Phoebe and Vernon Omlie: From Barnstormers to Aviation Innovators

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Emboldened by the critical acclaim her feat commanded, Fairgrave and Vernon Omlie set off on a barnstorming tour. As the tour progressed, so did their romantic liaison. Although it was a constant struggle to make ends meet in the frenetic world of 1920s aviation, they had, in the vernacular of the time, ‘gotten mashed’ on each other. In early 1922 they married.

Omlie was a lean and lanky aviator who had served in the Army Air Corps in World War I and was highly thought of by his colleagues. His pilot’s license was signed by no less an aviation notable than Orville Wright. He was skillful, careful and very steady.

As the barnstorming tour expanded, he and Phoebe took on another pilot as partner — Glenn Messer, an established barnstormer from Des Moines.

Vernon insisted on planning and practicing every stunt over and over on the ground before they performed it in the air.Theirs was one of the first teams to transfer a ‘beautiful young girl’ from one plane to another while both were flying a mile above ground. Vernon found a barn in Iowa with a long runway from front to back where they could practice the stunt. They rigged a trapeze from the roof, in the middle of the runway, so that when Messer hung by his knees from it, his hands would be at the same height as Phoebe’s when she stood on the seat of a buggy on the ground.

After Phoebe and Messer became comfortable with the necessary handclasps and movements required for her to transfer safely from the buggy seat to the trapeze, Vernon attached horses to the buggy and slowly approached Messer, who was hanging from the trapeze. He gradually increased the speed of the buggy until Phoebe and Messer could make the change smoothly even when the horses were at a gallop.

The first time they tried it in the air, Messer hung from the axle of the upper plane. But that clearly brought the plane’s propeller much too close to Phoebe. They solved the problem by hanging a rope ladder from the axle, which allowed Phoebe and Messer to climb into the receiving plane after the transfer.

As Charles E. Planck wrote in his book Women With Wings, ‘This act became one of their most spectacular and caused many a yokel to sunburn his tonsils watching it.’ The daring stunt was originally perfected for movie makers, who were looking for such acts to provide ever greater thrills for motion picture fans. Early on, Phoebe began a series of speaking engagements at the Princess Theater in Memphis, describing her life in aviation and in the movies. Her stunts soon helped make Pearl White famous in such 20th Century Fox films as The Perils of Pauline.

In the 1920s, barnstorming was perceived — very much as movie stardom was in the ’30s and ’40s — as an instant ticket to wealth, fame and adulation. Thus, many were called, but few were chosen. In reality, most barnstormers found slim pickings in the wealth department. And the rewards were certainly not commensurate with the risks involved.

Vernon and Phoebe suffered their share of financial woes. Once a hotel owner in a small Illinois town even impounded Phoebe’s luggage during a tour while they scrounged for money to pay the bill. Somehow they managed to keep going.

The format was simple. They would follow the country fair circuit through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois, going south as the weather cooled, eventually ending on the Gulf Coast. An advance man would precede them, prevailing on local merchants to let them install posters in their shop windows touting the flying circus. The quid pro quo was a free airplane ride for the cooperating merchants.

There was no realistic way the Omlies could charge admission to watch Phoebe perform her high jinks in the sky. But by the time most people saw that slip of a girl dancing the Charleston, hanging by her teeth or changing planes in midair, hundreds of feet above ground, the public was hooked. Most were also eager to pay handsomely for the thrill of an airplane ride, during which they could see their own homes from high in the sky.

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Tags: Adventurers & Trail Blazers, Aviation History, Women's History

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