Named "B"; belonged to the first female group, which was not accepted from the NASA. Bernice Steadman was a veteran of many Air Races and began flying at an early age, earning her Private Pilot's License at age 17, and her Commercial Pilot's License in 1946. She founded and operated her own flight school, charter service and Fixed Base Operations at Bishop Airport in Flint, Michigan. She held an Airline Transport Pilot license and taught Reserve Air Force pilots after WWII. She was inducted into the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame in October of 2002 and the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2007 she was honored by presentation of a Doctor of Science Degree by the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. ^{1, 2}

Gene Nora heard about the research program going on at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque while serving on the faculty at the University of Oklahoma. She wrote a letter to Dr. Lovelace outlining her aviation and educational background, asking to be accepted. Lovelace wrote back "come on". She and Janey Hart, who came in the same way and was an inspirational partner, were the 24th and 25th women to undergo the physical exams. Though Gene Nora (pronounced Janora) was told she passed the tests, she never met Dr. Lovelace, nor was she told that she was in an astronaut training program, and so always considered it research.

Irene was 34 and single when she was solicited by Dr. Lovelace. A strong willed woman of German descent, her first aviation experience was as a child in Chicago. She and her Mother would go to a local park to partake of parachute rides!  Wanting to pursue aviation, and more so, to fly fighters, she attempted to join the WASP when she was 17 by using a fake logbook and older friends birth certificate. These women admired the WASP greatly and at the time that was the best flying a woman could do. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. It didn't stop her though, as by 1961 when she received her call, she held a Commercial Pilot's license, with airplane single and multi-engine land ratings, instrument ratings, and airplane single engine sea ratings - and built up more than 9,000 hours - far more than any Mercury 7 astronaut.

Wife of the US Senator from Michigan, Philip Hart, and the daughter of Walter Briggs, millionaire owner of the Detroit Tigers. One of the group of women who went to the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1961 and underwent the same medical and psychological tests that the Mercury 7 astronauts had completed. She was one of the Mercury 13 finalists, considered qualified by Dr. Lovelace for astronaut training. Hart earned her first pilot's license during World War II, and later became the first licensed female helicopter pilot in Michigan.  In the early 1960s, Hart was chosen to participate in the Lovelace Foundation's Woman in Space Program, a privately funded project designed to test women pilots for astronaut fitness by subjecting them to the same physical tests developed by NASA for astronauts.

Jan Dietrich was a pilot and member of the Mercury 13 Astronaut Training Program. The Dietrich twins, high flying queens of the sky who are in training at Oakland Airport for the 2400-mile women"s transcontinental air race starting Aug. 15 from Santa Ana. The twins, ex-University of California aces. they are sponsored by the Taloa Academy of Aeronautics and the San Mateo Chamber of Commerce. 7-23-57. * At the dawn of the space race in the early 1960s, Bay Area pilot Janet Christine Dietrich was one of 13 women who underwent secret astronaut testing, passing the same rigorous physical and psychological assessments as the men who became immortalized as America's first astronauts.

Another WASP, Jean Hixson of Akron, later became the second woman to break the sound barrier, which she did over Lake Erie. But Hixson wanted to go even higher -- and so she became part of another experiment: Project Mercury, which tested 13 American women to become the first astronauts, reasoning that women, who are generally smaller and eat less than men, would make the most efficient astronauts. Although Hixson passed every test required -- and was determined to be the best of the group -- NASA decided it would go against the "social order" of the time to send women into space first. Although Hixson never made it to space, she certainly blazed a trail for those who did.  ^{1, 2}

Jerri T. was first exposed to flying at the age of 4, when she sat in the cockpit of an airplane that flew her father to a business meeting in Texas. The bug bit, bit hard and never let go - and she let her father know she loved flying. However, her father's advice was reflective of the era: "Work hard, do well in school and you can grow up to be an air hostess and fly all the time". Jerri, of course, protested saying she wanted to be a PILOT! Her father did his best to explain the facts of life in that era, "Honey, girls just don't fly airplanes, that's MENS work". Well, if you know Jerri, standards of an era like that are a minor inconvenience, at best. When she was 15, she began taking flying lessons after school without the knowledge of her parents. She was determined and wasn't about to let antiquated thinking deter her. Unfortunately she was caught - her Mother was APPALLED! And Jeri was sent off to a Catholic school in San Antonio It never diminished her desire though, nor changed her mind. It was simply a speed bump in the airway of life and pretty soon she would be past that bump.

Cobb is the daughter of Lt. Col. William H. Cobb and Helena Butler Stone Cobb. As a child growing up in Oklahoma, Cobb took to aviation at an early age, with her pilot father's encouragement. Cobb first flew in an aircraft at age twelve, in her father's open cockpit 1936 Waco biplane. At 16, she was barnstorming around the Great Plains in a Piper J-3 Cub, dropping leaflets over little towns announcing the arrival of circuses. Sleeping under the Cub's wing at night helped scrape together money for fuel to practice her flying by giving rides. By the age of 17, while a student at Oklahoma City Classen High School, Cobb had earned her private pilot's license. She received her commercial pilots license a year later. In 1948, Cobb attended Oklahoma College for Women for a year. By age 19, Cobb was teaching men to fly. At 21, she was delivering military fighters and four-engine bombers to foreign Air Forces worldwide.