Old Missoula

Edith Foltz Stearns – Important Early Pilot & Instructor

Aviatrices Meet Here, “Talk Shop”

Two women, well known nationally in aviation circles, met in Missoula Friday.

One as a guest and the other as hostess.

The guest was the former Ruth Law, said to be the first woman to do acrobatic flying in the United States. She is now Mrs. Charles Oliver.

The hostess was Mrs. H. E. Stearns, 319 South Fifth street west, the former Edith Foltz of Portland, fifth woman in the United States to be awarded a transport license by the department of commerce and the first governor of the National Aeronautical association in the northwest.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Oliver spent Friday visiting Mr. and Mrs. Stearns here while on their way by motor from Beverly Hills, Cal., to Glacier park.

Ruth Law was one of the early distance record holders. Back in 1916, she held the distance record among both men and women pilots.

Mrs. Stearns said Saturday that the earlier women pilots had contributed much to aviation along with the men in the service, and that it was due to their persistence and efforts that aviation is a safe means of transportation today.

Mrs. Stearns, as Edith Foltz, was the first woman pilot to fly a tri-motor ship commercially. She was a co-pilot in the mail service between Seattle and San Francisco in 1928. She has participated in national air races with Amelia Earhart, Louise Thadenm, Ruth Elder and Blanch Noyes.

Mr. and Mrs. Stearns came to Missoula from Beverly Hills, Cal., the first of the year. Mr. Stearns is connected with the Hagens Motor company. Recently, they purchased the home of Professor F. E. Scheuch, 319 South Fifth street, west.

The above article appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on July 11, 1937.

 

Edith Foltz Stearns was profiled in the Oregon Aviation Newsletter[1] in 1995 by William Villani:

 

When Edith Foltz Stearns died in 1956, the Portland Oregonian remembered her as “probably Oregon’s most famous woman flier.” That notoriety has faded somewhat over the years, but her remarkable career – air racer, wartime ferry officer and the country’s first female airline pilot – still causes her to stand out among the state’s aviation notables.

Born Edith Magalis in 1900 and raised in Texas, she had an early career as a singer but became involved in aviation after marrying Milwaukie celery magnate Joseph Foltz, Jr. Foltz, a World War I Army aviator, had a small barnstorming operation at Swan Island and it was here that Edith learned to fly. She soloed in 1928 and described the event in a 1946 interview with Leverett Richards, aviation editor for the Oregonian: “I was so relieved at getting down safely I let go the controls and breathed a sigh of relief,” she told him. “About that time the ship ground-looped. Well, I never did that again.”

Soon earning her civil license, the newly-certified aviatrix set her sights upon loftier goals. Learning that Elinor Smith had set a new endurance record for women, she vowed to best that mark. According to articles in the Oregonian, she intended to make her attempt at Seattle on June 16, 1929. However, the newspaper carried no further information on her effort, so apparently she did not succeed in besting Smith’s record. Nonetheless, the episode exemplifies the young flier’s ambitious spirit.

She would have more luck in the 1929 Women’s Air Derby, the ‘Powder Puff’ race between Santa Monica and Cleveland. Her plane was the brand-new Alexander Bullet, a sharp-looking low-wing monoplane described by Richards as being ‘tricky as a Balkan politician.’ The race would hold several interesting turns for the Portland pilot.

As Edith Foltz prepared to leave Santa Monica in August 1929 on the first leg of the Women’s Air Derby to Cleveland, she had reason to be confident in the potential outcome of the race. Her mount, Race 109, was one of the fastest ships in the field; the low-winged Alexander Bullet R705H, c/n 2005. Some commentators thought such a machine too much for a woman, but Foltz was to prove those doubters wrong.

The racers set off across the US, time being measured across separate legs of the transcontinental course. Foltz was flying competitively but controversy awaited her at the Cincinnati checkpoint. Not feeling well, she was having difficulty locating that city’s airport. Spotting a small field, she swooped low but decided it was too tiny to be the one in question and continued on.

As she later related to a reporter for the Portland Telegram, she flew for another half hour before finally alighting in a farmer’s field. Taxiing to the man’s front door, she proved to be quite a surprise for the gentleman who owned the place. “You can’t imagine how surprised that man was,” the aviatrix recalled. “You’d have thought he had never seen a plane before. Maybe he hadn’t had one in his front yard.”

“He said it was Cincinnati I had passed,” she went on. “I should have gone back but the farmer said dinner was just ready and there was fried chicken. I stayed and went on to Cleveland.”

Foltz’s detour caused some consternation among race officials, but they checked her story and finally awarded her second place in her class behind Phoebe Omlie. After collecting $700 in prize money, Foltz spent some time recuperating on the East coast but soon was back in Oregon pursuing new adventures.

Prior to leaving on the transcontinental derby she had won commercial license #5600, the first woman in the Northwest and only the fifth in the nation to win the coveted ticket. Now she put that credential to work, clocking some 100 hours as a co-pilot on West Coast Air Transport’s big Bach trimotors.

Not content with those laurels, Foltz spent her spare time (there could not have been much of it) lecturing Portland showgirls on the new industry of aviation. Along with 98 other pioneer female fliers, she also was a charter member of a group that remains to this day – the Ninety-Nines.

Another highlight could come in July of 1931, when she was selected to succeed Russell Lawson as Oregon Governor for the National Aeronautics Association. She was the first woman to hold such a prestigious post in that organization.

Foltz also gained notoriety for designing and patenting the ‘Folzup’, a special flying garment for women. This addition to the aviator’s wardrobe could quickly be converted from flying togs to a skirt and dress for streetwear. “I like to get into my plane and go places,” she explained to a reporter for the Oregonian, “but I don’t like to clamber around planes in dresses and I don’t like to stride down the street in trousers.” The Folzup was her innovative solution to the problem.

The Portland flier continued her involvement in air racing, participating in the 1930, ’31, ’32 derbies. She placed fourth in the ’31 event, despite catching a wheel on takeoff from Redding, CA and damaging a wing upon landing at Fresno. That year she also placed second in the Amelia Earhart closed-course race, leading that contest until the last lap when she was passed by Florence Klingensmith. The next year she would place second in the women’s derby while flying Kinner Bird NC10672.

Racing days would soon be over, however, for war clouds were gathering. Foltz would play her part in the conflict to come.

At the onset of war, Stearns was teaching CPT cadets at Swan Island, having earlier operated Oregon Airways with new husband and partner Harold Stearns. (Like Joseph Foltz, Stearns had flown in World War I.) However, an opportunity soon arose to join Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary, a group of civilian pilots who took up ferry roles to free up others for combat duties.

After passing through familiarization training on Harvards in Canada, she sailed for a besieged England in June of 1942, one of 25 American women to be accepted by the ATA.

The new Pilot Officer Stearns was soon occupied delivering precious fighter and bomber aircraft to RAF units. Her favorite type was the De Havilland Mosquito, the fast twin-engine wooden bomber, but fighters such as the Typhoon, Tempest and Spitfire also held their appeal. “Those babies really travel,” she told a reporter from the Oregonian.

Other planes delivered by the Portland flier included large Halifax and Lancaster bombers; she declined to fly the ‘hot’ B-26 Marauder, however, because of that type’s nasty reputation.

Most deliveries were routine, but there were exciting exceptions. Once she was delivering a fighter from its factory when she spied a fighter trailing her. Its markings were strange and unfamiliar – a German! A cloud appeared providentially in her path and she slipped gratefully into its protection, thankful for instrument time gleaned years earlier in a Stearman. Reflecting on the incident later, she observed “there was a time when I felt flattered to find a man following me. But this was not one of those times.”

On another occasion she almost fell victim to a more friendly peril. It was the time of the V-1 ‘robot bomb’ menace and she was again delivering a fighter, threading her way along a prescribed ‘safety lane.’ Suddenly the sky around her was disrupted by the black puffs of ack-ack fire. Radar-directed guns far below had picked up her image and were lobbing proximity-fused shells dangerously close. Pushing her throttle wide open, Stearns “got the heck out of there.” (Later she learned that there had indeed been a V-1 in the vicinity.)

Even the favored Mosquito offered its share of occupational hazards. Once as Stearns was circling over her destination in a brand-new ‘Mossie’, one of the plane’s gear legs locked up in its nacelle. Unfortunately the type’s operating notes were in her pack, and this was in the nose of the plane! With no one on board to aid her, she trimmed the craft as best she could and then dove down into the nose to retrieve the necessary instructions. This accomplished, she was able to resolve the problem and land safely.

Overall Stearns had a very positive view of the British and the way they treated the women fliers. She believed that she received much more acceptance than she would have as an American WASP. This opinion was borne out by encounters with U.S. Pilots in Britain, some of whom she had schooled before the war at Swan Island. One P-38 group was especially displeased when she flew in one day to introduce them to a dual-control Mosquito. Initially disbelieving that she had flown the plane in herself, they refused at first to even let her out of the airplane and then showed no interest in being tutored by a female.

The British treated her with more respect, however. A highlight came in January 1944 when the Duke of Gloucester arrived at her ATA base to review the pilots. Her British contemporaries were agog over the arrival, but Stearns remained level-headed when presented. “Guess I’m too American,” she related after the war. “I saluted him and shook hands, with a ‘sir’ but without a curtsy, which I couldn’t have done if I’d tried.”

After the war Stearns returned to Portland and dabbled in the real estate business, but the air still held its appeal and she remained active in the 99s. Once she had a misstep when her heel caught in the rudder pedal of a lightplane she was flying to meet in McMinnville, causing a ground-loop. Embarrassed, she observed, “maybe I should have stuck to bombers!”

She eventually found her way back to Texas, instructing Navy cadets on Link trainers. It was here that she would fold her wings, passing away to lung cancer in 1956. She was laid to rest in the soil of her native Lone Star state.

Edith Foltz Stearns’ many years in Oregon did much to advance aviation in the state and women’s fortunes in the field as well. Her place in the state’s aviation history is indeed a special one.

Special thanks to H. Glenn Buffington and Ron Bartley for their help with this article.

 

The above article, by William Villani, ended with numerous References. A link to the OAM article (which appeared over 3 separate issues of the newsletter) appears below.

https://oregonaviation.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1995-03-reduced.pdf

https://oregonaviation.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1995-07-reduced.pdf

https://oregonaviation.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1995-12-reduced.pdf

https://www.wai.org/pioneers/2012/first-women%E2%80%99s-national-air-derby-pilots

https://www.womenofaviationweek.org/u-s-women-of-military-aviation-history-since-world-war-i/