Part One of this column covered significant events in the early years of Ruth Nichols, who was born in 1901, grew up in Rye, and earned a pilot license while a student at Wellesley College. She was one of the most accomplished aviators of her time, holding numerous records while flying various types of aircraft — from biplanes to passenger jets — during her nearly 40 years in the air.
After she was severely injured in a 1932 plane crash, Ruth found new ways to use her aviation skills and fame, including the promotion of women aviators. In 1929, she was a founding member of The Ninety-Nines, an international organization of licensed women pilots whose first president was Amelia Earhart.
Nichols and Earhart were both residents of Rye for several years in the early 1930s, and it is likely they were socially connected as Earhart’s husband, George Putnam, and Nichols’ father were members of the same club. However, it is clear from Nichols’ memoir (“Wings for Life,”) that their relationship was mainly professional. As shown in the photograph, they appeared together often in races, banquets, and other aviation events.
Influenced by her great aunt, who was a devout Quaker, Nichols became affiliated with the Purchase Meeting in Harrison and was increasingly involved in humanitarian causes. In the early 1940s, she founded a civilian air service, called Relief Wings, to provide disaster relief as well as medical evacuation and air-ambulance services, When the U.S. entered World War II, Relief Wings provided its services under the authority of the Civil Air Patrol, and Nichols ultimately attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the CAP.
After the end of the war, Nichols finally got to make a round-the-world flight to help the United Nations assess the effects of the war on the world’s children. “Here was work into which I could put my heart as well as my hands, and for which I could finally unite an adventurer’s heart with a Quaker spirit,” she said.
She became the first woman to pilot a twin-engine jet in 1955 and set new speed and altitude records in 1958 by flying a jet aircraft at more than 1,000 miles per hour at 51,000 feet. Still, the world Nichols had known in those early days of aviation was long gone. So it was that news of Nichols’ death on September 25, 1960, barely registered with most Americans. She had been found dead in her New York apartment, an apparent suicide. She was just 59.
“When life gets too cluttered and stuffy on the ground,” she wrote in her memoir (published in 1957), “I can still take to the privacy and freedom of the sky, and there adjust my sights to distant vistas not yet contacted.”
There is no finer tribute to Ruth Nichols than the preface in her memoir, written by Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, U.S. Navy, who was the most famous American polar explorer of the 20th century and a central figure in the early use of aviation for exploration.
In conclusion, he wrote: “It is an exciting story of an outstanding woman as well as an outstanding flier.”
