‘Jack’ an interesting woman

I continued to study the vast numbers of women who called Culpeper home, were committed to improving the quality of life in their own community and in many respects became an inspiration to others.

Two striking women come to mind. They were from very different backgrounds but possessed strikingly similar characteristics: determination, resilience, ingenuity, and conviction of spirit.

Let me introduce the older of the two, Edith “Jack” Stearns-Gray. Born in 1891 to a wealthy northern family of Palmers and Stearns, “Jack” as she preferred to be called grew up in Brandy Station at the lovely, historic and prosperous estate known as Farley.

Her father had served the state of Vermont as a Capt. in the Union Army and I bet you can imagine the reception they received upon settling in Brandy Station in the late early 1900s.

“Jack” was an undaunted free spirit, dining with Teddy Roosevelt at the White House; loving horses and refusing to ride sidesaddle but ever mindful of her responsibility to the community in which she lived.

She was a voice for women’s rights and helped steer the suffrage movement in Culpeper. But it was her unquenchable quest for adventure specifically the new age idea of flying that she is most remembered.

It was no place for a woman, but Jack was determined and rarely grasped the meaning of the word “no.”

They tell a delightful story about Jack and her first flying adventure. By 1912, she had already caught the “flying” bug and while in NY she approached a fellow by the name of George Gray, trained as an aviator in the Wright Brothers School of flying. He was in town with an air show when she called him and offered him $50 to take her for a ride. He refused, saying it was too dangerous for a woman and that was not nearly enough money. Jack figured it was the woman thing; she dressed in a masculine-looking riding habit, showed up at the airfield and wrote Gray a check for $50. Later that afternoon she was setting new records as the first woman to fly over the Adirondacks.

George Gray never cashed the check and in 1913, they were married.

She became the first woman from Virginia to ride in an airplane and the first to take off in an airplane from Virginia soil.

Jack had two loves, her aviator husband George Gray and flying. Once married, they became a barn storming duo performing up and down the East Coast in a plane named “Up.” They rarely missed an opportunity to treat Culpeper to their theatrical shows and at one such event; the citizens of Culpeper presented their “air woman” with a splendid silver cup.

WWI called George to service as one of the few trained aviation technicians and Jack returned to Culpeper working for the Red Cross for several years.

Following the war years, George became an aeronautical engineer and airplane salesman and Jack published her memoirs of the first days of aviation. She called her book, “Up,” A True Story of Aviation.

Until next week, be well.

Below is a Web exclusive excerpt from Edith “Jack” Stearns-Gray’s book, “Up.“
During these early days of flying we flew over my old home town of Culpeper, Virginia. One flight I remember particularly, over this El Dorado of magnificent scenery, replete with historical lore. We attempted to fly with poor test gasoline. The airplane could safely carry the aviator but not ‘excess baggage.’ I was determined to go up, because, as the motor hummed for a “get-away” the gate receipts had mounted to a considerable figure, and I did not wish to return the money. I was at the time desirous to help a very ill girl friend at Saranac Lake who had tuberculosis, and I was adamant on making that flight, even if it were only ten feet in the air so I could keep the price of admission legally. She needed immediate funds, and I justified the moral end of it by promising the crowd a longer and higher flight if the one on that day did not satisfy them. Gray finally consented, and said we’d try a “hop.“ That “hop” missed by a narrow margin being a fatal one. I was very foolish, but did not think so at the time.
    We rumbled off across the fair grounds, a much too short run for a safe take-off. We took this chance because it was the only practical place we could get an admission price paid, and as we rose in the air, the engine began to sputter and miss—then suddenly it got “sleeping sickness” and quit altogether. There we were, three hundred feet up, with no possible chance of making it back into the racetrack, a volplaning airplane—and “nowhere to go!“ Gray had to think quick. I thought not at all. My mind was a perfect blank. Under us was a high fence, bordering the Southern Railway tracks, where fate decreed a freight train was slowly puffing along, adding not one whit to our already precarious predicament. We took the fence—posts and all. Neither one of us was injured, and only four dollars damage was done to the plane. I was terribly broken up in mind, if not in body, for I knew that I must return those gate receipts. The crowd would not let me. That was their kind. I, however, renewed my promise that I would make good on a flight over Culpeper just as soon as the plane could be repaired.”