Women, and heroes for all: aviators Tilly Reeve and Beryl Markham
The Kenai river in Alaska, is an unlikely thing — clear and deep emerald green, unlike most of the rivers in Alaska, which are filled with churning dark brown sediment when not white frozen ice. The Kenai river is filled with a wide variety of very large fish, not unlike many Alaskan rivers, but in this case, much larger and much more varied. On this unlikely river, I had an unlikely conversation.
Unlikely conversations can be illuminating. Particularly with unlikely people. It’s the tug on a fishing line, perhaps first expressed as a small, exploratory nibble, and then the yank as the fish takes the bait and pulls hook, line, and sinker under. The only question that remains is whether you are the fisherman or the fish.
The unlikely person in this case was Captain Erin McSwain, daughter of one of my partners, graduate of West Point, and only the eighth woman ever to be an Army Ranger. She holds a master’s degree in engineering and worked as a sapper (oversimplified: someone who blows stuff up — gotta love that!). Her unique journey through the Army and into leadership presented the basis for a very interesting conversation. Erin recognized her groundbreaking life path and said she wanted to be a role model for other women who would follow in her footsteps. She lamented that she had not had the opportunity to have many female role models in her chosen fields, so almost all of her role models and mentors were men. I agreed that it was incredibly important that young ladies see who she is and what she has accomplished, and that she was generous to wish to share her story and her perspectives with them. However, it occurred to me that the next stage of mentorship was for her to be a role model to young men as well as young women.
It may well be that we men are just not used to having opposite gender role models. Almost all of my role models and heroes have been men. Part of this might be the patriarchal society I grew up in, and another part might be because I have never asked myself the question: if I had female heroes, who might they be?
You know what they say: ask the question in a forthright way, and the universe has a way of giving you the answer, but only if you have the consciousness to recognize it.
So, on the banks of the Kenai, I asked myself the question: which women are my heroes? Fellow dudes, do you think this is not macho? You will after you read the stories of two powerful and interesting women. Like Capt. Erin, they could kick your sorry ass, but that is not my point. Rather, it is that these are women who INSPIRE me, showing paths forward which I would like to emulate. They are fearless and authentic. This is not gender specific. We should not pigeonholed greatness. Greatness knows no gender, no sexual preference, no color, no nationality, no balance in a bank account, no region, no religion. As MLK once said when talking about racism (another major form of inequality, of course), “I have a dream that one day my four children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
This is what I seek to be inspired by: a hero’s character.
Let me introduce you to my first two role models, women who are heroes; both female aviators from the early to mid 20th century. One, you will have never heard of, and the other became quite famous, but only long after her crowning career achievements. They both had this in common: a wonderful lack of understanding (or care) about what they were “supposed to be doing,” as well as an unlimited horizon of what they MIGHT do.
I deem both of these women as “heroes” rather than the more common term for women, “heroines,” to purposely de-genderize the noun and the social stratification of the term. Similarly, I use the genderless term, “aviator,” rather than the ridiculous but more frequently used term of their day, “aviatrix.” Just as Captain McSwain no longer has to be called by a gender specific rank (“Captainix?”), can we all now agree that heroes and aviators, are just that — full stop.
My first hero is Janice “Tilly” Reeve, an Alaskan aviation pioneer, bush pilot, mother, wife, fisherwoman, and the subject of this picture we found while cleaning out her family’s aircraft hangar, which we bought some years ago at the Anchorage International Airport. The hangar was first built to house Reeve Aleutian Airways, founded by Robert “Bob” and Tilly Reeve to provide air service all the way out through the Aleutian Islands, that incredibly long archipelago stretching from just off the North American continent, almost all the way across the Pacific to Kamchatka. During and after WWII times were good for Reeve Aleutian, but through the years after that business dried up out there, particularly past the fishing outpost of Dutch Harbor. Slowly but surely, business for Reeve Aleutian Airways also dried up, until there was just this old hangar on the south side of the airport used for maintenance work on Northwest Airlines freighters. Like your grandma’s old stuff in the attic, the Reeves had left things they no longer wanted, or forgot they had. The photo of Tilly below, as well as the painting which may have depicted one of their bush flights, was among the cache we found when we went to clean the offices out. The story of the Reeves before me, particularly Tilly, interested me and I decided to learn more.
Take a look at this photo of Tilly Reeve in front of her De Havilland aircraft, probably taken at some remote Alaskan outpost in the 1930s. Observe the expression on her face: she is at once delighted to be wherever “there” was, and also conveying the message, “Don’t you wish you were here, doing what I am doing?” The first lesson I want to learn from any hero is that they love their lives, and they are doing what they were put on earth to do. Tilly’s buoyant smile says all of that.
How did she get to this place both in space and in spirit, which is equal parts alluring and sacred? The answer to this question reveals my second requirement for heroes: Do what you think you should be doing, take chances, and go for it.
I came to know this about Tilly by a story told to me by her only surviving son. My question: “How did your mother get to Alaska anyway?
In the 1920s, Tilly was living in the San Francisco Bay area, when she read the story of a dashing aviator in Alaska who happened to be from a small town in Wisconsin near where she herself had grown up. This something in common was her “hook.” She engaged in correspondence with him for a very short period of time and then decided she just had to meet him face to face. Uninvited, she hopped a steamship to Seward, Alaska and just showed up at Bob Reeve’s door one day. According to their son, this must have scared the hell out of Bob and he avoided her as best he could for some weeks. Take another look at this picture of Tilly. Does she look like someone who gives up easily? Eventually, her good nature, pleasant looks, and abundant resilience won ol’ Bob over. It was Bob who gave her the nickname “Tilly,” saying when he first saw her, she reminded him of cartoon character, “Tillie the Toiler.” Five children and fifty years of love later, they both departed this world, and someone who had never heard of them before bought their abandoned aircraft hangar, found this photo, and began to wonder just who this woman was.
Through research and interviews with family and friends, I discovered this person who went about adventure with great joy. She was not put upon by the uncomfortable wilds of Alaska before its statehood in 1959. She offered support as well as the requisite ass-kicking when needed. She was a woman of her time, while also being a woman of the future. Many of the things she did in her life, such as how she got to Alaska in the first place, were not things that women of her era normally did.
I admire Tilly Reeve and proclaim her a role model because she followed the path she made, not the path others told her to tread. One might say that she was her own “person.” This is a genderless quality. Folks who follow their own dreams, and happily succeed on their own terms, are to be admired.
Tilly is this person for me.
Beryl Markham, 1936. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (photo no. cph 3c23400).jpg
My second hero also emerged from the early days of aviation, this time, from East Africa. Her name was Beryl Markam, and today we mostly know her because of an amazing book she wrote in 1942 entitled West With the Night. The title refers to her first-of-its-kind solo flight across the Atlantic in the early 1930’s, but this time from east (Europe) to west (North America) — the hard way, against the prevailing winds. This makes one think of the popular saying: “Don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.” Beryl Markham was the “reverse Charles Lindbergh” of her day, yet she never received anywhere near the acclaim of Lindbergh, despite a nearly identical feat.
Before and after her flight across the Atlantic, Beryl worked as a bush pilot all over East Africa, primarily based near Nairobi. There, she also trained horses, acted as a professional guide, and eventually wrote that famous book. And oh, what a book it was! Shortly after it was first published in 1942, Ernest Hemingway said this: “Written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. Markham can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers.”
Yet, after a bit of hubbub in 1942,the book vanished from the shelves, hearts, and minds of readers for decades, only to be accidentally discovered again by a screenwriter in Los Angeles in 1983 and republished to great acclaim. Why the acclaim? As Hemingway said, she is a drop-dead fantastic writer. From the first paragraph, you simply cannot put this book down. However, more than that, it’s her semi-autobiographical vignettes of her life of adventure, sorrow, doubt, victory, and love — all against the exciting backdrops of African expeditions, trans-Atlantic miracles, and secret affairs.
Just look at the titles of the last few chapters of West With the Night, and you may get the picture:
XVII I May Have to Shoot Him
XVIII Captives of the Rivers
XIX What of the Hunting, Hunter Bold?
XX Kwaheri Means Farewell
XXI Search for the Libyan Fort
XXII Benghazi by Candlelight
XXIII West with the Night
XXIV The Sea Will Take Small Pride
As an example of her “marvelous” writing, here’s a favorite passage of mine, from the start of “Book Four” in West with the Night. Beryl sees a man land an “aeroplane” near her father’s farm in Africa and immediately becomes entranced (probably with the plane and the guy), and decides she wants to be a pilot. He agrees to teach her.
“Tom taught me in a D.H. Gipsy Moth (my notation: this is a wonderful name and a classic WWI biplane), at first, and her propeller beat the sunrise silence of the Athi Plains to shreds and scraps . We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know — that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.”
What I like about this paragraph is how she describes discovering a new world (she was less than 20 years old at the time), and also how she counsels that no one should limit themselves to what they believe is their “horizon.” I have always worked to not overly define either myself or my own horizon. Also, note that she mentions that she learned how to “wander,” a practice I also have sought to follow.
What specifically is the source of my admiration of Beryl? It’s not just that she grabs adventure by the you-know-whats, but also that she is so incredibly literate in describing it. It’s also that she did way more than most men her age would ever do, but never focused on the disadvantages she faced when recognition did not come her way. She did things that made her happy, and to hell with the rest. She was clever, resourceful, sexy, and proud. She was not afraid to get her hands dirty, but as pictures of her from the era show, she could also be extremely glamorous. In many ways, she out Amelia-Earharted Amelia Earhart herself
Like Earhart, she was lost to us after WWII. Unlike Earhart, she was found once more, living by herself on a horse farm in Kenya in the 1980s. No bones to dig out of a wreckage on a South Pacific atoll here. There was Beryl, once simply forgotten by the world, in the flesh and blood, left for dead, but really just going about her daily business — like she always did. The best part is that the republishing of her book in the 1980’s brought her enough money to make her way back out of the relative poverty she had been living in, and she died comfortably not long after that. Once again, Beryl got the last laugh, even though she would probably have been just fine without that.
My heroes are those who live full and interesting lives, without the regrets of what could have been. The revel in what really is. Beryl Markham appears to be one of those people, and thus, I deemed her another one of my hero’s.
However, I soon discovered that Beryl had a dark side. She drank too much, carried on affairs with other women’s husbands, lied to and used numerous rich men for their money, often failed to pay her debts, and even abandoned her only son shortly after he was born. By all appearances, she was often not a very nice person, self-centered, manipulative. It seems from reading about her she cared about animals, particularly horses and dogs, much more than people (but that part I don’t hold against her because sometimes I also feel the same way).
All of this brings up the question: do you have to love, or even like your heroes? Further, must heroes be devoid of character flaws? Answers came quickly when I thought about some of my male heroes. Winston Churchill, perhaps one of the most heroic human beings to ever live, was certainly a drunk, an extreme egotist, and at times a bully. His faults were so apparent that by mid-life, neither he nor anyone who knew him thought he would ever amount to anything. Then, take Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the greatest of all Americans. He had LOTS of bad habits. For instance, he loved to take business meetings while soaking buck naked in a bathtub, sometimes with his mistress along for the… ahem, ride. Can you imagine being called for an audience with the great Dr. Franklin and encountering him under those circumstances.? It might have been hard for me to maintain my heroic image of him after all of that.
So Beryl was this troubled soul, who had grown up in a far-off land, almost devoid of any other children to play with, raised only by her father because her mother had no interest in living on a farm in Kenya, abandoned by her father at 17 years old when he decided to flee to Peru. The woman who emerged from this life was in some ways as feral as the great cats of the savanna, but also quite adept at the looks and ways of a modern 20th century woman. She was blessed with great courage, strength, wit, and gumption. She used all of this to play just about everyone she came into contact with, and to live a truly amazing life that folks like me still read and write about.
It all comes down to this question: what is the sum of all the parts of a heroic life? And do we cut one gender more slack than another. Why would Frank Sinatra, a notorious jerk and abusive drunk, but also a talented and heroic figure, perhaps be considered more of an obvious hero than Lucille Ball, also a tough, flawed lady who changed entertainment for ever? Yet, when it comes to heroes, you hear a lot more about Frank than you do about Lucille.
So it is with Beryl and Tilly. The sum of the parts of their stories still come out to lives lived and with lessons for all of us. This includes the less-admirable stuff. Also, the sum of the parts of a hero’s life should equal a unique and powerful expression of one’s life against the odds they have been given. You don’t have to be perfect to be a heroic human. You don’t have to be a man to be a hero to other men. Nor must Captain McSwain limit her role-modeling to only other female soldiers, but should also be considered an inspiration by those male soldiers in her command.
This entire exercise, the intellectual fish I pulled up from the emerald river that day, is about my opening my own mind and instinct to what is actual, real heroism, rather than culturally and gender-limited myth building. It’s as if I have to retrain my inner sight to see past the stereotypes that have been handed to me, that I have freely accepted. Humans are pattern seekers, followers of well-worn trails. Our neural networks are like these old cow paths, while Tilly and Beryl carved out new and gratifying paths for their lives.
We too can seek new patterns and new truths about other selves and the world around us. For instance: recognizing a woman as a hero, for what she is, for how she has lived, and for how she has helped me understand life and my own world, even if she lived 100 years before me. Heroes are, by definition, powerful human beings. A truly powerfully lived life can influence well beyond the grave, and certainly beyond one’s personal foibles and failures. The filter of time clears the story of these women’s lives like the Kenai sinks the sediment, until there is nothing but deep, clear beauty in motion, for all of time.
