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| At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian Magazine
When the National Air and Space Museum reopens October 14, Geraldine Mock’s Cessna 180 soars in the new exhibition, &quot,We All Fly&quot,
Who Was the First Woman to Fly Solo Around the World? Between March 19 and April 17, 1964, Geraldine Jerrie" Mock (above: at the start of her journey at Ohio's Port Columbus Airport) flew her single-engine Cessna 180, dubbed "Charlie," solo around the globe setting a world record. NASM 2007-10125, photo by Sheldon Ross, Columbus Dispatch.

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Looking back, Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock might have said these were the things she preferred: a double shot of scotch over a bouquet of orchids. Pants instead of a skirt. And a trip around the world where she could’ve taken her own sweet time taking in the sights, instead of staring at the ceiling of a hotel, trying to sleep in preparation for her next flight. Mock is the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world alone. During and after her ground-breaking 22,860-mile flight in 1964, the barely five-foot-tall pilot set 21 world records. “Just nobody else had the sense—or shall I say, the stupidity—to try it,” Mock told Air & Space magazine just before she died at the age of 88 in 2014. “There were women who told me that they flew because of me. I’m glad I did what I did, because I had a wonderful time.” The mid-1960s was a time when few women worked outside of the home, much less climbed into the seat of an airplane, so Mock, the 38-year-old mother of three with her fashionably coiffed curls, became known in the press as “The Flying Housewife.” Her goal was huge, after all, she was attempting a feat similar to what had led to the 1937 disappearance and subsequent death of the famed aviator Amelia Earhart. Mock hadn’t set out in search of fame, or even to redefine societal expectations, according to her granddaughter, the author Rita Mock-Pike, who is now telling Mock’s story in a one-woman show that is touring this fall. “She didn’t believe anyone should be kept back from their dreams,” says Mock-Pike, who remembers her grandmother as an avid storyteller. “It was her way of rebelling against society and saying, ‘No, you don’t get to tell me or anyone else who we are… If I could do this, anyone can do anything.’” On October 14, when the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum reopens to visitors, Mock’s red and white Cessna 180 will hold pride of place in the new “Thomas W. Haas We All Fly” gallery, which explores the influence of general aviation on society, including in sports, business and humanitarian endeavors. “Geraldine Mock never doubted that she could do it,” says Dorothy Cochrane, the museum’s curator of general aviation. “That was what seems so unusual, because she seemed like a quiet, retiring housewife. Nobody knew that she had all this in her, and she just did it.” To Mock, at least at first, her month-long flight was just about “having fun.” The National Air and Space Museum's new exhibition "We All Fly" (above: behind the scenes as the gallery is readied for its October 14 debut) is soon to showcase how aviation influences society across sports, business and humanitarian efforts and features Mock's Cessna 180. NASM. Three-Eight Charlie: 1st Woman to Fly Solo Around the World. Three-Eight Charlie is the story of Jerrie Mock’s record-setting flight as the first woman to solo around the world in 1964 in a single-engine Cessna 180. It’s an insightful and well written account that includes intrigue and heroism, and discusses the cultures and geography of the world at the time. This book is a great read for aviation enthusiasts as well as young people, and anyone with big dreams. Jerrie Mock’s childhood. Born in 1925, Mock grew up during the Great Depression, when the expectation was marriage and family. For women, life ended there, says Mock-Pike. When she was seven, her father took her on a airplane ride in a Ford TriMotor. Looking down at the fields and streams below, Mock instantly knew that she was going to be a pilot, her sister Susan Reid recalled in the podcast Ohio v. the World . From that moment on, Mock declared that she had three dreams: she would ride a camel. She was going to see the pyramids in Egypt. And she would ride an elephant. At the Ohio State University, she became the only woman in her aviation engineering class. At first, the other men looked down on her, that is until she scored the only perfect grade on a difficult chemistry exam. In 1945, she left college to marry Russell Mock, and the couple would soon have three children—Roger, Gary and Valerie. But she was bored. “I’m just a housewife. I get tired of washing dishes and ironing clothes,” Mock told the Washington Record-Herald in 1964. She found other ways to keep herself occupied. In the 1960s, she produced the television series "Youth Has Its Say," where she helped teenagers parse through current events, says Mock-Pike. She also became the writer and director of Opera Preludea , indulging her love for music in a weekly radio show that preceded broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. In the 1960s, Jerrie Mock produced the television series "Youth Has Its Say." Courtesy of Rita Mock-Pike. Still, she needed something else. So while her sons were at school, she began taking flying lessons, and soon, she and her husband both were licensed to fly. They purchased the Cessna 180, naming it Spirit of Columbus after their Ohio hometown. Before long, Mock dubbed the aircraft “Charlie,” derived from its registration number N1538C, “Three-Eight Charlie” and the aviation alphabet code word for ‘C.’ “When she talked about Charlie, it wasn't the plane, it was Charlie. And he had his own personality in her mind,” says Mock-Pike. “It was as if Charlie was her friend and partner, this personality, this essence.” How to fly around the world. One evening at dinner, while talking to her husband about how she thought her life should be more exciting, Russell Mock replied: “Why don't you just get on the plane and fly around the world?” “Alright, I will,” she said. The idea was at first a joke, but two years later, Mock was obtaining permissions and visas, charting flight paths, and working through a long checklist of items in preparation, including clearing foreign sanctions and getting permission from the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) in order to be considered the official record-bearer for circumnavigating the globe, says Cochrane.













Single women around the world