2015040787

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges

Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

from The Explorer by Rudyard Kipling, 1898

Contents

Authors Note

ONE EVENING while watching the local news, a story caught my attention. The news story celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first woman to fly solo around the world. Jerrie Mock had flown in her eleven-year-old plane from Port Columbus and landed twenty-nine days later at her hometown airport in Columbus, Ohio. The flying housewife had a compass, a map, and a system of dots and dashes to circumnavigate the globe. The longest leg of her flight took over seventeen hours, and at one point she had to stay awake for thirty hours. A war was going on. She flew over shark-infested waters. She landed in and took off from foreign countries with many different cultures and beliefs. Incredible, amazing, and brave were words that popped into my mind.

I always thought Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly around the world. And as I started asking around, I found most folks think so. Not many had heard of Jerrie Mock. In 1964, the year Jerrie made history, so many stories were competing for the headlines: The Civil Rights Act had just passed. The Beatles came to America and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. The United States had just entered the war in Vietnam. The US and the USSR were in the middle of the space race.

When Jerrie Mock arrived home, she received a heros welcome, and her story appeared on the front page of the local newspapers. She received numerous awards and recognition from high officials, even President Johnson! So why and how had Jerrie Mock been forgotten? Why didnt she have a prominent place in the history books? Why hadnt anyone ever heard of her?

I couldnt get Jerrie Mocks story out of my head, so I picked up the phone and gave her a call. Airplanes were made to be flown, she said matter-of-factly. You just got to use common sense, point it in the right direction, and be sure you have plenty of gasoline. The hardest part was planning; the flying was easy. I told her she was brave and daring. She laughed. I was just having a little fun in my plane, she said. I tried to convince her that it was much more than that. I told her I would be honored to write her biography for young readers. I loved her story, an inspirational tale about believing in childhood dreams. Its something I talk about when I give author visits in schools. Whats life without dreams and whats better than making dreams come true?

While researching her story, I set out to find the airplane she had flown. I went to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an air-and-space museum in Virginia. My husband, Ed, and I searched for quite some time before we spotted the small red-and-white plane high above our heads, tethered to the ceiling. I had hoped to have a look inside the plane in order to see all the custom-made gas tanks and other adjustments that had been made for the long-distance flight, but that simply wasnt possible.

When I visited Jerrie, she sat in her recliner with a stack of books piled high on the table. At age eighty-eight, she spoke of her lifelong love of reading. As a young girl, she had read Nancy Drew mysteries, and, to that day, she still loved a good suspenseful story. Clearly a genius and a mathematical whiz, she pointed to her head while speaking about flying in races, and how she had made calculations to get an advantage over the competition. Her eyes sparkled as she recalled stories from long ago with amazing detail and passion. When I clearly had no idea who had been an enemy of Christopher Columbus, she pointed her finger at me and said, Read your history books! Jerrie still had an interest in history and geography, and she kept up with the news and current events. She asked about popular books kids were reading today, and she told me she hoped the younger generation knew the importance of reading books and of having a dream. During our visit, she referred to her book, Three-Eight Charlie, and asked me to include passages from this book she had penned in 1970. Her gift of writing was as brilliant as her gift for flying.

Soon after completing her flight she was quoted as saying, I hope... that somewhere here and there my just doing something that hadnt been done will encourage someone else who wants to do something very much and hadnt quite had the heart to try it. With these words, and her life story to back them up, Jerrie Mock reminds us that even ordinary people can do extraordinary things. So work hard, put your heart into it, and follow your dreams!

CIRCUMNAVIGATING THE GLOBE

FLIGHT ONE

MARCH 19, 1964

NO ONE would ever have believed that Jerrie Mock had a big day ahead of her. The thirty-eight-year-old woman straightened the house, packed a suitcase, and ran some errands. According to the Columbus Dispatch, The petite Bexley housewife and mother went matter-of-factly about her business on the day before, and, like any woman about to take a trip, she had an appointment at the beauty parlor. The next day she would leave to fly around the world. In 1964, there were very few female pilots, and even fewer who dared to fly alone for such a long distance. As Jerrie Mock planned her flight, she discovered that, if she succeeded, she would be the first woman to circle the globe, solo.

When the big day arrived, she finished packing her cramped little airplane, a Cessna 180 she had lovingly nicknamed Charlie. Three of the four seats had been removed, replaced with aluminum gas tanks, converting the single-engine airplane into a long-distance marathon flier. She squeezed a typewriter onto the pile of maps, a variety of snacks, her suitcase, an oxygen tank, and a bulky life raft. Jerrie planned to write all about her journey and send her reports back to the local newspaper.