Passion For the Skies: ELAYNE BROWER
Story and Photos by Renata Kosina / Published in July 2015
When I first contacted Elayne, she was having breakfast at the local airport cafe. It’s not much of a surprise, considering the 87-year-old is a former pilot, airplane owner, nuclear and aeronautical engineer who tested Navy and commercial aircraft models and participated in sending NASA’s rockets to the Moon.
I admire people with rich lives like Elayne’s. People who follow their passion and make it their life’s work. I’m curious about what point in her life Elayne realized what her aspirations were and what led her to follow through. I want to know what her experience was like as one of the first women aeronautical engineers. And, what did she learn from her life?
On one sunny morning, I sit down with Elayne in her living room to find out more. It soon becomes clear that despite her long and rewarding career in nuclear engineering, her true passion lies in everything aeronautical.
The Beginning
“I knew early on in high school (what I wanted to do), because at that time, maybe just by luck, my high school had a course in aeronautics that I took”, Elayne reflects. “I was also building model airplanes and thinking about joining the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Women’s Reserve”. Influenced by the dramatic events of World War II, she sought the only option that allowed women to join the air force. However, by the time of her high school graduation in June 1945, the war in Europe had ended, and the RCAF plan was no longer a viable option.
Interesting Times
After the war, during what she calls “interesting times”, Elayne studied aeronautical engineering at Purdue University in Indiana while working with returning G.I.s in the dorm kitchens. Exciting opportunities followed her graduation in 1949. First, the pilotless aircraft laboratory in the Naval Air Development Center, nearly six decades before drones became common. Then she went on to test aircraft, fighter plane and helicopter models for the Navy Department. “Working in the wind tunnels was very interesting – I enjoyed it a lot”, her eyes light up.
Women engineers in the 1940s and 50s
When Elayne graduated in 1949, there was only a small handful of women graduating in aeronautical engineering from Purdue. “Some professors were great about women in aeronautics, but some did question it. I was generally fortunate”, she remembers. “Working as a woman, you had to realize things were changing. I also knew I wasn’t paid as much as my male colleagues, but it was a job I wanted to do.” She didn’t see any point in fighting it too much. “The time was such that there was no point like today.”
In the mid-1950s, Elayne joined the Society of Women Engineers, which at that time had about 8,000 members (over 50,000 today). It was all about education and sharing experiences. It was a place where women openly discussed the state of the industry and the various companies, and some even started their own. “The society did a great job in building rapport between women engineers on all levels, especially after computers were introduced”.
It’s clear that Elayne doesn’t dwell on the challenges of those days. She didn’t go into aeronautics to defy the odds or make a statement, but to follow her passion. “If I felt I didn’t get paid enough, I said something”, she sums it up
The Apollo Space Program
In the early 1960s, after working for the Navy Department, Elayne returned to school to study nuclear engineering. However, after her graduation, a new opportunity presented itself in her original field. Happy to be working in a less classified environment, Elayne joined Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama, to work on NASA’s Saturn V Apollo Program. “I just simply followed where the jobs were at that time, the beginning development of the Space Program”, she explains her return to aeronautics. As the beginning of putting people into space, one of her first projects was to ensure reliable, blackout-free communication between the capsule and ground control. After that, she supervised the propulsion staff for the Saturn V’s 3rd stage (S-IVB).
Here is roughly how it worked: The rockets for each of the first two stages fired off to lift the capsule off the ground and to carry it toward Earth orbit. The third stage put the capsule into Earth orbit, then shut down before restarting and sending it into space and on to the Moon. Elayne’s job was to ensure it had restarted and was capable of the planned flight mission. Before NASA and Boeing gave the OK for the translunar orbit, her team had about 90 minutes (one loop around the Earth) to asses the entire situation. “After the lunar mission… everybody was holding their breath for the reentry.”, she recalls the suspenseful moments of those days.
Flying airplanes
Elayne earned her private pilot’s license in 1966 and joined an international organization of women pilots called the Ninety-Nines (whose first president was Amelia Earhart). They had a very active group in Huntsville, including some of the other women pilots from Boeing. “I used flying as a relief from everything that was going on in the business world. Get up in the air, and there is nobody up there! Just relax and enjoy it”, she recalls her flying days with excitement. In 1969, she moved to the Seattle area to work in commercial aircraft research for Boeing. The camaraderie of coworkers and friends in aviation, along with more opportunities to enjoy flying, made her feel right at home. She would fly her friends and even dogs for trips to surrounding areas and picnic lunches in the San Juan Islands.
Once she had a close call flying in bad weather from Huntsville to Seattle. Thankfully, her flight instructors, experienced army veterans, had done an excellent job in preparing her for trouble. An example of her training was an emergency night landing, where she learned how to land in a tree and climb down rather than guess in the darkness about where the ground was. Another part of her training was this hair-raising scenario. Right before a touchdown, her instructor would jam the rudder, forcing her to get the plane back up in the air. “Every time there was a screech on the runway, people knew that the instructor was ready to solo someone, “ she recalls her training days.
In the mid-1980s, Elayne moved to California to be closer to her family. She couldn’t keep up with caring for her mom, flying, plane maintenance, and the shortage and high costs of storage in her new hometown, so she finally sold her plane. Her passion for aviation has not ended, however. Elayne is an active member of the Nineny-Nines, a member of the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association), and has recently participated as a member of a T-6 crew at the Reno Air Races.
Nuclear Engineer
Although I’ve focused mainly on Elayne’s passion for aeronautics, she also had a successful career as a nuclear engineer. She smiles as she remembers days working on her master’s thesis in nuclear engineering, when computers came into play. They used IBM 730s, “big boxes with long stacks of punch cards,” which they had access to only between midnight and 3 am. Hard to imagine in today’s world.
Elayne held various jobs in the nuclear and power generation industries, ultimately working for the Washington Public Power Supply System (now Energy Northwest). “We did lots of good work there,” she says with pride.
A small sample of a punch card from Elayne’s collection. During her nuclear engineering studies, they used IBM 730 computers with long stacks of punch cards. They are pieces of rigid paper used to store digital information through the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions.
Life’s Takeaway
“I have not always put money at the forefront. The job and the content of the job were more important – and the company…,” Elayne pauses. “Once, I turned down a job where they didn’t allow their engineers to have coffee at their desks. When I sent them a ‘thank you, but no thank you’ reply, the personnel guy asked, ‘Was it the coffee?’ I said yes.”, she laughs. I believe that says it all.