WOMEN FLIERS REUNITE IN CAPE

Fifty years ago, the aviation industry devised a cross-country race to prove that small airplanes were safe.

"The race was for women, because if a woman could do it, anyone could do it," said Lois Feigenbaum, a pilot from Berryman, a town near Potosi.

Although the race was designed as a proving ground for airplanes radios and engines, it has become a proving ground for female pilots.

Some of those female pilots met Saturday for a reunion of the 1966 race, which stopped in Cape Girardeau, and the club that made that stopover possible.

The Cape Girardeau Area Chapter of the Ninety-Nines, an international club, named for the 99 women who showed up for the first organizational meeting in 1929, is for women pilots only. Amelia Earhart was its first president.

The club arranged a stopover here for the annual race in 1966, in hopes of generating interest in Cape Girardeau aviation.

Millie Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau, who was a pilot at the time, was chairman of the Cape Girardeau stop of the coast-to-coast race, called the Powder Puff Derby.

Bands played, the mayor made a speech and residents provided free meals and lodging for the pilots. That fall, an airport bond issue passed by a wide margin. Some of the navigational equipment purchased still is in use.

The local chapter of the Ninty-Nines is still active, though small, and encouraging women to consider piloting.

"None of us are women libbers," Feigenbaum said. "We don't have to be. We can just show our credentials."

Today, as in the 1940s, female pilots are considered something of an oddity. Men outnumber women in the cockpit, but women are making up ground thanks to doors opened by women like those attending the reunion.

Feigenbaum was the first woman to learn to fly in Southern Illinois. Today, major airlines are looking to hire women and all-female cockpit crews are possible. "Years ago, that just wasn't even considered," she said.

In 1945, Dorothy Miles of Cape Girardeau learned to fly. She studied civil air regulations, navigation and meteorology for her own pilot's license, then turned around and taught soldiers at Cape Girardeau's airport those same skills.

A woman teaching war-hardened soldiers was certainly an unusual in the 1940s. Today, female flight instructors are common.

Now that doors are opening to women pilots, these aviation pioneers are proving that age isn't a barrier either. Margaret Ringenberg, 74, of Ft. Wayne piloted her plane to a third place victory in this year's Air Race Classic, the new name for the Powder Puff Derby with Feigenbaum as her co-pilot.

Ringenberg, 74, was the keynote speaker at Saturday's reunion. She piloted a race around the world in 1994.

She didn't win, but finishing was victory enough for this veteran pilot. She has logged over 40,000 hours, including flight time ferrying aircraft to Europe during World War II.

But during the round-the-world race in 1994, she was the oldest racer. When she and her co-pilots, women aged 60 and 69, stepped out of their plane during an unscheduled stop on a Tunis airstrip, soldiers insisted that the pilot come out of the plane. They couldn't believe these three women were flying the plane.

News media around the world kept asking the same question: "Aren't you tired?" No tired than the other pilots was her reply.

And her enthusiasm for flying remains strong, as does the enthusiasm of other members of the Ninty-Nines.

"I love flying," Feigenbaum said. "It's my life."