Pioneer LI aviator's life celebrated at a memorial

In a time when American society largely confined women to the private sphere, Freeport native Elinor Smith soared the skies, becoming a pioneer in the early days of aviation.

Smith's storied feats, her drive to achieve her dreams and her sheer love of flight were celebrated at a memorial Sunday at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in East Garden City. She died in March at age 98 in Palo Alto, Calif.

Speakers chronicled the highlights in Smith's short career: She became the first female executive pilot in 1929; was voted the best female pilot by other fliers in 1930; and, in 1931, was the first woman to fly higher than 30,000 feet.

They also offered a glimpse into the character traits that shaped her destiny.

The daughter of vaudeville performers, Elinor Ward used her father's stage name, Smith, and went on her first flight at age 6. By the time she was 16, she had gotten her pilot's license. The next year, cajoled by a reporter, she became the only person to fly under the four East River bridges.

In a video clip shown by filmmaker Heather Taylor Sunday, Smith said of the reporter: "I think he goaded me into it and said it couldn't be done. I said, 'Well, it could be done.' "

After the flight, an unfazed Smith posed for newspaper cameras, "casually powdering her nose as if to say, 'It was no big deal,' " said Laura Muha, assistant dean of Columbia University's School of Journalism.

"Generally speaking, pilots were viewed as a cross between daredevils and heroes . . . while women were viewed as delicate creatures," said Muha, a former Newsday reporter who interviewed Smith. "The two just didn't mix. Apparently, however, someone forgot to tell Elinor."

If she sought publicity through such stunts, however, it was chiefly as a means to finance her career when aviation jobs were open to men only.

"Publicity was her lifeblood and she courted it with such hazardous stunts . . . just to continue to fly," said Joshua Stoff, curator at the Cradle of Aviation Museum.

In her senior year of high school, Smith took a job with Irving Air Chute Company to become the first female executive pilot. The trade off: Smith didn't graduate. Sunday, Freeport schools superintendent Kishore Kuncham posthumously awarded her a diploma.

Though Smith would retire from aviation after marrying Patrick Henry Sullivan in 1933, she returned to flying in 1956, and in 1981, wrote an autobiography, "Aviatrix."

"She lived life on her own terms, and she lived the life she wanted," said her son Patrick H. Sullivan, 72, of Santa Cruz, Calif., one of her four children.