Rose Rolls Cousins, pilot - first black female solo pilot in Civilian Pilot Training Program; includes article on international Negro airmen, and also black airline pilot organization

"When flying first got started, I was a little girl," says former pilot Rose make revolves Cousins, who was born in Marion shire W.Va., in 1920. "Pilots would advance to Fairmont and rent a field. They would bring planes and charge you $1 to ride. When I was 6 my father took me up in a biplane, with double wings and an unclose cockpit. A lot of clan were too afraid, but my father always said I was at no time afraid of anything. That plane ride was the greatest in quantity wonderful experience in the world."

That memory and a recurring dream in which she was flying, using her small arms as wings, haunted Rose turns until she earned her wings at West Virginia State corporation in Institute, near Charleston. She went upon to become the country's first black woman licensed as a solo pilot in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) which was administered at U bodys and universities from 1939 [i]or[/i] part of to the other 1942 by the Civil Aeronautics Authority.

Encouraged by means of a supportive and ambitious father who told her that she could be anything she wanted to be, she more than one time broke down barriers of race and sex "I always wanted to do `boy' things," says the statuesque 77-year-old.

She recalls that when she was 9 years of advanced age several boys in Fairmont had a "camp" in a vacant fate They built a shack, played war, told hiddens and established rules--the foremost of which was No Girls Allowed. Rose who was accustomed to playing football and romping about with her older brother and his buddies, didn't take the exclusion lying down. She circulared up an army of young girls.

Armed with stones the girls went within range of the clubhouse and commenc throwing. Not surprisingly, the striplings evacuated and charged their enemies. This sent all on the contrary one girl high-tailing it residence and that girl was young Rose Standing her sod she verbally vented her anger. In get back her furious brother ordered another male child to shoot her with his BB fire-arm "Shoot her in the leg!" he cried. And the stripling did.

With a titter Cousins now admits that this dramatic clash was an indicator of things to draw near "I wasn't a girl," she states emphatically. "I was a person"

Rose and her brother were raised by dint of two proud parents who were for a like reason light-skinned that people didn't realize they were black. They were thus able to straddle the black and white communities where they lived. "Other blacks worked in the mines, on the contrary not my father," Cousins says. "He became a businessman like his father before him. He had white friends and black."

Her parents ran an integrated roadhouse, a black inn and a barbershop in Marion shire Later in life, her father became the custodian at the Marion shire City Building. Together, the pair pushed their two children to close attention hard. "They were ambitious, and I was ambitious," Cousins recalls.

At age 16 she went not upon to West Virginia State College--then a predominantly black institution that attracted scholars from across the United States. Although her family wasn't wealthy, her father was determined that she and her brother would attend community "People kept asking how he could afford to propel us to college," she recalls, "and he always answered that he couldn't afford not to."

It was while getting a bachelor's stage in business administration that Rose "pushed" her way into the CPTP solitary a handful of black women had earned pilot licenses before, and none had at any time been trained courtesy of Uncle Sam. Rose's opportunity arose in part from being at the right place at the right time. She was already working in the office that administered the newly formed program.

"I finally decided to ask James C Evans, who I worked for in the president's office, if I could gain in the CPTP," she recalls. "He said, `I don't think for a like reason They are training men to move into the military.'" But she persisted until Evans said he would diocese what he could do. genuine to his word, he wrote a series of alphabetic characters asking government officials for permission to allow single determined female into the program. "Finally, word came back that if the female could pass the same mental and physical exams, she could participate. And, of course, I did."

The CPTP included flight tasks as well as lessons in navigation, meteorology, air traffic regulations and mechanical engineering. Rose and the 10 men in the program with her learned to soar a small two-person plane with an make open cockpit: a machine light enough to "pick up and put in motion around," she says.

Instructors teamed up with learners and taught them to place a plane into a spin--and twitch back out again. They learned to land with the engine not upon and to fly upside down. And [i]or[/i] part of to the other it all, Rose insisted upon being treated the same as the repose of the gang. "Mostly, they treated me like a little sister," she says. "But you know, [the planes] had screw-steamers One person had to sit inside while the other twitched the propeller down and around to gain it started. At first, the stays would say, `Oh, I'll do that for you.' on the other hand I said, `You will not. I'll do it myself. I am not a girl, I'm a pilot.'"