Metro Archives has had a productive spring and summer, thanks in large part to the work of our interns. One is continuing the long-term development of our Nashville Enslaved and Free People of Color Database, a project that’s been underway for nearly a decade. Another is creating content for our social media pages. This blog post, however, comes from our intern Jill, who recently processed the Georgianna McConnell Collection.

Who is Georgianna McConnell? If you're familiar with Nashville's aviation history, that name definitely rings a bell. If not, she has a fascinating story—so I’ll stop talking now and let Jill take it away...

All About Georgianna...

When someone says, “Name a pioneering female pilot from Nashville,” it’s likely the first person who comes to mind is Cornelia Fort. With an airpark in East Nashville now named for her, Fort’s short but storied aviation career has become legendary in Nashville. But she's not the only notable aviatrix that called Nashville home. 

Georgianna McConnell was about 2 years old when her uncle, Lt. Frank “Brower” McConnell, a pilot with the Tennessee National Guard’s 105th Squadron, died in an airplane accident during Air Guard maneuvers at Langley Field in Virginia in 1927. McConnell Field was named for him, and until 1937, it served as Nashville’s first municipal airport. Now McCabe Golf Course in West Nashville, McConnell Field was an important hub for airmail operations for the city and the home of the “Old Hickory Squadron” of the Tennessee National Guard. 

Georgianna once remarked that she was “marked from birth” to be a pilot. Growing up around airplanes, she was frequently ferried by her father—along with her sisters, Eva and Betty—to airports to talk with pilots and watch the landings and departures.

McConnell herself knew by the age of 12 she wanted to learn how to fly. She worked in the Vultee Aircraft factory during World War II to earn the money for her lessons, once remarking, “It was nice to be able to see the new planes as they came off the line.” In 1944 at the age of 19, she earned her pilot’s license along with two close female friends. McConnell’s training took place at Gillespie Airport (once Cumberland Field and now part of Metro Center) with a former World War I fighter pilot.

The mid-50s to early-60s were exceptional years for McConnell’s flying career. During this time, she flew with fellow Nashville pilot Helen Deason in the 1954 All-Woman Transcontinental Air Race (also known as the Powder Puff Derby), which took them from Long Beach, CA, to Knoxville in an Ercoupe aircraft. At that point, she had been a member of the Civil Air Patrol for years, logging 800 flying hours, and was also an active member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. 

After serving as the head of the Tennessee chapter of The 99s—an international organization of women pilots founded by Amelia Earhart in 1929—she was elected governor of the southeastern section of the organization in 1955. 

In 1960, McConnell received a letter from Dr. William Lovelace, a contractor for NASA, inviting her to his clinic in Albuquerque. This came at the urging of Jerrie Cobb, the leader of the Mercury 13 program, inviting her to be amongst the first class of women to test for NASA’s “Women in Space” or the FLAT ("First Lady Astronaut Trainees") program.

The government refused to fund the women’s trips, so they were sponsored by Jacqueline Cochran, a former hairdresser turned leader of the WASPS and also the first woman to break the sound barrier in 1953. Describing it as “the most exciting thing that ever happened to me,” McConnell underwent weeks of rigorous physical and mental assessments, including the following tests:

• Inducing vertigo by putting ice water in their ears
• Using electrical shocks to test for pain
• Forcing them to swallow tubes to test their stomach acid

Though she was ultimately not chosen to train as an astronaut, McConnell remained a lifelong advocate of sending women into space, and particularly of Cobb, who passed the clinic’s tests but wasn’t invited to train as an astronaut because of NASA’s restrictive policies. At the time, NASA required astronaut candidates to be military test pilots—a career path not available to women. In 1962, John Glenn defended this exclusionary practice before Congress, calling it “appropriate” and a “fact of our social order.” In response, McConnell wrote him a strongly worded letter.

Though she never flew as a full-time pilot and the cost of maintaining an aircraft kept her grounded in her later life, McConnell remained an active part of the aviation community and an advocate for women in aviation and aerospace. 

She renewed her license in 1994 after 50 years of flying. She also worked as a cashier for the Provident Life Insurance Company for much of her life, baking and decorating cakes in her free time. In retirement, she became an amateur historian of aviation and a genealogist, researching the many branches of the McConnell and Tippett families. 

'Til next time, 

Sarah