‘Wonderful Winged Women’ took aviation dreams aloft

How to go

What: “Those Wonderful Winged Women” ranger program

Where: Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center, Dayton Aviation Heritage National Park, 16 S. Williams St., Dayton

When: 1 p.m. Saturday

Cost: Free

More info: 937-225-7705 or www.nps.gov/daav

Before Amelia Earhart’s solo transatlantic flight in 1928, there were pioneering female pilots all over the world who overcame much resistance to fly: Raymonde de Laroche, Blanche Scott, Bessie Cole and Marie Marvingt.

Park ranger Karen Rosga said Laroche is known as the world’s first female pilot, Scott is believed to be America’s first female pilot, Cole was the first black female pilot and Marvingt began an air ambulance service in France during WWI.

Rosga will talk about “Those Wonderful Winged Women” during a presentation at the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center on Saturday.

“It’s Women’s History Month, and I presented this program last year on Women’s Equality Day, which was established in 1971,” said Rosga, a park ranger with the National Park service for 32 years. “The purpose of this program is to show what women had to overcome in the past.”

Today a news headline like this would be hard to imagine: “Ought Women to Aviate?” Yet those words introduced an article in The Detroit Free Press in 1911. The writer insisted that “women are temperamentally unfitted for flying because they are prone to panic.”

In addition to the female aviators listed before, another woman who dispelled that notion was Harriet Quimby. She worked as a drama critic for Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, which was like the Time magazine of that period. In her leisure time she had a passion for flying.

“She was an amazing, absolutely gorgeous woman who had a plum-colored satin flying costume made,” said Rosga, a Beavercreek resident who’s worked for the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Park for the past six years. “Of course, underneath were layers of wool to keep her warm. She did a lot of exhibition flying and was completely exposed to the elements during her time aloft.”

Quimby, like the others, was not about to let a little exposure dampen her enthusiasm for adventure. She also displayed an ironic wit. She described flying as “easier than voting,” since women hadn’t yet won that right.