AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025 - 37

Blanche Scott
In 1980, the U.S. Postal
Service issued an airmail
stamp commemorating
Scott's achievements and, in
2005, she was inducted into
the National Women's Hall of
Fame. Drive by her childhood
home at 116 Weld Street in
Rochester, New York. Then,
visit her grave in Riverside
Cemetery, Rochester, Section
T, Lot 524, Grave 2.
was the passenger in a Lockheed Shooting
Star piloted by Chuck Yeager at Cleveland's
National Air Races. In 1954, she was
employed by the U.S. Air Force Museum
to acquire artifacts for the collection. Scott
died on January 12, 1970, at age 84 and was
interred at Rochester's Riverside Cemetery.
Bessica Faith Medlar was born on
April 23, 1875, in Beloit, Wisconsin. It's
hard to determine a reputable timeline
for her, but at some point she was working
as a dentist in New Hampshire and then
attended Tufts Medical School in Boston
where she earned a medical degree in
1903. Along the way, she married François
Raiche, a Frenchman she'd met during
her European travels, and they moved to
Mineola on Long Island.
While visiting France in 1908,
Bessie and François saw Wilbur Wright
demonstrate the Wright Flyer, and they
became enamored with aviation. When
they returned home, they built their own
biplane, similar to the Wright brothers'
design, fabricating much of it in their
living room with the final assembly taking
place in the yard.
Although Scott had made several
flights in early September while training
with Curtiss, Bessie Raiche was the first
woman to announce she would fly and do
it publicly.
A few history books credit
Scott with the first flight,
but Raiche for the first
" intentional' flight.
Likely because she was lighter, the
couple had decided she would make the
first flights. Neither had any training and
on September 16, 1910, Raiche made the
first well-documented solo airplane flight
by a woman in the United States at the
Hempstead Plains Aerodrome. Raiche
made five flights that day with the last
covering nearly a mile, similar to the Wright
brothers' first day of flying. The last flight
ended in an accident.
A local newspaper wrote, " She
scrambled to her feet and before any
of the mechanics and others who had
witnessed the fall of the biplane could
reach her, she had shut off the engine and
stopped the propeller. She calmly said she
was not injured. "
Over the next few weeks, Raiche made
more flights, and the Aeronautical Society
of America credited her with the first solo
flight. On October 13, 1910, they awarded
her a gold medal, studded with diamonds
and inscribed " The First Woman Aviator
in America. "
Raiche said, " Blanche deserved the
recognition, but I got more attention
because of my lifestyle. I drove an
automobile, was active in sports like
shooting and swimming, and I even wore
riding pants and knickers. "
Raiche and her husband formed the
French-American Aeroplane Company,
which built and sold a few airplanes,
but Bessie became ill, forcing her to give
up flying.
Moving to California, Raiche opened a
medical practice in Newport Beach in 1912,
specializing in obstetrics and gynecology.
The couple divorced in 1925, and Bessie
died of a heart attack in 1932, at the age
of 56 years. She was interred at Fairhaven
Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California,
the same cemetery as another famous
flyer, Douglas " Wrong Way " Corrigan, and
Glenn Martin, the aircraft designer.
Scott likely made the first flights by
a woman in America, but in the privacy
of Curtiss's upstate New York flight
school, so Raiche received more press
coverage. After all this controversy,
remember that it was a French woman,
Raymonde de Laroche, who was the first
woman to pilot an airplane, on October
22, 1909. Dennis K. Johnson is a frequent
contributor to AOPA publications. He is a
private pilot.
AOPA PILOT / March 2025
37
DENNIS K. JOHNSON
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025

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