Santa’s Elves worked overtime, and for Christmas I got the very best gift…a NEW and BEAUTIFUL website! I hope you find it easier to navigate and enjoy as much as I do.
Huge thank you to the generous and talented Elves!!
We are in the last few days of the old year, heading into the new one. It is a time of letting go of the old and welcoming the new. Whether we do this with resolutions, meditation, rituals or just taking stock…some changes are bound to happen. Maybe you want to find your wings and fly – literally or figuratively? Whatever you welcome into the new year, I hope you follow some dreams and let go of some old baggage. I plan to do just that.
This woman was more on the literal side with the wings. I found her story amazing and amusing in equal amounts. Certainly she had talent, ambition, and marched to the beat of her own drum!
Bessica Faith Medlar was born in Wisconsin on April 23, 1875. Her father, James, owned a photography studio where her mother, Elizabeth, also worked. When her parents divorced, the year is uncertain, Bessica opened her own photography studio. She graduated from Rockford High School in 1894 and went to France to study painting. While in France, she witnessed the Wright Brothers demonstrating their flying machine to rapturous crowds. It was also the time when Raymonde de la Roche was in the news for her aviation feats. Bessica Raiche was greatly impressed by Raymonde and decided that she too would take to the air as soon as possible.
In 1897, Bessica returned to Wisconsin and worked as a dental assistant for Dr. C.J. Sowle. Bessica was an accomplished artist, athlete, musician, linguist, and still thinking about flying. She was involved in many activities not considered acceptable for a woman of the day, such as swimming and shooting. She was unapologetically a “new” woman, wearing bloomers and driving an automobile. Though women were beginning to be recognized as individuals in their own right, people still believed flying was socially inappropriate for females–on a par with smoking, drinking, dancing and whatever else was deemed immoral.
In 1900, Bessica entered Tufts Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1903 with a medical degree. She received special training in obstetrics and worked at Staten Island Children’s Hospital for a year. The following year she opened her own general practice in Massachusetts using the name Faith C. Medlar, M.D. That same year she married Francois “Frank” C. Raiche, the son of a French immigrant, an attorney, and a member of the New York Aeronautical Society. The couple had one daughter.
After a few years, Bessica and Jack built airplanes in their summer home which was near the aviation activities in Mineola, N.Y. Their first plane was assembled in their living room, using a grand piano as a workbench. They painstakingly built the various parts of a biplane they designed, which resembled a Wright Flyer. Their design space was their living room, and the grand piano was their workbench.Their The workshop was their backyard, where assembly was completed. Since they couldn’t get a powerful enough engine, they used bamboo and silk, rather than the heavier canvas favored by the Wright Brothers, to keep the weight of the biplane as low as possible. For the same reason, they decided that Bessica rather than François would pilot the machine because she was the lighter of the two.
When it was ready for final construction, they had to remove the front of the house to get it out. The biplane had a length of 28 feet, 6 inches (8.687 meters) and a wingspan of 33 feet (10.058 meters). An engine built by C.M. Crout, which produced approximately 30 horsepower, powered it. On September 15, 1910, they completed the first plane. No one has determined the exact time when they replaced the front of the house.
On September 16, 1910, at Hempstead Plains, New York, Jessica made her first solo flight. The couple decided she would pilot the plane because she weighed the least. Bessica was a woman of many accomplishments, but she had no experience with aviation. A mechanic who pointed to the control wheel and said, “Pull it this way to go up and push that way to go down gave her only lesson.” She took off and skimmed over the airfield a few feet off the ground. The fifth flight of the day ended in a mishap that definitely qualified as the first aircraft crash by a woman.The evening edition of the Knoxville Sentinel reported: “Mrs Raiche came out on the field this morning for an initial trial, which with beginners, consists of what is known as ‘grass cutting’ or skimming the field. She had gone perhaps a mile when suddenly she ran into a depression and came to grief. The nose of the machine was jammed into the ground. Mrs Raiche was thrown out, the machine falling on top of her. She scrambled out from under the wreck and ran, limping somewhat, to shut off her motor, which was still running at full speed. The machine was damaged.” Another newspaper added: “She calmly said she was not injured to those who ran to her aid and then she directed the men to drag the wrecked plane back to the shed.” Well, that didn’t go very well!
Later, Bessica and Frank formed the French-American Airplane Company and constructed several more aircraft. One was Bessica’s design, which she flew herself. Two weeks earlier, on September 2, 1910, Blanche Stuart Scott had also made a solo flight in an airplane while under instruction of Glenn Hammond Curtiss at his school at Hammondsport, New York. Scott was practicing taxiing to familiarize herself with the airplane and its controls. Curtiss had rigged the throttle to prevent it from advancing far enough for the airplane to take off. However, possibly because of a wind gust, the airplane became airborne, and Blanche Scott is recognized as the first American woman to fly solo in an airplane.
The Aeronautical Society of America credits Bessica Raiche with the first intentional solo flight, however. The society awarded her a gold medal studded with diamonds and inscribed The First Woman Aviator in America.
In 1912 she formed the first women’s only pilot’s introduction course, but because of ill health, Bessica moved to California and returned to her work as a medical doctor with the Orange County Medical Association. She was a well-respected physician who specialized in obstetrics and gynecology. And served as chairperson of the Orange County Medical Association.She also worked with public health problems, tuberculosis, and children’s welfare.
