Whose shoulders am I standing on? by Mary Wine

My life is great. Seriously packed full of opportunities. When I get up in the morning, I see doors, that I have the freedom, the right, to knock on. Getting through those doors is often challenging, making me dig down deep for my bulldog determination but there isn’t a law forbidding me from taking my shot.

It makes me think….Whose shoulders am I standing on?

I fell in love with history very young. The dresses…Oh the dresses! Bustles, corsets, amazing hair…gentlemen kissing the back of my hand…swoon!

When I picked up my quill to write, historical stories were my personal playground. I carried it through into my every day, crafting historical garments, learning court dances from Elizabeth Tudor, diving deep into the by-gone eras.

There is a lot of reality hidden behind those silk dresses. 

Sharp edged reality…that contrasts so bluntly with my own life. Staring at a portrait of a noble lady, I discovered myself looking into her eyes, seeking the truth of her life. She was born into a world where laws bound her because of her gender. The dictates of her society were as tight as the corset she wore. 

I’m standing on the shoulders of women who pushed back, stood up, and refused to buckle.

Amelia Earhart, Marvel Crossen, Pancho Barnes. 

Female aviators from the dawn of flight. They were more than aviators. They were women who had just won the right to vote in the United States. When I started ‘Where the Sky Begins’…I really didn’t realize how deep the rabbit hole would be.

Historical facts came flying at me like mosquitoes in an Alanta summer. Pregnancy was a mental illness in woman, any pilot who had a baby had to start her pilots license process over. Just wanting to fly could be grounds to have a female admitted to a sanatorium for treatment. And the list goes on.

But these women, they were going to fly in spite of it all.

Travel by plane is pretty normal in my life. I’ve got my frequent flyer accounts and never think twice about booking air travel. How many of us snooze through the safety talk? Our confidence in modern aviation is habit. We enjoy modern travel that we can book right on our phones. Long gone are the days of my childhood when our home didn’t have a computer, we had to dial up the airline to book a seat. 

That’s the thing about history that hooked me. When I dive into research, it makes me realize how great my life is. I get a complete buzz, along with a shot of pure sunshine. All the little things that had been weighing me down, evaporate. The faces in the pictures, the names noted in historical facts become real to me.

I see the young Irish girl following her family onto a ship, heading out to the open ocean. She might be ten or eleven years old. Suddenly, getting up to go to school is a privilege, something that little girl dreamed of getting to do. Someone…a whole lot of someone’s…helped break the path I walked down when I grew up. They fought to give me, the next generation, what they could only long for. I am living their dream.

 Walking along a row of restored Travel Air’s from the late 1920’s, I was smacked with the reality of just how dangerous it was for Amelia and Pancho to yell ‘Contact!’. Before releasing the clutch and rolling down a dirt runway, hoping they’d get enough speed to take off. Trusting that the fuel lines wouldn’t clog and stall out their single engine planes mid-air. Every one of them had lost friends to carbon dioxide poisoning because they sat directly behind the engine, their cockpits wide open.

Those leather jackets and aviation hoods look so neat, but they were essential to survival in one of those open cock pit planes. Sitting behind the engine, Marvel Crossen would stick her head over the side of the plane to clear her head with fresh air because carbon dioxide fumes often filled the cockpit where the pilot sat. Empowered with the exuberance of youth, they didn’t flinch.

News papers mocked the women. Called them ‘Petticoat Pilots’ and printed headlines about how ‘women are naturally dependent on men.’ Amelia and her friends still lined up to race in the first all woman air derby. They fought for sponsors, flew experimental aircraft, and put their lives on the line to prove that women could be pilots.

My life is full of opportunities often paid for in blood. Writing ‘Where the Sky Begins’ was a necessity for me. These women were heroines, some of the bravest I have ever learned about. Sharing their story was a must. 

The derby was organized for profit. In the spirit of ‘train wreck’ media, there were men who wanted to stir up a frenzy with how audacious their air race was. The press turned out in huge numbers, snapping pictures. 

But the pilots were there to prove they belonged in the cockpit. They wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with other pilots, gender aside. Today, we expect that. With few exceptions, the path in front of me is open to all genders. Pancho Barnes had a fortune. More than one mansion to call home. Her grandfather founded the first air unit in the United States military, in hot air ballons.

Taking to the sky was in her blood. She was a stunt pilot in Hollywood. She organized the very first union to ensure the stunt pilots received fair pay. One of the few aviators who owned her own plane, she was still barred from Air Derbies because of her gender. Her fortune couldn’t buy equality. Pancho was larger than life though, she pushed back and kept pushing.

‘Where the Sky Begins’ came out of my heart. Walking through a hanger of restored airplanes, I saw all the steps people before me took to build this world I get to explore. They were fading into the pages of history. I want to know their names because I stand on their shoulders.

—

Mary Wine is the author of over seventy novels in multiple genres, including historical fiction, and has extensive experience in the television industry, including writing, story editing, and production. A taekwondo master, with extensive knowledge of sword fighting, Mary infuses her action scenes with a realism that will keep the action moving at top speed. MaryWineBooks.com

WHERE THE SKY BEGINS

In 1929, twenty daredevil women take to the skies in the most dangerous race of their lives.

Florence “Pancho” Barnes—heiress, rebel, and the most colorful pilot in America—can outfly, outswear, and outdrive any man. When Hollywood tries to turn the first-ever cross-country National Women’s Air Derby into a publicity stunt with movie starlets and their male “mechanics” doing the real flying, Pancho rallies the greatest female aviators of the era to fight back.

Alongside aviation legends Amelia Earhart, Louise Thaden, and Marvel Crosson, these fearless women demand the right to fly solo across 2,800 miles of treacherous terrain in primitive, fragile aircraft held together by glue and prayers. But as the race begins, sabotage strikes. Someone wants these women to fail—or worse.

As increasingly serious incidents mount, the pilots realize they’re not just racing for glory. They’re fighting for their lives and the future of women in aviation. United in their determination to finish the derby, they refuse to back down, watching each other’s backs as they barrel across the country in a white-knuckle race that will determine once and for all whether women belong in the skies.

From high-speed car chases to emergency landings, speakeasy showdowns to courtroom battles, Where the Sky Begins is a thrilling ride through one of aviation’s most dramatic chapters—a story of courage, sisterhood, and the unbreakable spirit of women who refused to be grounded.

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Category: On Writing