JACQUELINE COCHRAN

Jacqueline Cochran was born in a small town of DeFuniak Springs, in Florida (United States) on the 11th May 1906. Her father, Robert Cochran, was a young mechanic and her mother was Bessie Pittman. They got divorced.

She stole chickens to help feed her family in her childhood. She was a barefoot girl and she didn't go to school.

Her first job was sweeping the floor and being a ''shampoo girl'' in a beauty parlor..
She worked as a hairdresser and she started learning how to fly a plane.

She married to Floyd Bostwick Oldum, in Arizona, on May 11, 1936.

They didn't have any children because they got divorced.

Jacqueline become really famous after flying planes, she learnt to fly in just three weeks. 

She first become well known when she entered her first race in 1934. In 1937 she won first place in the women's division of Bendix and was the first woman to make a blind landing.

In 1953 she become the first woman to exceed the sound barrier. She was the president of the 99s, an organization of women aviators founded in 1929.

Jacqueline Cochran died at her home at the age of 80, in August 9, 1980 in California. Her remains are buried in the public cemetery on the Coachella's valley.
She went higher and faster into the frontiers of aviation. The heroic women followed her. She was truly 'on of a kind'.

I admire her because of all her records in the aviation world. She broke the sound barrier, and she still holds more international speed, distance and altitude records than any other pilot, male or female.