TDIH: Pearl Carter Scott, Aviator

The youngest to fly solo, at age 14.

On this day in 1930, a teenager becomes the youngest solo aviator to take to the skies.  “Handling the controls like a seasoned transport pilot,” a local newspaper reported, “Eula Pearl Carter, 14-year-old Marlow high school sophomore, swooped into the air . . . . to become possibly the youngest aviatrix in the United States.”

Pearl’s fearless determination echoed that of her father, George Carter. He’d been blinded at an early age but was determined to overcome it. He worked relentlessly until he’d turned himself into a wildly successful businessman.

His success laid a foundation for his daughter.

When Pearl was just 12 years old, her father bought her a 1927 Durant Roadster. (The confident girl had already learned to drive!) She drove the car to and from school, but she also chauffeured her dad to help with his business.

Soon, a chance meeting with legendary aviator Wiley Post changed her life forever.

The Carters met Post when he flew to Marlow to visit his brother. As Post landed in one of George’s fields, a crowd quickly gathered to admire his plane.

Pearl (in the center) with her parents and her plane.

George and Wiley apparently hit it off pretty quickly: Wiley was blind in one eye, so the two had something in common. Wiley offered to take first George, then Pearl, up in his plane.

“I knew right then,” Pearl said, “while I was in the air with Wiley that first day, that I would fly someday. I asked him a hundred questions while we were in the air, and as soon as he set the plane down, I ran over and told Daddy that I wanted to learn to fly.”

George agreed, and Pearl began taking lessons from Wiley whenever he was in town.  She was enthusiastic about it, and Wiley believed she was a natural. Pearl was soon dropping broad hints that she’d like an airplane.

Would you believe she got one? “I had never wanted anything that my Daddy didn't get me,” Pearl chuckled years later, “but even I was a little surprised at getting my own airplane. Enormously exciting.”

George hired pilot Slim Marshall to give Pearl flying lessons when Wiley wasn’t around. On one occasion, Slim decided to test Pearl’s ability to stay calm in a crisis. He put the plane into a spin, headed toward the ground, and didn’t pull out of it until 300 feet.

Pearl just laughed, and Slim swore he’d never try to scare her again. She clearly had nerves of steel.

Before too long, Pearl was flying with Slim, but he was just a passenger at her side. Finally, on September 12, 1930, she took the plane up solo.

She was just 14 years old.

You know she didn’t stop there, right? Soon, she was performing in aerial shows and was barnstorming across southern Oklahoma and northern Texas. 

“That sense of freedom,” Pearl later mused. “You just felt like you were the boss. . . . I was too much of a daredevil. I liked to do all the maneuvers . . . . It’s something that gets in your blood.”

Pearl’s barnstorming career came to an end within a few years. She eloped when she was 16. By the time she was 18, she had one baby and another on the way. She decided to give up flying for good.  She knew that she was “too much of a daredevil” in the sky, and she worried about leaving her children without their mother.

There is more to Pearl’s story, of course. Her mother had been an original enrollee of the Chickasaw Nation, so Pearl became more involved with the tribe later in life. She has since been inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame.

Naturally, that is a story for another day.

P.S.  You will see many sources claiming that Pearl’s first solo flight occurred in 1929. They are incorrect. Newspaper reports of the event are dated September 1930.

Sources can always be found on my website, here.