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Ladies of Aviation

January

Naomi Parker Fraley (August 26, 1921 – January 20, 2018)

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Accepted now as the young woman who became famous as "Rosie the Riveter," Naomi Parker Fraley was born on August 26, 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Joseph E. and Esther Parker. The family resided in Tulsa for a few years but left the state soon after their daughter's birth. Naomi Parker was attended high school in Los Angeles. Married three times, she has the surname of her third husband, Charles A. Fraley. Rosie the Riveter's identity was discovered after years of research by James J. Kimble, a professor at Seton Hall University. Early in World War II Parker was working in a U.S. Navy machine shop in California when a photographer decided to use her as the subject of a wartime labor poster. It featured a young woman in a red bandana making a fist as she rolls up the sleeve of her blue denim work shirt. Captioned "We Can Do It!" the poster was used exclusively as a morale-building tool in the Westinghouse Electric Corporation Plants that were involved in wartime production. The image of Naomi Parker Fraley as Rosie the Riveter has become an icon of the women's movement in America. Her family made its home in the state of Washington for several decades. She remained there until she died on January 20, 2018.

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Dianna Everett (Oklahoma Historical Society)

February 

Raymonde de Laroche (22 August 1882 – 18 July 1919)

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In 1909, while the Baroness Raymonde de Laroche was dining with Charles Voisin, he suggested that she learn to fly an airplane. Her new ambition took her to the French flying grounds at Chalons where she was taught by Voisin himself. On March 8, 1910 she received the first pilot's license awarded to a woman. She entered the 1910 Reims meet as the only female participant and was seriously injured in a crash. After a lengthy recovery, she went on to win the Femina Cup for a nonstop flight of four hours. In 1919, the Baroness set a women's altitude record of 4,785 meters (15,700 feet). In the summer of 1919, de Laroche, who was also a talented engineer, reported to the airfield at Le Crotoy to copilot a new aircraft in hopes of becoming the first female test pilot. Unfortunately, the aircraft went into a dive on its landing approach and both the Baroness and the pilot were killed. A statue of de Laroche stands at Le Bourget airport in France.

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(National Air and Space Museum Smithsonian)

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