Legendary Nw Aviatrix Tells Of Adventures In The Sky

Gladys Buroker never forgave her father for his bad temper that drove her from home in 1932.

She might have become a daring aviatrix anyway, buzzing across the country and walking wings, parachuting and ballooning.

But her dad’s meanness forced independence on her and ignited in her a disdain for men. Both propelled her to carve out a rare life for a woman of her era.

“I just broke loose, did the things I wanted to do. There wasn’t anyone to stop me,” she says. “I didn’t care if men liked me or not. I didn’t think there was a decent one out there anyway.”

At 83, Gladys remembers her adventures in the sky so clearly that she filled a book with the tales that made her a Northwest aviation legend. “Wind In My Face,” which Gladys published herself, hit Northwest bookstores this summer after 10 years of work and help from Coeur d’Alene English professor Fran Bahr.

“People kept telling me my story belongs in a book, and then I had several surgeries and needed something to do, so I wrote it myself,” Gladys says, as adamant about her independence as ever.

She now lives in a tidy home in the forest near Rathdrum, right between the Kootenai County airfields she helped build.

Gladys never intended to leave her Western Washington home for Idaho, a place she considered as livable as Siberia. But she ended up staying 55 years.

Washington had been good to Gladys after she left her father. Even in the 1930s, it was an aviation hub and fascinating to this farm girl bent on adventure.

Her first bi-plane ride at 17 convinced her she wanted to control the mechanical bird. At 18, Gladys left home to learn to fly.

It didn’t bother her that the aviation world was dominated by men. Gladys drove a Harley as fearlessly as any of them and understood mechanics better than most of them.

She learned to fly that year from Herb Buroker, who taught her that all men weren’t like her father. They married a few years later, but their lifelong partnership in the air began with her first flying lesson.

“I think I’m probably the most fortunate woman ever,” she says, her love for Herb still evident 24 years after his death. “He never did discourage me after we were married.”

But he did end her parachute-jumping career. He’d seen people killed in parachute accidents and warned Gladys against jumping. She still signed on with a couple of barnstormers in 1934 for 20 exhibition jumps.

Her 17th landing wrenched her knee and grounded her long enough for Herb to find her and pull her out of the show. She was relieved, but still craved adventure enough to try wing-walking.

Two years later, she and a girlfriend hit the road on Gladys’ Harley. They toured the United States and part of Mexico and startled Harley dealers everywhere when they pulled off their helmets.

Gladys was so mechanically gifted that she built her 10-year-old brother, Cal, a motorcycle his size.

She loved thrills, but had her practical side. After she married Herb, Gladys wisely earned a pilot’s license, then certificates to fly commercially and teach. Her gender scared some students, but most were awed by her command in the cockpit.

Interest in aviation boomed in the late 1930s and the Burokers found students everywhere they turned. They taught at colleges, then for the military, which had a paltry number of pilots at the onset of World War II.

The war pushed Gladys and Herb inland. The Seattle/Olympia area was an obvious target, which inhibited the Burokers’ flight lessons. They needed a remote field and one the military wouldn’t take over. Herb chose Coeur d’Alene’s Weeks Field.

“My heart sank. Idaho seemed so far off the beaten track,” Gladys wrote in “Wind In My Face.”

They opened a flight school in 1942 and trained a steady stream of pilots for Farragut Naval Base.

Flying gave Gladys pure joy until her brother Cal was killed at 24 speed-testing a new plane in 1948. Two years later, fire destroyed the Burokers’ hangar and the city closed Weeks Field.

She didn’t teach for years, immersing herself in motherhood and working as a nurse until her retirement. But she kept flying.

When Herb and Clay Henley bought acreage just south of Athol in 1972 for their own fun-flying, Gladys helped carve out the airstrip. The project evolved into the Henley Aerodrome, where Gladys taught and flew gliders and jump planes for parachutists.

She taught her last lesson in 1995, but still builds wing frames for vintage planes in her home workshop. Her short hair is wavy white now and a metal cane helps her walk. She quit flying when she no longer could command the plane.

“I flew when it was fun, when you flew by the seat of your pants,” she says, smiling at some private memory that most likely includes a propeller and tight goggles.

“If I was physically able, I’d still be flying.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo