A Soaring Tribute to a Pioneer

As a formation of World War II-era propeller planes buzzed over Burbank Airport on Sunday, 81-year-old pilot Jan Wood raised a champagne glass skyward and belted out a gruff, audacious holler -- her tribute to Evelyn “Bobbi” Trout, the Southern California aviation legend who helped ensure women’s role in the history of flying.

Wood and nearly 200 others gathered to pay their respects to Trout, who died Jan. 24 in La Jolla. At age 97, she was the last of a pioneering generation of daredevil females -- among them Amelia Earhart and Florence “Pancho” Barnes -- who took to the skies in the 1920s and ‘30s, challenging the idea that the Charles Lindberghs of the world had cornered the market on bravery. Their exploits, including a Santa Monica-to-Cleveland air race that humorist Will Rogers dubbed “the Powder Puff Derby,” captured the American imagination and inspired ensuing generations of women pilots.

Trout, whose fame rivaled Earhart’s on the West Coast, served as a role model for younger women like Wood, who tested Boeing’s UC-78 “bamboo bomber” in 1943 and 1944 as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a civilian group that handled many domestic aviation duties stateside during World War II.

“Bobbi Trout was absolutely phenomenal,” said Wood, who still flies her 1953 Cessna out of Van Nuys. “It was just a few years after [her heyday] that we were accepted. Now, women are in combat because of what we did.”

Trout learned about engines working at her family’s Los Angeles gas station, and took her first flying lessons in 1928. In the next few years, she set numerous flight endurance records, broke the women’s altitude record for light-class aircraft and helped found the well-known Ninety-Nines female pilots organization.

Though she bowed out of the Powder Puff Derby with engine trouble, the hype surrounding the event cemented her reputation as a feminist icon.

When flying jobs dried up during the Depression, Trout became a commercial photographer. She and Barnes also formed the Women’s Air Reserve, which transported emergency supplies during disasters.

In later decades, Trout invented a rivet-sorting machine for the aeronautics industry and dabbled in the real estate and insurance fields, nephew Brook Trout said.

Trout insisted that her family forgo a funeral for an informal reception in an airplane hangar.

Afterward, the champagne flowed on the tarmac, as guests toasted the Van Nuys-based Condor Squadron, which flew vintage AT-6 Texans in what is historically referred to as a “missing-man” formation.

The irony did not appear lost on Terri Lincoln, one of two female helicopter pilots for the Los Angeles Police Department.

“Every woman before me has helped tremendously and been a tremendous inspiration in my life,” she said. “As hard as it was for me, it was much harder for them.”