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Rhea Woltman
Inducted 2008
Rhea Hurrle Allison Woltman grew up in central Minnesota and attended
St. Cloud Teacher’s College. But she always wanted to fly,
so after just a couple of years of teaching in a one-room schoolhouse,
she moved to Texas and started training as a pilot. Starting with
her first plane, a Piper J3, Woltman progressed from a private
pilot to a commercial pilot, then earned her rating as an instructor
for flying airplanes by instrument. Woltman eventually attained
her C-plane rating for airplanes with floats and her rating as
a glider pilot. She flew competitively, and she also completed
one of the major flights of the era for women, a solo flight from
Houston to Anchorage in a Piper Super Cub with floats.
In the early 1960s, the United States was engaged in The Space
Race. Woltman was working as a charter pilot in Houston, having
already logged almost 2,000 flight hours. She was tapped as one
of the women to undergo testing to participate in the secret Mercury
project, submitting to the same rigorous medical and physical tests
as her male counterparts, from sensory deprivation to weightless
training to scuba certification. Woltman and 12 other women pilots
became the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATS), now known as
the Mercury 13. Woltman was prepared and eager to undertake space
flight, but the Mercury 13 never reached their goal. The U.S. government
shut down the women’s program without their ever being able
to fly a space mission, but these women led the way for other American
women to travel into space. In 2007, the University of Wisconsin
conferred on Woltman and the remaining Mercury 13 astronauts an
Honorary Doctorate in Aeronautics, honoring them as pioneers in
aviation history.
Woltman moved to Colorado Springs in the early 1970s, where she
did glider training and towing for Air Force Academy cadets at
the Black Forest Glider Port. She grounded herself in order to
participate in her husband’s business. Her interest in parliamentary
procedure led her to become a professional Registered Parliamentarian,
the highest level of proficiency in the field. She was the first
parliamentarian for the U.S. Olympic Committee and has served many
other organizations across the country as parliamentarian, including
the Colorado Association of Hospital Auxiliaries. |
