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Mary Elizabeth Owens prepares to get into an airplane with a parachute she had packed, circa 1940.
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Mary Elizabeth Owens, circa 1930.
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In May 1932, Mary Elizabeth Owens sent this Western Union telegram to Amelia Earhart congratulating her for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
Mary Elizabeth Owens Prade (1913-1967), who for 20 years lived where Winding Creek subdivision is now (off Carroll Avenue and south of Southlake Boulevard), was an aviation pioneer.
At age 15, after her father said he wouldn’t teach her to drive because she was too young, Mary snuck out for flying lessons. She soloed at Meacham Field and earned a private pilot’s license — before her driver’s license.
At 19, Mary became one of the first women in the U.S. to hold a transport license, given to pilots qualified to fly commercial airliners. She’s also one of the first women to have received a parachute rigger’s license.
In 1931, she joined the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots. That year, Amelia Earhart was elected its first president.
On Sept. 12, 1934, Mary and pioneer racing pilot Jean LaRene of Dallas took off over Chicago on their fifth attempt at a women’s endurance record of 240 hours aloft. Four previous attempts had been cut short due to engine trouble and storms.
Mary and Jean flew a Curtiss Thrush single-engine airplane with virtually no instruments in the cockpit. They called it the Lone Star. To refuel twice daily in mid-air, Mary had to climb through a hole cut in the top of the Lone Star and grab for a hose dangling from the refueling plane — all without a parachute. When the plane flew over the Chicago World's Fair, crowds craned their necks to see it. Two days short of the record, extreme fog made refueling impossible and they were forced to land west of Chicago in a cornfield.
During WWII, Mary was one of the first women hired to teach prospective military pilots to fly and was assigned to Lou Foote Airport south of Dallas. An early group of pilots became indignant when they learned their instructor was a woman, but when they found out she was also a Civil Aeronautics Authority (now FAA) inspector who could issue or withhold pilots’ licenses, “they sent me flowers,” Mary said with a laugh when tell- ing the story to a reporter in 1965.
During the war, while staying at Lou Foote Airport and working 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, she had her grand piano moved to a corner of the hangar so she could practice.
After WWII, she married C.A. Prade, a Navy pilot, and they built a home and airstrip on acreage near what’s now Carroll Avenue. A hangar was part of the design of the house.
In 1967, pilots from all over flew to Flying Cap airstrip for Mary Owens Prade Day (neighbors remember 100 small planes parked along the runway). Friends and admirers came to celebrate her life and also to say goodbye, as she was dying of cancer. She was too sick to get out of bed for the gathering, but she correctly identified every plane that flew over her house by the sound of its engine.
Mary Owens Prade would have been mostly forgotten in Southlake if former councilmember Pamela Muller and her friend Monique Schill hadn’t stopped by the Prade house in 2012 before it was torn down. Winding Creek developer Paul Spain said it was OK for them to look around. They were thrilled to find newspaper clippings about Mary, and they shared them with the Southlake Historical Society. When Paul built Winding Creek, he kept a stone wall built by the Prades as part of its entrance.
The Southlake Historical Society thanks the Prade family for the photos included in this article.