LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Jackie Cochran: Long Island
built 642 days ago
In 1940, Jackie made the first flight in the Republic P-43, and recommended a longer tail and different tail wheel installation. This aircraft became the famous P-47 fighter. Between 1935 and 1942, Jackie flew many experimental flights for Sperry Corp., testing gyro instruments along with different engines, and aircraft designs.
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At the age of six, Jackie went to work in a Georgia cotton mill, earning six cents an hour for a 12-hour day. She instinctively knew that somewhere beyond the gritty hand-to-mouth existence of her childhood lay a world of endless opportunity and adventure. She longed to explore that world and embrace its opportunities. When a schoolteacher named Miss Bostwick took Jackie under her wing, the young girl's confidence grew. She began to plot her escape from squalor.
Cochran attempted to leave the squalor of her childhood by running away with the circus. The circus left without her, but it wasn't long before she found another way out. In her early teens she moved in with a Jewish family that owned hair salons. Underage, Cochran worked mixing dyes when she secured a promotion by threatening her employer with disclosure to child labor authorities. A year later, Cochran moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to work in another salon. There, a prominent client secured her admission to nursing school.
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In the early 1970’s, doctors told Jackie that she needed a pacemaker. They ... told her that she could no longer fly. Jackie was the type that would try to think her way out of her situation. She did have to give up flying because it would be dangerous so she bought a recreational vehicle and she drove it all over the country.
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