Jerrie Cobb | Series " The Forgotten Ones "
My series of portraits of women " The Forgotten Ones "Â : Jerrie Cobb (1931 - 2019), American aviator and holder of several world records for speed, distance and altitude on a propeller plane, could have been the first woman in space if Congress had not voted against it in 1963 (and John Glenn did not help). Only she and Wally Funk, out of the dozen or so women in the Mercury 13 space program, passed all three phases of evaluation to become astronauts. A few months later, her Russian counterpart Valentina Terechkova will be sent into space.
Afterwards, for 30 years, she flew humanitarian missions in South America to supply indigenous tribes by air (and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize).
(And I discovered her thanks to the TV series "For all Mankind")