The basic idea of that law was soon copied by many states, but Tennessee was the first to have it, due in large part to Omlie’s lobbying efforts. A few years later the federal government assumed exclusive responsibility for pilot training.

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In 1941 Phoebe Omlie sold her interest in the business and returned to Washington as a coordinator in the research division of the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA). The CAA and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) cooperated with the Office of Education in the training of airport personnel, preparing the people who handled the planes and performed other work at the airports for the special problems of the flying fields. Omlie’s long experience as a manager and co-manager at Memphis meant that she was eminently qualified to organize these classes. By the end of the year she had started programs in 46 states, through which several hundred men from the ranks of the WPA had been trained.

Eleven years later Omlie resigned, fearing the government’s ever-increasing role in aviation was stifling the industry. She came back to Memphis a far different woman from the vivacious 23-year-old wing-walker who had barnstormed into town back in 1924 along with her pilot husband. After she returned, Phoebe cast about for something to challenge her spirit of enterprise. She bought a cattle ranch in north Mississippi, about as far from aviation as one could get. Her lack of experience was a problem, and after five years of unsuccessful effort at ranching, she traded it for a hotel and cafe in Lambert, Miss., south of Memphis. Sadly, Omlie proved equally inept in that business…or unlucky. Demand for hotel rooms in tiny Lambert was none too great in the late 1950s. She gave up the hotel in 1961 and returned once again to Memphis, this time broke and living off the bounty of friends much of the time. She remained interested in aviation and appalled at the ever-growing federal legislation restricting it.

Omlie had maintained a few press contacts and was able to find a small audience to address in many of mid-America’s cities. For nine years she made sporadic trips to address meetings, usually railing against the CAA. But her audiences continually declined in size, and she made her last speaking trip in 1970 to Indianapolis.

Five years later, on July 17, 1975, Phoebe Omlie died, and her friends arranged for her to be buried beside Vernon at Forest Hill Cemetery, in south Memphis. She had spent her last years in an alcoholic haze in a seedy Indianapolis flophouse, in utter seclusion, refusing to see anyone for any reason, and suffering from lung cancer. She was not to know that the central tower at Memphis International Airport, erected in 1982, would be named to honor her and Vernon.

Ironically, while Phoebe Omlie was being buried in the quiet, green hills of Forest Hill, just a few miles to the southeast entrepreneurs were starting to build a corporation now known throughout the world as Federal Express. When you pass by Memphis International Airport and see all the orange and purple planes parked there, ready to fly around the world, remember Phoebe Omlie, who used to love dancing on aircraft’s wings. Without the Omlies’ contributions to the aviation industry, such a company might not exist today.

This article was written by George T. Wilson and originally published in the June 2002 issue of Aviation History. For more great articles subscribe to Aviation History magazine today!

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