Fay Gillis Wells, American Aviatrix and Journalist
Fay Gillis Wells stands in the National Air and Space Museum beside the Winnie Mae. This is the plane in which Wiley Post made his record-breaking global flight in 1933. Fay Gillis Wells (October 15, 1908 - December 2, 2002) was an American pioneer aviator, globe-trotting journalist and a broadcaster. In 1929, she became one of the first women pilots to bail out of an airplane to save her life and helped found the Ninety-Nines, the international organization of licensed women pilots. As a journalist she corresponded from the Soviet Union in the 1930s, covered wars and pioneered overseas radio broadcasting with her husband, the reporter Linton Wells. She came to Washington in 1963 to open the Washington News Bureau for the Storer Broadcasting Company. From 1964 to 1977 she served as Storer’s White House correspondent. She was the first female broadcaster accredited to the White House, and one of three women reporters chosen to accompany President Nixon to China in 1972. During this period she renewed her association with flying and education, beginning with the Amelia Earhart stamp in 1962. She was chairman of the first international 99s convention in 1967 and began encouraging the use of flying and the planting of trees to promote international friendship. She died in 2002 at the age of 94. No photographer credited, 1976.
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Photo credit: © Science History Images / Alamy / Afripics
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