of the space program explain why the famed mercury 7 astronauts went into space but not any of the 13 so-called first lady astronaut trainees. this oral history from 1999 is from the nasa johnson space center history collection. .. this is carol butler and i'm doing an oral history for the nasa history office with wally funk, retired ntsb investigator, senior flight instructor, chief pilot, wonderful woman of aerospace. thank you for joining us today. >> thank you very much for having me. >> to begin, if we could talk briefly about your early career and your interest in aviation developing and how you moved forward and to the aerospace career as a woman. >> well, aerospace was not really a name in my young life. flying airplanes was. i had got my first try at flying, just pure flying, by flying my superman cape off my daddy's foreign when i was about five years old. and i was allowed to make airplanes out a blocks of balsam wouldn't hang them from my ceiling when i went on the college. i, was allowed to take flying as my mother had dearly love flying, and her father wouldn't allow her to. so, they encourage me then to go on into my aviation career. i was at a girls school for two years, got my private there. then i went on the oklahoma state university, which was the best flight school in the united states at that time. from, say, the mid 50s on through to the 70s. and i'm a national, international judge for safe con performances for all schools, universities and colleges. so, now, i'm giving back the safety that i've learned over my 44 years of instruction to the kids that are just starting out in the flying that i started and in the late 50s. so, it all has come around full circle. oklahoma state afforded me most of the rest of all my ratings. i would trade off mowing grass between the runways for my glider rating or my sea plane rating and that was a great experience as a kid of 19. doing such things. there was never any eyes raised or eyebrows raised about, what's that girl doing? i had great parental enthusiasm and don't helping me to do my education that i wanted an aviation. it wasn't until i graduated from oklahoma state and went down to fort sill, oklahoma, where i was a flight and structure. that i learned about jerry cobb, we've been in phase two, off the magazine cover of life magazine. i wrote immediately to the doctor who had used her as a subject doctor sea crest at the hospital. he puts me into touch with dr. randi loveless that albuquerque, new mexico. within two days, dr. loveless right back, fill out this form and your date is a month away, can you come? i was not on the original list, and i was 21 and i was too young. so, they had to get extra permission for me to take the same test as the mercury seven astronaut took. they have picked 25 women candidates out of the records, there weren't records in washington, d.c. in those days. or yes there were, at 99 headquarters. but it wasn't as it is today, so comprehensive. they found women that had a college education, over 1000 hours of flight time, you had to have a commercial instrument rating, top physical condition and be willing to go through these tests. so, i said yes, of course i want to go and of course get information for me to go, because i'm just a kid. well, it turned out that was to my benefit, because i had no preconceived ideas of what was going to happen in any of these tests. i had no idea that things could be done to my body into my mind that they did do as a youngster, as you will. being a grown-up now, i might have had some reservations going in, as many of the other women probably did. i took a lot of pain that was associated with some of the test that we took. i took it in stride, it was going to get me one step closer in the space and that was where i wanted to go. of, course i did as much as i could in space exploration for physical tests, psychological tests as possible. to get me into, absolutely, a race first patients against russia in those days. it's interesting to know that 25 women were put through the tests, but 13 past. so, that's why we're called the mercury 13. unfortunately, we went through by twos but the lady that i went through with never made it through the first day. we all don't know who each other where, not until four years ago that we know who each other where, in total. of course, i was in a flourishing field of my own, so i didn't get to go to some of these meetings that the other women could go to because they were retired and i was still working. but we finally all got together and exchange stories and i hope that you're going to get many of these gals stories. i applied to nasa for different times, turned down four different times because they didn't have an engineering degree. and they gave me nine months to obtain such a degree, which was an impossibility. jerry cobb and i had, at one time, described that we would buy a jet aircraft from england. which was called a small vampire. but then, nasa reorganized there nomenclature, so to speak, they yet have jet test pilot time. that's was impossible for a girl to have in those days. i, mean it's taken us 30 years for eileen to go up into space, and she was the first girl to be able to go through edwards air force base. so, she was 20 years in front of us. the thing that i'm most happy about is that eileen is going to be in that left seat less than two days. she had a vision hand, at five, she knew that she wanted to fly. she patterned her life, there is at least enough knowledge of data patterned ones life to know that she had to get her licenses, she had to go into the air for, is she blossomed in the air force, got on with nasa. this was our second trip about we've got a girl on the left seat, and that is absolutely incredible. this is going to show young stars and young ladies that are going to see this particular program that you can do anything you want to do with your life. matt, sciences, engineering, very important to stick with and have as your personal goals. i leans tenacity, her personal goals, her dedication, has made it possible for you and i to come together and a lot of people from around the world come together. >> absolutely. it's fabulous, absolutely. before you got involved in the testing program, had you thought about even the possibility of going into space before? >> before i read about it, i don't even know about it. it was not something you knew about. it was just as new as new. we didn't know astronaut meant. >> so you just jumped into it? >> absolutely, i knew that was for me. i wanted to go into exploration, i've been an explorer in my youth. >> great. you've continued to be an explorer, you're exploring still. >> yes, i hope to go on to russia with his eager voyages and be part of a cross training of american astronauts and russian cosmonauts so that we can use their facility at star city and go through some of the same tests that eileen has gone through in houston. i've been down to houston many times to observe what she has done, the astronaut work that she's doing down there. i could not have had the chance of partaking in such a wonderful schooling. >> well, it will be interesting to see the training able to go through and star city. the testing in training that you did do earlier when you first started out as a 21 year old, not knowing anything about the space opportunities. >> what's interesting about your statement is, we have come such a long way in technology that the things that i was tested on, people aren't tested on anymore. they were testing us to our extremes, to how much can we take of ten-degree water being injected into our ears and how fast does are i gonna stared a particular object. i had no control over my body. was it gonna fall off or not? yes, i would've if i had been strapped into a dentist chair. what would i do in a tank of water that was so, the humidity of the room is so perfectly controlled to my temperature that i couldn't feel the water on my hands or my face because there was no hearing, smelling, all your senses were taken away from yeah? you are just in there as long as possible. i broke the record of ten hours and 35 minutes. >> that must have been a very interesting experience. >> well, you know, it was so easy for me. as a youngster then, you don't have a lot on your mind as youngsters today do. the question always comes up, well, how could you stand ten hours and 35 minutes? on the contrary, when they said, how long you think you've been in there, i said, oh, i wasn't hungry, i didn't have any needs, maybe five hours. so everyone that is taken this particular test has cut their time in half, which is unbeknownst to the scientists today in an isolation situation, everyone cuts their time in half. now, the guys, the mercury seven, they were in a separate room. you know, you can count a lot of things in a lip room and entertain yourself, where, i was on my back floating in this water with my five basic census taken away. i couldn't smell, touch, taste, anything. i just had to lay their. they wanted me to talk or to sing, but in those days, i did not talk. this would be a very difficult interview if this was a long time a go. i've learned a toxins then. >> that's good. you mentioned a couple of the other tests, the water in the ear, what were some of the other, as you came down through the first phase of testing, what were some of those tests? at any point did you stop and think, wet my doing? or anything along those lines? >> tense your last question first, no, i had not a shadow of a doubt. i was their subject, they could do anything with me that they wanted to do. i didn't know that you could get x-rayed from head to toe and who take a whole day, every single tooth, every single bone. they wanted perfect specimens at that time. now, let's go back to the men. the mercury, there were 159 men, selected from the armed services to go through these tests at lovelace, how many were selected? 25 women were selected. how many past? 13. so, do we have a little bit of information here on how well do women do things? how well do they come across on the -- terrific. how old are they go across the prairies and subtle the west in wagons? great. big families, didn't think anything about it. why can't we fly and go into space? the men today that think that we can't, as, women do things, sorry, folks, we can do it. a woman, i'm sure eileen has tried extra hard to do her best, because nobody wants to fail. and failure is not a part of my make up. i do the best i can do, and i kick as many doors and as i possibly can no matter where i go. >> and you have undoing it. >> oh yes, i love life, you better. >> gotta enjoy life. as you were doing the testing, you said you didn't know any of the other women that were going through. you had, of course, read about jerry cobb. after you are done with the first phase, what's contacted you have with the people running the program or with dr. lovelace? how did it continue that you could go on with the next phases of the testing? >> i found out would jerry cobb had done down in pensacola, she had done this about six months to a year prior to my going through. >> we were talking about how you became involved in the second round of the testing and how you found out about the opportunity. >> the second round of testing would have been would jerry cobb had gone through in pensacola, florida. we were to have had a chance to go down, it was all scrubbed, most likely a political situation. bye a lot of the girls were disappointed in that, i kind of went on and went on to a alternative, if you will, i went overseas for three years. i learned a lot about many countries, i was in 59 countries. i did a lot of camping. i met a lot of neat people, i still stay in correspondence with. anyway, i learned with the pensacola tests were all about. so, i kind of made a list of what i could do in california and various states. so, at usc, i was able to take the centrifuge test. now, being a civilian, being a girl, they would only give me three jeez, i could not have a g suit. only men could have those things. so, i called mother up in california and i said, mom, i need your worst merry widow and girdle from when you were a girl, can you get those to me? you betcha. so, i modified and made my own g suit out of her merry widow and just stuff my body in this tight little thing, i put my flight suit over, because i knew once they started to twirl me around in the centrifuges, obviously, they thought i was gonna go out within the first go around of 3g's. but i knew to keep the blood rushed up and my body and up in my head. so, obviously, they gave me 3g's for two minutes at a time. and the cameras were said it different places. okay, we went second round. no big deal. i punched out the buttons, lights that are coming up for my assignments. third time around, no big deal, feeling a little tired, but it was okay. fourth time around, i don't know if the guy really hit the button or give me a few more jeez, or if it is really that many more jeez, or that same amount of cheese but my body not having the rest in between. what happens is, when you're going around this long arm, extended arm, going around this room very very quickly, and trying to punch out the different lights that they're giving's assignments, you start to gray out. when the grail effect starts as when the blood is coming down from your brain, at about half mast to your eyes, part of it is gray and the rest i can see you. well, i knew those happening, so i clenched my body in my neck, i pushed all that blood back up in my head, it cleared up. so, then i could keep doing my thing. i never told them until it came out and dateline 25 some years later that i hadn't made my own cheese suit, i passed with flying colors. the other test was the martin baker injection test at l terrell, that's where i was placed in a particular flight suit and parachute rig. i was shot up on a long long pole, it's almost like people hit the gong, then come down with a crash. i was a lightweight, i only weighed about 110 pounds then. so, obviously, i went up as far up as the slide would go. it came down with a terrible thud. not really realizing what was happening. to make this thing go, there was kind of like a lot of powder, not dynamite, not a lot of firecrackers, but, like, a bunch of firecrackers, i guess you could say, underneath my seat. what i did, i pulled this canopy up for my helmet to keep my head rigidly back against the headrest so that my head wouldn't come forward, you could break it up. coming down, i don't realize, the guys knew it, i would have a tremendous headache. you could have a compression. well, i never told anyone i had broken my back skiing, trying to prepare for the olympics. so, i was like, oh, i wonder if anything has happened here. nothing happened, i was fine. they took all the gear off of me and the next thing, they just assured me right into the high altitude chamber test. in those days, they could take a civilian up to 39,000. today it's only 29,000. and we zoomed on up there, and, boy, on 100 percent oxygen, i was feeling great. i mean, that is the best way, they say, get over a hangover or to get rid of a headache, it's to breathe 100 percent oxygen. so, i was feeling great. of course, here comes the test. wally, take your mask off, i take my mask off. we want you to write your name and anything you want, at some numbers on to this piece of paper. so, at that altitude, you can only last a matter of ten, 15 seconds without oxygen again. so, i'm writing, i think i'm doing really terrific, because you have euphoria and the feeling of well being here without oxygen. this is how come a lot of airplane people have accidents, they have a feeling of euphoria, they are not getting the right oxygen to their brain to read their instrumentation correctly, then they get in trouble. well, of course, we had a lot of noses pressed up against every window looking at this girl in their, they never had a girl before, wondering how she is going to do it with a mask off. so, i'm just writing down and doing my assignment, thinking i'm doing a great job. i heard it, but i didn't respond, they said, wiley, put your mask on, wally, put your mask on. you see, i was already in another state of deterioration of no oxygen to the brain. and they let me go as long as possible. i simply slapped the mask on me. everything came clear isabelle. i wrote, i look down at what i was writing. it is all skripal. and not only had i not stopped at the end of the page, i had gone on into infinity. thinking i was doing great. so, that was the high altitude test. and the last test was phase three, which was conducted at the hospital in oklahoma city, that's where we're put into the tank as i had described earlier. >> what an interesting array of tests that you went through. >> and then on top of it, in the 80s, i went to space camp for a week. i've done everything i could possibly do to learn and grasp more about the wonderful world of space travel. >> that's great. such a, it's good to see you being so interested in maintaining that enthusiasm, to pass it on to others. >> absolutely. kids today have a wealth of knowledge, if they just have parents or teachers to say, you can do anything you want to do and go after it. the encouragement of going after it. taking all of the math and science and engineering courses throughout, kids on computers today. the youngsters i'm teaching the flight today, i have 16 and 17 year olds this summer that i'm teaching. they are grasping flying, i'm showing them at 78 hours because of the computer industry, they're learning to fly on the computers. >> a whole new way to learn. >> i mean, they showed, there is no way to teach me. when i learned, i learned by the seat of my pants. you show me, then i respond. that's exactly high learn to fly. it wasn't out of reading the book, it was show until. so, in my acrobatic instructions, i would look at the picture, have somebody show me, and off i would go. >> a good way to learn. just by doing it as you go. while you are doing the testing, shortly after that, they had congressional hearings, actually dealing with bringing women in as astronauts when nasa was hiring the second group of male astronauts. were you aware of those at the time? >> i can't really remember. i don't remember exactly where i was at that period of time. i had been asked that over and over again, i don't think that any of us knew what jerry and jeanne had to prepare themselves to do to go and defend us as a group. now, mind you, we didn't know each other, yet. and so, i knew jackie cochrane, she had been very generous to support phase one financially. and i've had wonderful letters from her and jerry cobb. but i didn't realize. i was either out of the country where i was so buried at my work that i didn't realize until after it was over with that these hearings have gone on, and that's when we found out the parameters or jet test pilot experience to be an astronaut. which led us out of the league. >> for the time being at least. >> yes, thank you for adding that, because eileen did it. we have three girl test pilots and i think we've got two female, eileen and another gal, that are testing. because eileen has to have a backup, girl backup. >> hopefully we'll be seeing more and more as time is going on. >> -- >> you went on, as you said, you are traveling overseas for length of time, you had your career in aviation. tell us something about that if you would, an overview of why you continued to do. >> i kind of went over to -- , well i went to russia with two goals in mind. to see the paris airshow and to meet valentin a cash go via, she had already gone up in 63. and i was in russia in 65. i saw the harris air show, i want to rush us by myself. scared to death, on a train from vienna to moscow, and i never got