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Ruth Nichols
A native of one of Manhattan's storied brownstone districts, Ms. Nichols, a Quaker, moved from the Big Apple to suburban Rye, NY, at the age of 12. She graduated from the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Nichols entered Wellesley College in the fall of 1919. Between her second and third years at Wellesley, she spent 2 years in Florida, ceding to her mother's fruitless wishes that she forget about a career and take her proper place in society. Then she returned to Wellesley. Although she graduated in 1924, she was considered part of the class of 1923. Her love of things and activities aeronautical superseded her initial career aspiration, to become a medical doctor. A plane ride with World War I ace Eddie Stinson, following her graduation from the Masters School, and her secretly administered flying lessons from flying boat pilot Harry Rogers, during her stay in Florida, combined to solidify an urge to fly that would last a lifetime. Courageous Ruth Nichols rebounded from several flight related scrapes with death, always eager to return to the air. While attempting to become the first female transatlantic pilot in 1931, her plane crash landed in New Brunswick, Canada. In 1935, while attempting an emergency landing in Troy, NY, her plane missed the small airport's runway, caught fire, and threw Nichols from the plane, critically injuring her. As a volunteer for UNICEF, Nichols served as a stewardess on Italian plane, which overshot the airport in Shannon, Ireland, and dropped into the sea. All of the plane's passengers and crew survived, uninjured, after a harrowing night spent on a life raft.
* copiloting of a nonstop flight from New York to Miami, January 3, 1928 * besting Charles Lindberg's transcontinental speed record, 1930 * establishing new women's flight altitude record (28,743 feet), March, 1931 * breaking Amelia Earhart's world women's speed record (210.754 miles per hour), April, 1931 * establishing new women's flight distance record by flying from Oakland, CA to Louisville, KY * becoming the first woman pilot for a commercial airline (New York Airline) * becoming the first woman pilot of a twin engine executive jet, 1955 Nichols, with Amelia Earhart and others, cofounded the Ninety Nines, an international organization of women pilots. Her humanitarian pursuits included work with UNICEF and the Emergency Peace Campaign, a Quaker organization dedicated to finding peaceful resolutions to international conflict. She planned Relief Wings, a state-based civilian air ambulance service, which assisted the federal government's Civil Air Patrol program during World War II. She volunteered for the Red Cross as a flight instructor and nurse's aid. Ruth Nichols died in her New York apartment on September 25, 1960, at the age of 59. For more information see Ms. Nichols' autobiography, "Wings for Life" (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1957) and the entry on Ruth Roland Nichols in Notable American women : the modern period : a biographical dictionary, edited by Barbara Sicherman, Carol Hurd Green with Ilene Kantrov, Harriette Walker [Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980] Written by Mur Wolf
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As
the holder of a host of aviation "firsts," it is fitting
that Ruth Roland Nichols (February 23, 1901 in September 25, 1960)
is featured, as we pilot the maiden voyage of Wellesley College’s
125th Anniversary Person of the Week program.
Ruth
Nichols' firsts and records include:
