Debbie Gary Callier

Last updated

Debbie Gary Callier (born February 24, 1948) [1] is an American air show pilot. [2] She began flying at age nineteen, and was the first woman to fly in a formation aerobatic team. [3] She also wrote the Bellanca Pilot Proficiency Training Manual. [2]

Contents

Biography

Callier graduated in 1965 from William McFarland High School in Bordentown Township, New Jersey and attended George Washington University before moving with her father to Saint Thomas. [4]

Gary first took flying lessons in 1966 in New Jersey. [5] Her first solo flight took place in the Virgin Islands, where she had moved with her family. [5] Starting in 1968, she began working as a glider instructor and in 1969, met Jim Holland when she flew a glider at the St. Croix airshow. [5] She learned aerobatics from Holland and joined his airshow. [5] She performed for some time for Holland, then worked for a Canadian aerobatic team. [6] [7] She competed against 40 men for her spot on the aerobatics team. [8] After, she joined the Bede Jet Team. [9] She became the first woman to fly full-time in an aerial formation team. [6] [5] [8] The Star Tribune called Gary "the world's leading woman show pilot" in 1978. [10] She also appeared in episode 12 of the first season of the TV series The Blue Marble in 1974. [11] She has flown a Bede BD-5J and a Pitts S-1A open cockpit biplane doing her stunts. [12] [13]

After 1972, she started working as an instructor at the Flabob Airport. [5] When she was not doing airshows, she worked as an instructor. [12] Later, she worked in Alexandria, Minnesota. [7]

In 1978, Gary married Jim Callier, who was the president of the Bellanca Aircraft Corp. [14] In 1994, Gary earned a journalism degree from the University of Houston. [6] She did an internship at the Houston Post , and wrote for Air & Space, a magazine published by the Smithsonian Institution. [6] [15] She also took time off from air shows to raise her children. [6]

Gary started flying airshows again around 1998. [6] She encourages young people, especially girls, to think about going into aviation as a career. [16] [17]

In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Gary's name and picture. [18] A photo-lithograph of the card is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aerobatics</span> Flying maneuvers involving attitudes not attained during normal flight

Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in conventional passenger-carrying flights. The term is a portmanteau of "aeroplane" and "acrobatics". Aerobatics are performed in aeroplanes and gliders for training, recreation, entertainment, and sport. Additionally, some helicopters, such as the MBB Bo 105, are capable of limited aerobatic manoeuvres. An example of a fully aerobatic helicopter, capable of performing loops and rolls, is the Westland Lynx.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patty Wagstaff</span> American aviator

Patty Wagstaff is an American aviator and U.S. national aerobatic champion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wayne Handley</span> American airshow performer

Wayne Handley is an American airshow performer, former naval aviator, agricultural pilot, Aerobatic Competency Evaluator (ACE), and coach for upcoming and current airshow stars. Handley and his wife Karen are former residents of the Salinas Valley of California, who currently reside in Groveland, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The French Connection (aerobatics)</span> Aerobatic team

The French Connection was a famous husband-wife aerobatic pair that performed in countless airshows throughout North America for almost 30 years. The pair consisted of Daniel Héligoin, a former French Air Force fighter pilot and aerobatic champion, and Montaine Mallet, an aeronautical engineer and his assistant who later became his wife. Both Daniel and Montaine were French-born; they came to the U.S. from France in 1973 to promote and sell their aerobatic plane, the CAP-10, manufactured by Avions Mudry in France. They operated an aerobatics school at Sky Acres Airport, NY, Dutchess County Airport, NY, then at Flagler County Airport, FL. They regularly performed at airshows around the U.S. and Canada until their death in a training accident on May 27, 2000. Their favorite and signature 'French Connection' aerobatic routine was unique: Montaine and Daniel would fly their CAP-10 planes in an extremely tight canopy-to-canopy formation, literally inches apart, through various hair-raising aerobatic maneuvers. Daniel and Montaine loved to teach, and they devoted much of their careers to aerobatic instruction. The "French Connection Scholarship" fund was established in their name via the International Council of Air Shows Foundation.

Charles Allen Kulp, nicknamed the Flying Farmer, was an American aerobatic pilot. He performed a comedy aerobatic routine every Sunday at the Flying Circus Aerodrome in Bealeton, Virginia for 34 years.

Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon is an American computer scientist, professor, author, and champion aerobatic pilot who is best known as the co-inventor of the treap data structure, a type of binary search tree that orders nodes by adding a priority as well as a key to each node. She is also known for her work in data-intensive science and visual analytics of very large data sets, for which she received the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Lynn</span> American aerobatic pilot

Nancy A. Lynn was an aerobatic pilot, flight instructor, and air show performer. She owned and operated Lynn Aviation, an aerobatic flight school located at Bay Bridge Airport in Stevensville, Maryland, with her husband Scott Muntean and son Pete.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sean D. Tucker</span> American aerobatic pilot (born 1952)

Sean Doherty Tucker is an American world champion aerobatic aviator. He was previously sponsored by the Oracle Corporation for many years, performing in air shows worldwide as "Team Oracle". Tucker has won numerous air show championship competitions throughout his career, was named one of the 25 "Living Legends of Flight" by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in 2003, and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2008. He has led several efforts to assist youth in learning to fly or becoming involved in general aviation, and currently serves as co-chairman of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)'s Young Eagles program, a role he has held since 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leo Loudenslager</span> American aviator

Leo Loudenslager was an American aviator. He is one of two aviators to have won seven national aerobatic titles and is one of only three Americans to win the World Aerobatics Championship title.

Charlie Hillard was an American aerobatics pilot, and the first American to win the world aerobatics title.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gene Soucy</span> American aerobatics pilot

Gene Soucy is an American aerobatics pilot. The son of two pilots, he would wash airplanes at a local airport in exchange for flight time while growing up in Kentucky. He soloed in a glider at age 14, and in a regular airplane at 16.

Matt Hall is a third-generation pilot, a former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fighter combat instructor, international unlimited aerobatic competitor and the first Australian to be selected to compete in the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, starting in 2009 with his team Matt Hall Racing. He won the championship in the final season of Red Bull Air Race in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Clark</span> Aerobatic pilot

Julie E. Clark is a retired American aerobatic air show aviator and commercial airline pilot. She started her commercial flying career with Golden West Airlines as a first officer and ended it in 2003 as a Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 Captain. She was one of the first female pilots to work for a major airline, and has been voted as "Performer of the Year" several times for her air show performances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vicki Cruse</span> American aerobatic pilot

Vicki Cruse was an American aerobatic pilot and administrator. She won the U.S. national unlimited aerobatic title in 2007 out of a field of 101 participants. It was only the fourth time that a woman had become the national champion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aviation in Wisconsin</span>

Aviation in Wisconsin refers to the aviation industry of the American Midwestern state of Wisconsin.

Neil Williams (1934–1977) was a Welsh aerobatics pilot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chuck Aaron</span> American aviator

Charles "Chuck" Aaron is an American pilot notable for being one of a handful of pilots holding an FAA waiver to perform aerobatics in a helicopter in the United States, and one of only four such pilots in the entire world. In 1980, Aaron worked on the air rescue program for NASA's Space Shuttle, and he founded his own company, FX Helicopters in Westlake Village, California in 1997. Aaron announced his retirement from the airshow circuit in 2015 and made his last performance for Red Bull at the November 2015 Red Bull Air Race World Championship in Las Vegas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vera von Bissing</span> German aviator

Vera von Bissing was a German aerobatic pilot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jimmy Franklin</span> American aviator

Jimmy Marshall Franklin was an American aerobatic pilot. He performed at airshows, both solo and as part of teams, for over 38 years until his death at an airshow in Moose Jaw. Born and raised in Lovington, New Mexico, Franklin learned to fly at age 8 and bought his first airplane at 19 and flew his first airshow the same year.

References

  1. ↑ according to her trading card - Debbie Gary Callier - tradingcarddb.com
  2. 1 2 "Flying Magazine". Flying: 13–. August 1979. ISSN   0015-4806.
  3. ↑ "Air Show Takes Flight at RDU". WRAL.com. 1998-04-30. Retrieved 2015-06-16.
  4. ↑ Debbie Gary; Alumni Hall of Fame Class of 1965, Bordentown Regional High School. Accessed February 14, 2020. "Ms. Gary graduated from William MacFarland High School in 1965. After graduation, she attended George Washington University for two years. She left college when her father asked her to take off a semester in 1967 to go with him to St. Thomas where he was beginning a construction job. Her long career in aviation began during that time."
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Aerobatic Pilot Returning". The Herald. 1977-06-06. p. 11. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Small Jet, Big Fun/ Female Aviator Loves Performing For The Crowds". greensboro.com. 1998-09-11. Retrieved 2015-06-16.
  7. 1 2 "Airborne Artistry to Test Butte Skies". The Montana Standard. 1978-06-18. p. 26. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  8. 1 2 Sowers, Carol (1976-10-09). "Flying Obsession Has Her Making Aerobatic Tailspins". Arizona Republic. p. 44. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  9. ↑ Schultz, Rob (1977-08-03). "Debbie Gary One of the Few Women Aerobatic Pilots". The Oshkosh Northwestern. p. 4. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  10. ↑ "Up and Down and Around They Go". Star Tribune. 1978-08-24. p. 14. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ "Big Blue Marble Episode Guide".
  12. 1 2 Scott, Vernon (1976-10-04). "Flying Under London Bridge Out, But Debbie Gary's Air Show Still On". Simpson's Leader-Times. p. 11. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Chambers, Thomas (1975-08-02). "Speed is Second Nature to Woman Who Pilots Jet". The Oshkosh Northwestern. p. 8. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ Winslow, Carmen (1978-07-04). "Stunt Flier Will Wed in Butte". The Montana Standard. p. 1. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  15. ↑ "Flying Magazine". 1 August 1979. Retrieved 22 November 2017– via Google Books.
  16. ↑ "Airfest a Thrill Ride for All-Female Cast of Performers". Star-Gazette. 2005-07-23. p. 5. Retrieved 2017-11-29– via Newspapers.com.
  17. ↑ Wag, Patty (1 November 2016). "Oshkosh". Plane and Pilot.
  18. ↑ Wulf, Steve (2015-03-23). "Supersisters: Original Roster". Espn.go.com. Retrieved 2015-06-04.
  19. ↑ "Supersisters Inc. | Debbie Gary Callier, Supersisters No. 54". The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.