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Roger, podcast 005 is rolling. Welcome to Females and Aviation Past and Present. We are here today with Mary Latimer, who's a many-faceted aviation career, just keeps on giving. Welcome, Mary.
Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. And also with us today is Mary's daughter, Tamara, who has followed in mom's footsteps and welcome to you, Tamara. Thank you, my pleasure.
Okay, Mary, I understand that you started learning to fly in 1970. It's exactly the same year I started. And by 1973, you were utilizing your private pilot's license to AMP school 50 miles away. Tell us about that.
Well, I got my first airplane ride when I met my house. I was in the house. I was in the house from now after that. By 1970, 72, I got in soloed and went to have you and then went in business by and selling, flying, doing whatever.
And someone needed to be an anti-mechanic. And so it was logical for me to be the one to quit my job and go to AMP school. Very good. So you did that as almost a financial thing, rather than having to hire an outside mechanic.
You went and learned it yourself. Exactly. And what was that like? I understand you were the only woman in your class.
What was that like back then? I was only woman in the school. 125 students and I was the token female. You know, when I did find in school, I was not what I call mechanically inclined.
When I went there, I had virtually zero knowledge. I didn't know the difference between a cylinder and a carburetor, hardly. So going into school, my pre-test scores were a trope, ultimately, I made the highest point of flight embarrassment to them. They wouldn't let the newspaper print that.
Oh, they wouldn't. No, they didn't want to embarrass the guys. You know, I've experienced that like being women. We just know we have to work twice as hard and we end up really shining.
Yes. And the funny part was the instructor, I didn't find out so much, much later, but the instructor had a betting pool going on how long I would last. Oh, they didn't think you'd graduate. No, I don't think any of them gave me more than a couple of weeks and I graduated on time.
Good for you. That's a great story. And how did your career progress from there? Well, as I became a mechanic and I was going to school, I was continuing to fly.
So when I had graduated from AMP school in May of 74, that same summer I got my flight instructor and I'd already got my commercial. So I had the ratings and now it's time to go out and look I turned down for a flight instructor because I didn't think the guys would accept a female instructor corporate jobs because the owner didn't think his wife would understand having a female pilot when they went on overnight trip. I was too short to apply for the airline, family five feet tall, five to six with the minimum. So while I was going to AMP school, the gentleman at the flight service station, we asked him, why don't you talk about becoming a aircraft controller?
Why don't you apply it? It should be great. And that's how that went came into being. And so they were more accepting of women at that time?
Not particularly, but they, you know, it's government so they weren't quite as bold in their discrimination. And you know, Mary, you remind me when I took my flying lessons, I actually worked at an FBO flight school in exchange for my flying lessons. I was a weekend receptionist one day for one hour. But when I finally got through it all and got my CFI, the very school that I had spent two years with would not hire me for the exact same reason.
You just said, oh, I don't think the men would want to fly with you. And that's not seem to be the case. In actual applications, even the guys were the best instructors. They don't care whether they're male, female, green, purple, two feet tall or 10 feet tall.
They just want the best instructor possible. Exactly, exactly. So you did the air traffic control. How long did you do that?
26 years. Wow. Again, 1976 into law in Oklahoma. I was there during the strike in 81 state on the job.
That was interesting times. And in the late 90s, we went through the contract tower program. So basically financial decisions not to lead a lot because I'm hurting my family and my business and everything else going on. So Jason, a little bit bigger paycheck, kind of counterproductive.
So then contracted came around. I had three years left to be able to put my retirement. So obviously I'm not going to walk away from that. So I transferred from one of the lowest level facilities in the United States to Fort Worth Nation, which is one of the busiest VFR towers in the country.
Yeah, what was that transition like for you? Actually, it was kind of interesting because at neat and rotten, you were accustomed to working alone most of the time. So you were, you had to make priorities. It's kind of like phones ringing, someone's calling on, tower frequency, someone's calling on ground control.
It's time to do the weather, somebody needs their clearance, approach control of calling. So you've got a lot of different lines that are demanding your attention. You certainly have to decide who's important and which one do I deal with first. So even though we didn't have the high density, you still had to have a very good sense of prioritizing.
And when I went to Nietzsche, you can go to high density airport so you have a whole lot more people. You're very seldom work alone. You're working, but you're not working flight data and ground control and everything else at the same time. In Nietzsche, we had a radar scope.
It's a lot and I didn't. So I'm not looking out the window. So when the radar was out of service, I'm one of the strongest controllers available because I'm not even used to look at that radar scope. I used to doing it old school.
So you were good at spot in the aircraft coming in. Exactly. It actually wasn't much harder than what in some ways. That's interesting then.
Going to the busier airport because of the extra people and equipment, it wasn't necessarily more stressful for you. Correct. So Tamara, you just, how about you just grew up in the back seat of an airplane? How was that for you and when did you decide to follow in mom's footsteps?
Sometimes I say I didn't have a choice and there's a life. It was going to be an aviation. I was raised in it. I didn't get to leave it.
I know I was old enough to leave it and you take a 12 run outside home. But as I did grow up in the back seat of airplanes, many of her stories, I can follow up and say what it was like in the back seat of that situation. Some of them, I was a young probably remember some of it. But as I know, I'd always been surrounded by aviation.
I was sheltered in a lot of ways, especially with some of the discrimination dynamics that went on. I would say after I had my shoulder in that I had taken time away from aviation during that time that I said, okay, I can be a mechanic anywhere in the world. I can do these things. I may have a life, you know, a short lifespan of being a pilot and probably the only thing I know.
I just want to go back and do that a while. Did you find as you moved away from the safety of working in the family business that you were encountering the same kind of gender bias that your mom had years previously? I did see it. Some of the jobs that even as a mechanic I got were often easier to get a lot of the government contract jobs because they needed to see those minorities and those women.
I was a rare female mechanic that would walk in. I still don't want some kind of discrimination within the workforce. Sometimes they would leave me alone to do a job but normally took to it for people. Usually I had to kind of work hard to find myself and Tina fellas who were not necessarily again working with women when they realized I really didn't know what I was doing.
Sometimes there's an assumption that you know you have a ticket but you somehow didn't do what they had to do to get it. Together I did get it turned down for a couple of piloting jobs, corporate jobs because the owner was afraid that his wife might not like him flying with another female. So nothing much had changed since your mom encountered that. And it was only a six years ago that probably happened.
Isn't that amazing. And now you have a daughter who's also gone into aviation. Is that correct, ma'am? Yes, she is also.
She now a flight instructor in Elk City with the I had a couple more so. Right. Okay. So Mary, you're watching all this.
You've gone through it all in the 70s and then you watch your daughter and then your granddaughter and it kind of impacted you that all this was still happening. You got up and did something about it. Tell us about that. Yes.
Well, I just want to ask my granddaughter Amanda Head of solo. I just want to add to you the sweet water to the women near service pilots review in museum and we went to that. So while we were there, I met a young lady who was flying B1 bombers at the time. She showed my granddaughter and mentioned that granddaughter had just soloed in a B1 her pilot young lady, looks at my granddaughter and says, I am so jealous of you.
It just kind of floored me that why is she jealous of my granddaughter? And because this young lady's like, her parents, her particular mother, refused to allow her to take drawing lessons because she thought it was dangerous. So when the young lady had become, you know, became basically turned 18, she joined the Air Force so that she could become a pilot. And I'm looking at that thinking, wow, girls aren't allowed to do this career for a lot of reasons.
And so I was looking, obviously I'm down near Sweetwater, which had been an all-female flight academy. And I said, hmm, I wonder if that would work in today's world. I wonder if it would make a difference, do we need it? So I said, well, let me try.
I'll just open the door here, put out the blurb, invite some women to come to an all-female flight academy. Maybe same with the dynamics look like and say if we get answers. A bunch of women answered me, they wanted to come, a lot more wanted to come, but first circumstances couldn't. But some of the, kind of divided them up into a handful of categories.
One category of women, it's taken following lessons particularly, and they got caught up in, caught this with instructors, a little bit too touchy, family. Okay. Another comfortable environment when your instructor is, you know, handling the knee or around the shoulder or other even worse, or making commentaries that are highly inappropriate or suggestive of how the flight could end. So, but, you know, probably a lot of that was going on.
And this is still happening. I still get e-mailed. And then I get a number of women. The instructors intentionally tried to scare them, which is always conducive to learning.
You're already a little bit nervous. So you get an airplane with someone. The finishing line is to try and scare you even more than you are. So those weren't very positive environments.
I got to say e-mail from numerous women. Specifically, one was an REM, one was a EPA, one was a lawyer, one was a college student. Basically, it means I went to the ground school and they made me feel like an idiot. Now, when intelligent women are saying they make me feel like an idiot, I know that the idiot is the person conducting the class.
Well said, man. But, you know, and then a lot of women are fearful and they don't understand what's happening. When they stall, thinking stalls, stalling an engine, or stalling your car stall, the engine stall, and how do you get restarted? So this is what they relate to and in airplane.
It's kind of when the number one fears. So you have to explain aerodynamic. Let's say in our ground school, number one volunteer instructors are not such a feeling. Nobody feels like an idiot in my classroom, except maybe chasing me.
But we say, but we address the fears. We deal with them. Like say, whatever's going on, face your head on, deal with it, make it right. That's terrific.
So this was a program that you did all year long at your training facility. Well, actually we started, you know, third year was August of 2011. We chose the date because August first 1911 was when Harriet Swendy became first woman, licensed pilot in the United States. So to honor that, we decided on August, August in Texas with a bad plan because it's just extraordinarily high.
Okay. Nevertheless, the idea was we opened it up for a week. I'm going to donate a week of my time and see if we can identify some of these issues. Then did it in following year in November.
We kept going and since I started it, individuals have felt strongly enough about what I'm doing that they have donated me in your place. Wow. So now all of a sudden my earth needs airplanes are available to women year round and at a very greatly reduced rate. So now we're nearby the fuel.
Wow. And the young lady training here, she's out finally airplane as we speak. She's down here from Alaska building hours for her commercial. Okay.
And that's just on a day to day basis now that you're doing that for whoever wants to come to your facility. Is that correct? Absolutely. During gift week and this year is going to be October 11th through the 17th.
During gift week, I teach ground school for several days. It's a very integrating ground school. Not a specific curriculum. It's a question school from one topic to the other.
Sometimes the topics will shift. So it becomes kind of a different sort of a ground school. But I still teach that ground school. We still have to if we teach in the test, we're giving them real world knowledge.
We actually need to know for this. And then we have the instructors. So during that week, there's no way charge for instructors. The rest of the year, the airplanes are still available.
But we do charge instructor V for the rest of the year. So you're calling this week long camp gift academy? And you have one of these weeks approaching? Yes.
October 11th through 17th. And Tamara, do you come in and instruct for the gift academy? Yes, I do. I do a lot of the coordination for helping the women coordinate ride sharing programs.
And they fly in for a mouse date out of town. So because I'm in the gift area kind of work. All caviation who I work with an independent flight instructor, they have been donating airplane for that week every year. That's the first year.
I've been doing this for us too over time. Well, sure. Well, I'll be in it with your blurb on a Facebook page that actually brought this interview together. So I'm sure you're very important to the cause.
Now, does your daughter help with the gift week as well? She does help. And as far as I know, she plans on being here this year. The job can't take people away.
And you know, we hope it doesn't happen any time soon. Right. Yeah, her boss is one of my former students and he's one of them that donated a mirror point. So he basically promised to have at least four airplanes down here for us to use during gift week.
So I wasn't expecting Amanda to be here, but those are things. That's just great what you what you ladies have pulled together and and Mary, your husband as well as involved in this. Oh, absolutely. He is kind of my linchpin.
He has a uncanny ability to fly with someone for about 15 minutes. And then he can predict what they're going to be accomplishing by the end of the week. Wow. And they're not even flying with him.
How does he feel about being surrounded by all these women pilots all the time? He's just to it. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, we lack of I say, Wilbur County is actually the one place on the planet where the women typically outnumber them in aviation. And that's that's a real upside down ratio compared to real world. So I think your program is responsible for a lot of that, is it not? Oh, yes, absolutely.
And it's come as it comes just week and then they like what they see. And they keep coming back, but quite often they bring their husbands or your boyfriend or they you know, refer male people. So if a white school was looking to increase their business, you think they're eating a week of your time would be expensive, but we are so busy now and they never intended to be this busy. So I would probably expect a double to quadruple in your business if you did a gift week.
So yeah, that week really pays off. Yes. Well, that's the other half of that too is just marketing to women when, you know, it's still as you seem to be that when women trust a company, especially in aviation, trust at a pilot, trust an instructor, trust a white school, this is where they're going to refer their friends to or female or their family that's going to trust their family's life. So Tamara, I'm not going to ask your mind to two their own horns.
So I'm going to ask you to tell us about the awards that were given last year. She was awarded for the Southwest Region FAA Southwest Region, CFI of the Year award, which the AHA was one of the best and we all do consider her to be one of the best, especially when it comes to around school, not just as a designated examiner, but because she can take a student who is struggling with fears or a knowledge and find a way to make it make sense for somebody, not a lot of the way really. So she was definitely very deserving of that award? Yes, yes.
That's the people who have come a long way to come see her in West Texas. I mean, who comes to Alaska or the light one particular person and you know, when Vernon Texas. The other award was actually for a gift academy. It was the AOPA President's Choice Award for the work we've done and then I'll build you all how good we've done our job and our name or gift academy to win that award was very fulfilling and you know, to know that I'm at the course award.
Well, yeah, that award was for the academy, which was a recognition of all of you. And Mary, congratulations so much on the Light Instructor Award. It must feel very fulfilling to have that recognition. Oh, yes, like I said, very humbling and thinking, wow, okay, but definitely very grateful to that and all the students that have basically backed me up and helped me achieve that.
That's a great thing. I want to go over the gift academy one more time. When is the next gift academy? The next gift dates are October 11th through the 17th.
Okay. And there's Sunday through Saturday that way people can travel on the Saturday before and then have the Sunday to go home. So they're supposed to follow me. And that week is for pretty much anyone whether they be a student pilot or someone already rated and looking to advance maybe ad ratings.
Is that correct? Absolutely. Student pilots from zero knowledge, particularly with people that are maybe don't think they have the greatest instructor on the planet or generally they're most of them working on Friday. We do have them working on instrument, occasionally some working on commercial or flight instructor.
Some of them are as attendees sometimes they're not because they wanted to come up piloting or for some reason they have a fear that has never been, you know, if we're asking they just feel the need to overcome this, we love them too. So this week would also be a good week for the say a woman whose husband is a pilot and she's scared to death when she goes to fly with him. And if she went through this week perhaps she'd get more comfortable and know she could land the airplane if she needed to. Absolutely.
No, that's great. You ladies are just doing an amazing thing. I am super impressed. You make me feel lazy.
So the girls and women who are interested in this, what can they do? How do they contact you? You go to the website girlsinflight.org. I believe the phone numbers, everything are on the website there.
They can also go to the Facebook page, get the Academy Girls in flight training. There are still some openings available. We say we still win at the slot. Do you need any volunteers for this year?
We're always looking for good volunteers. They are quite fluid to us. Playing in the instructors and even people who help, you know, just generally help out with clean up and one duty for a ring is everything to us. Very good.
So they could go to that same website. One more thing that's coming back to me right now because Mary, you and I had a phone conversation earlier in the week and you were telling me about the numbers, the ratios between male and female are very different for you than they are on the national average. Tell us about that. When you look at a face website, look at how many people hold a pilot certificate.
When you look at the women, that percentage is 5.28% is the end of 2014. And last year, I issued 90 pilot certificates, 30 of those went to women. So that means my percentage was 33%. Wow.
That is great. And I did put out a challenge to anyone else in the industry within the next two years. If anybody can touch those numbers, there's a thousand dollars in bank that I'll hand it in. Do you think you'll have any takers?
I wish I was kind of like, okay, that might be the best thousand dollars I ever spent. Because you'll be encouraging them to encourage other women to fly. Well, I would suggest that the women kind of look at our website and look at what we're doing, confidence issues, finding flight instructors, those kinds of things. They don't have to come to Vernon, Texas to look at that.
If they contact us, we can give moral support from via email or telephone. So if a lady is struggling and she can't come to, that doesn't mean we can't help her. I'm actually, you know, analyze landing problem issues and currently help because I talked to the lady for a minute now on the telephone one night and she called me up the next day and she had solo the next day because she was able to solve her problem. Wow.
So you're basically volunteering yourself for a telephone consultation for someone who can't make it out there for the academy? Absolutely. That's beautiful Mary. You do that as well tomorrow?
Yeah, I've always known every student. Even if you don't, you know, don't fly with me, feel free to always contact me, you know, if there's something I can help you with, I will. You two ladies are just amazing. You're putting yourself out there as mentors, beautiful mentors for other women.
And then I thank you very much for taking the time to share that. And I hope that this message goes out to a lot of young ladies that will benefit from what you're doing. Yeah, I want to see the percentage of women's pilots hit 10% during my lifetime. Well, you're certainly not sitting back and just waiting for it to happen.
You just, I'm just totally amazed at how you're making that happen, at least in your area. And hopefully some other people will hear this and try some similar programs in other states and other areas. It works. You've proven that.
That's what we would love to know. That's great. That's great. Well, thank you very much.
So I really enjoyed the interview. Music courtesy of Shady Dave at freesong.org 262259.