March 27, 2021
Returning to the story of the Mercury 13: The Right Stuff, the Wrong Time, Jerrie Cobb had completed all of the tests which the Project Mercury astronauts had gone through. But Dr. Randolph Lovelace knew that NASA would view Jerrie Cobb’s exceptional test scores as a fluke and not representative of women pilots in general. So he began compiling a list of women pilots who had racked up more than 1,000 hours in the air, not an easy task in the 1960s, since women were not allowed to fly for the military and were not being hired by airlines.
Jerri Sloan’s flying credentials: 1,200 flying hours, commercial pilot’s license, multiengine rating, air-race honors, and experience flying B-25s.
Jan Dietrich and Marion Dietrich were identical twins. Jan became a flight instructor and corporate pilot, logging a phenomenal 8,000 hours flying time. Marion flew charters and ferried aircraft for various clients, piling up 1,500 hours.
Wally Funk got her first job at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1959, at age 20, as a Civilian Flight Instructor of noncommissioned and commissioned officers of the United States Army. She passed her Mercury tests, scoring higher than John Glenn did in his testing and was the third best in the Mercury 13 program. At age 81 she still flies every Saturday as instructor, having logged almost 20,000 hours – over 2 years in the air.
Gene Nora Stumbough was an air race competitor. In 1962, after NASA refused to consider the “girl astronauts” she captured what at the time was to her the best possible job in aviation for a female. She flew as a sales demonstration pilot for the Beechcraft factory in Wichita, Kansas. Initially she flew as one of the Three Musketeers, an introductory formation flight through the contiguous 48 States. Only the Navy’s Blue Angels (1946) and France’s Patrouille de France (1931) are older formation flying units.
Janey Hart earned her first pilot’s license during World War II, and later became the first licensed female helicopter pilot in Michigan. Even though she was 40 years old, the oldest woman to be invited for astronaut testing, Hart made the cut.
Bea Steadman earned her private pilot’s license at 17 and her commercial rating at 21. She earned the highest FAA license, the Airline Transport Pilot license.
 |
| Janey Hart (left), Bea Steadman (right). |
Rhea Hurrle was a competitive air racer and charter pilot with more than 2,000 flying hours.
Sarah Gorelick had B.S. in Mathematics, with minors in Physics and Chemistry. She held a Commercial Pilots license, with Airplane Single and Multi Engine Land ratings, Single Engine Sea, Instrument, Rotor and Glider ratings.
Myrtle Cagle, known as “K,” had 4,300 hours of flying time – more than some of the Mercury 7. She held a Commercial Pilots license, with Airplane Single and Multi Engine Land ratings, an Instrument rating and was a Certified Flight Instructor, Certified Flight Instrument Instructor and Certified Ground Instructor.
Irene Leverton tried to join the WASPs (Women’s Air Force Service Pilots) at age 17 using fake id. When she was tested for Dr. Lovelace, she had built up 9,000 hours, more than any of the Mercury 7.
Jean Hixson, carefully listed all her qualifications, including her WASP experience, 4,000-plus flying hours, high-altitude flying, explosive decompression experience, low-pressure chamber indoctrination, graduate degree in education, specialization in science and mathematics from the University of Akron, and her study of Russian as a foreign language. Hixson emphasized the value of a teacher in space in capturing the imagination of the nation’s schoolchildren – 25 years before Christa McAuliffe died in the Challenger explosion.
By the end of August, 1961, Randy Lovelace could confirm that 13 American women, these 12 plus Jerrie Cobb – the Mercury 13 – had passed the same tests as the Project Mercury astronauts.
Jerrie Cobb next took part in an experiment more psychologically challenging than any test the Mercury 7 encountered. The men’s isolation test confined the astronauts to a silent, dark room for two or three hours. John Glenn’s experience was typical. By feeling his way around the darkened chamber, Glenn located a desk and then discovered a writing tablet left in the desk drawer. With a pencil that he had tucked into his shirt pocket, Glenn scribbled eighteen pages, tracing one line to the next by sliding his finger along the paper. By contrast, Cobb faced the sensory isolation tank.
Jerrie Cobb’s run in the tank shattered every previous record. Six hours in the water was thought to be the absolute limit of tolerance. Cobb remained in sensory isolation for nine hours and forty minutes, her run finally terminated by an observer.
Rhea Hurrle spent 10 hours in the tank before her run was stopped by a testing observer. Wally Funk remained in the tank until observers asked her to come out. The report to Dr. Lovelace, stated that Funk “gave no evidence of any approach to limits to her tolerance.” Her total time in sensory isolation was ten hours and thirty minutes.
Jerrie Cobb had passed all of the Mercury 7 tests. Lovelace wrote to each of the Mercury 13 announcing that they would begin to undergo the same tests on September 18, 1961.
On September 12, telegrams arrived at their houses. Randy Lovelace had received word that NASA had no interest in the tests going forward. NASA determined that sending an American woman into space was not a priority. The official statement was, “NASA does not at this time have a requirement for such a program.”
 |
| Jean Hixson being given a going away part (she had resigned her position to take part in the tests). |
We will bring the story to a conclusion next week, beginning with a Congressional hearing that could hardly have been more prejudiced against the Mercury 13.
👉 Sweet Fragrance
Today we take our last visit, for this time, to the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
“. . . And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil” (John 12:3 NKJV).
Mary did not go from room to room dropping a little of the oil in each room. She did not tell anyone she had an expensive perfume in the house. The aroma of the spikenard simply diffused through out the house as a natural consequence of Mary pouring it on Jesus’ feet.
May I suggest from this that it is better to do our works for Jesus, to express our worship for him, and do it in a fashion that never attracts attention to us, but always to him.
To have stood and shouted, “Spikenard! Precious oil! Expensive oil!” would have been repulsive. Just pour it on Jesus’ feet and she need do nothing more because quickly the whole house will be filled with the sweet fragrance.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. When you give to someone in need, don’t do as the hypocrites do – blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get. But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you” (Matthew 6:1-4 NLT).
Mary’s act and Jesus’ sermon focus on the motives behind what we do in the Christian life. I have told people as I led worship, that the thing to do as we left the House was not to ask, “What did I get out of it?” but instead ask, “How did I do?” Did I worship God for the sake of God alone? Was my heart in what I did, or was I just going through the motions? Did I open the container and pour out the perfume just for Jesus, or so people would say of me, “What a wonderful gift he gave”?
Charles Spurgeon said, “Keep the thing so secret that even you yourself are hardly aware that you are doing anything at all praiseworthy. Let God be present, and you will have enough of an audience.”
By concentrating our love and attention on Jesus, and not seeking to be noticed, we will, like Mary, bless our whole house. Anything less degrades the gift and the giver.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment