Wally Funk, a trailblazing American aviator who shattered gender barriers across eight decades, has died at the age of 87.
Funk dedicated her entire life to aviation, achieving numerous historic milestones despite facing systemic exclusion from early US space programs.
She obtained her pilot's license as a teenager and became the first female military flight instructor in the United States at age 20.
By 1971, Funk became the first female flight inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), followed by her appointment as the first female instructor for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) three years later.
Despite these achievements, her dream of becoming an astronaut remained unfulfilled for decades due to NASA's early policies.
In 1960, Funk joined the Mercury 13 program, undergoing the same rigorous physical testing as male astronauts, where she scored at the top of her group.
NASA, however, refused to admit women at the time, insisting on using military fighter pilots, a role then closed to women.
Even after Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova reached space in 1963, NASA did not relent until Sally Ride became America's first woman in space in 1983.
Following her rejection, Funk traveled to Russia's Yuri Gagarin Center to complete zero-gravity training in 2000.
Her lifelong dream was finally realized in 2021 when Jeff Bezos invited her to join a sub-orbital flight aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard, making her the oldest woman to travel to space at age 82.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to finally get up there,” she said after the historic flight.
Born Mary Wallace Funk in Las Vegas, New Mexico, she grew up in Taos and began her aviation journey by jumping from a barn wearing a superhero cape at age five.
She dropped out of high school at 16 when barred from mechanical drawing classes, subsequently enrolling at Stephens College to study aviation.
Funk later attended Oklahoma State University, competed with the Flying Aggies aviation team, and went on to train more than 800 pilots at her flight school in Taos.
She was elected to the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame in 1995 and was added to the National Air and Space Museum's Wall of Honor in 2017.
“Nothing has ever gotten in my way,” she said. “They said ‘well you’re a girl, you can’t do that.’
I said ‘guess what, doesn’t matter what you are, you can still do it if you want to do it.’”
