Marion Rice Hart: Adventurous Aviatrix
At Age 74, First Woman to Make Solo Transatlantic Flight
Jul 19, 2008
U. S. Radar picked up an unidentified plane approaching Cuba. Jets were dispatched to escort it to Key West. Police surrounded the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza. “Jeez, will you get a look at the pilot, she’s a little old lady,” said an officer.
Marion Defied Stereotyping
Pilot Marion Rice Hart, 83, didn’t like being called “little old lady” or “flying grandmother”. She also was insulted when people asked why she didn’t act her age.
Editors, wanting to title her book “With a Powder Puff in My Cockpit”, met with disdain. The 1953 book was titled I Fly As I Please.
Marion grew up in an unusual household where members did what they pleased. Her father, Isaac Rice, was a prominent railroad lawyer and successful entrepreneur.
Marion and five siblings experienced a confusion of luxury hotels, transatlantic voyages, revolving tutors, harried servants and disbelieving neighbors. Marion packed light for family European tours, seldom with spare underwear. She said it complicated her life. Marion later designed a dress for all occasions—sack-like, drip dry, with hue zippered pockets for passports and flight manuals. She also patched holes in threadbare sneakers with rhinestone buttons.
A Counter Culture Individual
She had much in common with Lady Jack Lang , the first woman airplane passenger. Both were considered counter culture. After graduating in 1913 with M.I.T.’s first chemical engineering degree earned by a woman, she became a physicist, artist, author, sculptress, surveyor, sailor, short-wave operator and copper mine worker. She also wrote a book on celestial navigation.
Marion had a short-lived, childless marriage with Arizona copper miner Arthur Hart. After Fifth Avenue mansions and European castles, home on the range became more horror than heaven. Marriage, mining and Hart were more than Marion bargained for.
Flying Her First Love
Marion started flying in 1946 at age 54. She first made ocean crossings with copilots, but after completing her first solo crossing at age 74, decided she didn’t need them. “They just take up room,” she said. “If you have a copilot who is better than you, then you are just a passenger; if he is not as good as you, then he is just a nuisance.”
Her conclusion: “If the plane is already overloaded, there is no reason to add another 160 pounds.”
She carried her extra weight in gasoline and had a 2,300-mile range good enough to detour around bad weather.
Never Lost, Only “Mislaid”
“I can’t say I was ever so frightened I was hysterical, but things happened.," Marion said. Her wings’ spar cracked in flight, but the wings didn’t fall off until she was on the ground. She once lost radio contact between Ceylon and Pakistan. Close calls? “Nothing fatal,” she responds.
Marion claimed she was never lost…just “mislaid”. She made her last solo transatlantic flight at age 83.
Why had U. S. radar picked up her plane approaching Cuba and sent a military escort? Because Mexican authorities failed to file her flight plan!
(This article is based upon family material, Marion's 1953 book and an article in the Jan. 13, 1975 issue of Sports Illustrated.)
