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Afterword: Finding Phoebe
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
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- 139 Afterword FINDING PHOEBE Phoebe Omlie came into my life in 1994. I had no sooner begun my new job as assistant professor of history at the University of Memphis when a colleague, who had noted from my resume that I had a private pilot’s license as well as an abiding interest in the history of women, told me that the control tower at Memphis International Airport had been named for a woman. I was just finishing up a very large project, a biography of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, to which I had devoted nearly ten years of graduate and postgraduate work. Looking for a smaller project with which to take a breather from the heavy lifting of academic study, I found this one intriguing : a nice local story to produce a small, engaging book. As I began to look for information on Phoebe, I found newspaper clippings in the Memphis Public Library covering, for the most part, her early barnstorming days, a bit of information about some work in government during the New Deal, and her death in Indianapolis in 1975. The Memphis Airport had a few items in a tiny museum under the stairs in the main terminal : some yellowed newspaper clippings, a couple of trophies, the leather bit she held in her teeth as she twirled in the slipstream of a plane. There - 140 Afterword was no indication that the control tower was named for her, and no one seemed to know anything about it. The Pink Palace Museum had a small display as well: more yellowed clippings, a couple of trophies, a small model airplane, her pilot’s license and that of her husband, Vernon. Intriguing tidbits to be sure, but hardly the stuff of biography. I posted a query on an internet listserv for historians interested in women in the military and other nontraditional occupations. I received a few responses from scholars suggesting I check archives in several areas of the country. A few listed publications that might be helpful. Several months after the posting, I got a telephone call from a screenwriter, Patrick Pidgeon, who hoped to make a movie about her life. After being assured that my project would not compete with his, he generously offered to share his research with me. His gift of a large spiral-bound folder filled with photocopies provided me with a very useful chronology and overview of Phoebe’s accomplishments. The documents were a revelation. This was not a small, local story. This was the story of a woman of spirit, courage, and national importance. I traveled to Minnesota where Phoebe began her aviation career. The Minneapolis Public Library had some clippings and a handful of photographs . The Minnesota Historical Society supplied some pages from her high school yearbook. Phoebe had been inducted into the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame in 1988. I visited the facility and photographed the plaque, but my research was not much enhanced. From there I headed for the Quad Cities (Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa; Moline and Rock Island, Illinois) in search of records from the Mono Aircraft Company. From what I had learned, Phoebe was a sales representative for the company when she took up air racing in their signature Monocoupe in the late 1920s. I figured if I could find the company records, I would learn a bit more about Phoebe and her connection with them. At the Quad Cities airport, decorated with a restored Monocoupe suspended from the ceiling, I was granted access to some “old papers” in the basement, where I found some company files, specifications, advertising copy, and the like. Between those records and a trip to the library to peruse the microfilm of the Moline Dispatch for the years Phoebe was active locally, I got a pretty good handle on Phoebe’s activities with the Mono-Aircraft Corporation. Things were looking up. With the information I’d gathered, I was able to piece together a brief overview of her life. While it lacked scholarly authority, it was liberally embellished with descriptions of airborne stunts, serious crack-ups, and pithy quotes. In an effort to find people who had once known her or known of [54.144.233.198] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:00 GMT) - 141 Afterword her, I offered free talks to any local group that would have me. At one such talk, a woman came forward with a battered pewter loving cup. On the side was etched: “Presented...