Fay Gillis Wells stands in the National Air and Space Museum beside the Winnie Mae.
Fay Gillis Wells, writer, broadcaster, foreign correspondent, sailor, designer of boat interiors and noted aviatrix, 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 Wells participated in Posts achievement by managing the fuel dumps for the Winnie Mae in Siberia and by providing Wiley Post with the maps and navigation data. These services contributed to the success of the flight by which Post broke his own global record of 1931. Invited by Wiley Post to fly with him on a global mission in 1935, she decided instead to cover the Italian-Ethiopian War with her journalist husband, Linton Wells. Thus, Will Rogers was invited by Post as her replacement and went with him on the ill- fated journey that ended in an air crash fatal to both men. One of the founders of the Ninety-Nines, an association of licensed women pilots (named for the number of charter members) established in 1929, Fay Wells later became the organizations Bicentennial program chairman. In that capacity, she initiated the founding of the International Forest of Friendship in Atchison, Kansas, hometown of Amelia Earhart, the first president of the Ninety-Nines. The forest was established to honor aviation and space and those who pioneered in air and space flight. In the forest are plantings from tree seeds flown in lunar orbit during NASAs Apollo 14 mission to the Moon by astronaut Stuart Roosa. Apollo 17 astronaut Ron Evans planted the "Moon tree" seedlings at the dedication ceremony in Atchison on July 24,1986 (Amelia Earharts birthday).
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Photo credit: © NASA Archive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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