Cover of The 99 News, December 1982 Courtesy of the Ninety-Nines

On November 2, 1929, at Curtiss Airfield in Valley Stream, NY, 26 female licensed pilots, mostly from the East Coast, gathered to form the Ninety-Nines, an organization dedicated to support and advance women in aviation. Famed aviator Amelia Earhart, the first president of the Ninety-Nines, came up with the name in honor of the 99 charter members. Membership was initially open only to women with pilot licenses, but was been opened up to women with student pilot certificates toward the end of the 20th century. Almost 95 years since its founding, the Ninety-Nines has about 7,000 members in 44 countries.

The Ninety-Nines headquarters moved to Oklahoma in 1955, renting office space at the Will Rogers Airport until the organization built and moved into a one-story building on airport grounds in 1975. “As the organization became more formal, there was always a desire to have a museum,” explained Lisa Cotham, chair of the board of trustees. “We have always had historical documents and other artifacts.” The new HQ was the catalyst to establish a museum.

From its beginning, the organization has been collecting materials from members, including scrapbooks and other personal items; the Ninety-Nines’ business records; issues of the organization’s magazine, the Ninety-Nines; records from chapters; oral histories from chapters in California, Arizona, and Nevada; and memorabilia.

When the HQ opened its permanent location, the museum’s single room served as a resource center, which contained display cases of materials, and as a storage facility for all the materials collected from members. But as the organization grew, it needed more space to display and store its collections. In the 1980s, the Ninety-Nines began fundraising to build a second story to house its archives and library. Two California members, Claire Walters and C.J. Strawn, helped lead the charge to formally create the museum in the 1990s, advocating and fundraising to build out the museum. The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots opened its doors to the public in 1999.

Today, the Ninety-Nines International Headquarters and Museum, with its library and archives, continue to grow. In 1988, the headquarters moved into the two-story building across the courtyard. Now the headquarters has moved back into the original one-story building, and the museum/library will take over the two-story building, scheduled to reopen in fall 2024.

THERE FROM THE BEGINNING

The majority of the Ninety-Nines library and archive, with its 373 (and counting) individual collections, focuses on materials from 1929 to the present, with some items from women pilots dating to the birth of aviation at the beginning of the 20th century.

Though women have been involved in the history of flight from its start, their contributions are often not as well-known as those of the men. Wilbur and Orville Wright first successfully flew an airplane in 1903, but fewer people may know that their sister, Katharine Wright, played a significant role in their success. She took on three jobs to financially support the Wright Brothers as they developed their aircraft, managed their writing and communications, helped publicize their accomplishments, acted as a representative for the Wright Company, and nursed Orville back to health after he was injured, among other accomplishments. The earliest pieces in the collection are from Matilde Moisant (1878–1964), the second woman to get a pilot’s license, in 1911—a photo of her in a corduroy flying suit with double-breasted jacket and leather helmet.

When asked why the Ninety-Nines library and archives are important, Cotham said, “Even today, in 2024, there is still a fair amount of discrimination against women in this male-dominated field, and the accomplishments of women are not necessarily being recognized. We have an opportunity to document those achievements and tell the story of women in aviation.”

AMELIA EARHART AND BEYOND

Amelia Earhart’s 20 Hrs., 40 Min.: Our Flight in the Friendship Photo by Museum Manager Brandy Ball

The Ninety-Nines collection features many personal and professional items that belonged to Amelia Earhart—a hands-on president who stepped into the role in 1931, said Cotham. Items include Earhart’s correspondence with other members, offering plane rides to meetings and reassuring members that the organization was not trying to take over the world or push men out of aviation, and several autographed copies of her 1928 book 20 Hrs. 40 Min.: Our Flight in the Friendship , including a recording about Amelia Earhart talking about her flight. Personal items include locks of Earhart’s hair, her lucky elephant skin bracelet (which she did not take with her on her final flight), photographs, plaques, certificates, and items given to her.

Thirty-three boxes of materials were donated by aviation historian Harold Glenn Buffington (1917–2008), who had a lifelong interest in flight—Nora White, a member of the Ninety-Nines, took him on his first flight at age 14. He served as a flight radio operator during World War II and spent his career at Boeing Company. When Buffington retired in 1980, he continued flying, as well as researching and publishing articles on aviation history with a focus on women’s aviation, thanks to that initial flight with White. Throughout his life, Buffington corresponded with women pilots, clipped newspaper items, and collected relevant books, which he donated to the Ninety-Nines at the end of his life.

The Jacqueline Cochran collection spotlights the life of another renowned aviator and past president of the Ninety-Nines. Cochran (1906–80) flew transport during World War II in the British Air Transport Auxiliary and served as the first director of the U.S. Women Auxiliary Service Pilots (WASPs). In 1953, she was the first woman to break the sound barrier.

Cochran also financially supported the “Mercury 13,” also known as the First Lady Astronaut Trainees, in which women pilots took similar medical and physical tests as the Mercury Seven, the group of astronauts selected to fly spacecraft for Project Mercury, to demonstrate that women could qualify as astronauts. The program never got off the ground, however, and it was not until 1983 that Sally K. Ride became the first American woman to go to space. Cochran’s collection contains 14 boxes, including her first logbook, correspondence, photos, and other ephemera.

In addition to these special collections, the library and archives hold almost every issue of the Ninety-Nines, which began as a newsletter in 1929 and continues to publish bimonthly. The archive also holds many of the organization’s founding documents from the 1920s, such as correspondence from original members giving advice on how the Ninety-Nines should be structured.

Until Earhart assumed the role, the Ninety-Nines had no official president. Instead, there were three acting presidents and a significant amount of infighting. As the organization was working to choose a president, one of the nominees died in a flight accident. “One of the others took it upon herself to substitute her name and administer the election,” said Cotham, “to which the other attendees objected.” In an 11-page note from March 1930, taken by an unnamed secretary, Cotham noted, “You can see the jealousy.” The election did not take place until 1931, when Earhart became the Ninety-Nines’ first president.

KEEPING THE HISTORY ALIVE

Researchers and scholars have used the Ninety-Nines library and archives for a variety of projects, including journalist Martha Ackman’s The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight , and University of Memphis Professor of History Janann Sherman’s Walking on Air: The Aerial Adventures of Phoebe Omlie . Omlie (1902–75), a pioneering aviator who performed in the Phoebe Fairgrave Flying Circus, would be dubbed by the press “second only to Amelia Earhart among America’s women pilots,” and was appointed by President Roosevelt to be Special Assistant for Air Intelligence of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Former Mercury 13 participant and former Ninety-Nines President Gene Nora Jessen (1937–2024) researched several books about women in U.S. aviation history, including two on the first transcontinental air race for women, The Powder Puff Derby of 1929 and Sky Girls: The True Story of the First Women's Cross-Country Air Race. Louise Thaden and Omlie won the inaugural race in 1929.

The museum’s “Traveling Trunk,” a footlocker filled with flight-related objects and age-appropriate worksheets, is mailed to schools and then returned. Currently the program is specific to Oklahoma schools, which can reach out by phone or email to request it. A high school student from Goshen, IN, used the online collection and interviewed then-president Martha Phillips to research a project on Amelia Earhart for Women’s History Month, and convinced her high school marching band to dedicate a halftime show, featuring a recording of her conversation with Phillips, to the aviator.

Through the Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarships and Awards, the Ninety-Nines not only funds scholarships for flight training, but offers Research Scholarship Grants for scholars. Recently, grant recipient Gretchen Jahn researched and assembled a web page about the Powder Puff Derby for the website of the Air Classic Derby, another organization dedicated to women in aviation that runs an annual cross-country air race. The microsite covers the Powder Puff Derby from 1947 to 1977.

Once the Ninety-Nines finishes the expansion of the museum and library, the organization plans to identify and include women outside the United States, particularly in places where pilots have difficulty accessing flight schools and need to travel for training, said Cotham.

People interested in using the collection should reach out to the museum by phone, at (405) 685-9990, or email, at museum@ninety-nines.org. A fee schedule for research and duplication can be found here.