A legendary East Tennessean and pioneer in aviation has died.
Evelyn "Mama Bird" Johnson is a highly respected pilot and teacher who celebrated her 102nd birthday last November.
She's logged more than 58,000 hours in the air, which is a world record for a woman pilot.
"I sat down on the couch, picked up the paper and on the bottom of
the front page... and you never see ads on the front page of the
paper... but there was one on there and it said 'learn to fly' and I
said 'well, that's for me, that's what I'll do. I'll learn to fly,'"
she said.
Throughout her career, she was a flight instructor to thousands of people at the airport in Morristown.
She held the title of 'manager' at the airport as of a couple years ago.
A bronzed statue of her likeness was erected at the airport in 2011.
Farrar Funeral Home in Jefferson City is handling the arrangements, which are currently incomplete.
This Page One artcle on Evelyn Bryan Johnson originally appeared
in Feb. 15, 2007 editions of the Knoxville News Sentinel. Johnson died
Thursday at 102 in Morristown.
MORRISTOWN, Tenn. — Evelyn Johnson is 97 years old. Last September
she was in an automobile accident that required surgery to remove her
left leg and to repair a badly injured right leg.
Last week, with an artificial leg, “which some people tell me works
better than my real one,” Johnson was back at Morristown’s Moore-Murrell
Airport, where she has been the manager for 53 years. And, she asks,
“Why wouldn’t I come back to work?” Good question. Oh, there is one
other thing. She plans to fly again, just as soon as she can find
someone who can take her up and let her operate the aircraft from its
second seat. Johnson quit flying six months ago, and that’s only because
she can no longer pass the medical exam.
She has logged 57,635.4 (do not leave out the 4/10ths, or Johnson will promptly let you know about it) hours flying time.
Here is something to think about: She has flown an airplane the
equivalent of more than 2,400 days, or more than 6½ years in the air.
On July 21, she will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of
Fame in Dayton, Ohio, along with astronaut Sally Ride, America’s first
woman in space aboard NASA’s STS-7 shuttle mission.
Others nominated for the award include Walter J. Boyne, former
director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, aviation
historian and best-selling author; Steve Fossett, globe-trotting
adventurer who holds numerous world records in balloons, gliders and
powered aircraft; and Fred W. Smith, innovative founder of Federal
Express, a $32 billion Memphis-based global transportation, business
services and logistics company.
Johnson is being inducted just because she is “Mama Bird,” like the title of a paperback biography about her by George Prince.
Actually, there is more to it than that. As a flight instructor,
Johnson has logged more flight hours, trained more pilots and given more
Federal Aviation Administration exams than any other pilot on the
planet.
Bob Luttrell, artist, retired News Sentinel ad salesman and a Johnson
friend, picked Valentine’s Day to present her with an oil portrait he
painted to help commemorate her return to work.
Johnson has won so many flight awards (40 at her last count) that the next one should say something about the Wright Brothers.
By her count, she has trained more than 5,000 pilots and given FAA pilot exams to more than 9,000 hopefuls.
And just when it seemed that she was down for the count, Johnson
bounced back, “bought this artificial leg for $1,000. I’m up and going.
That’s what I bought this leg for,” she says.
“I intend to walk across the stage at the Hall of Fame to accept the award,” she says.
Anyone who knows Johnson does not doubt she will keep her word.
Johnson has never had a plane crash, but she has lived through several “events.”
On separate occasions, she experienced a fire in an aircraft and two complete engine failures.
On one of those landings, a student pilot flying with her was looking
for a friendly field in which to land. The student spied one, and
luckily Johnson picked a field a little closer by. It’s a good thing
they didn’t go with the student’s choice.
“It was quicksand,” she said.
Johnson learned to fly in the days of biplanes. She has flown about anything that has wings, even a jet.
“I flew from Knoxville to Morristown and buzzed the field in the jet,” she says.
“I shouldn’t have done that. But,” she says with a broad smile, “I’d do it again.”
Johnson earned a private pilot’s license in 1945. By the next year
she could fly commercial aircraft. By 1947 she had become a flight
instructor.
In 1952 she was appointed a pilot examiner by the Civil Aeronautics
Administration, a predecessor to the FAA. In 1957 she earned a
helicopter pilot’s rating, and the next year she was a helicopter flight
instructor.
She is routinely asked when she plans to retire.
Her answer is always the same: “When I get old enough.”
For Johnson it has been “love at first flight,” since the day she saw
her first biplane circling in the light blue skies above Gatlinburg.
“And it still is love at first flight,” she says.
