A lifetime of unapologetically pursuing her passions put Beverley Bass on course for breaking down barriers and shattering stereotypes. She never let rejection or the word “no” stand in her way. By continuing to reach for the sky (literally), Beverley Bass became a trailblazing pilot. Her story has made headlines all across the globe, is featured in a hit Broadway musical, and is a true #StrongGirl inspiration.

“I wasn’t trying to break down barriers – I had to google what “glass ceiling” meant!”

-Beverley Bass

 

As a young girl in the 1960s, Beverley Bass dreamed of flying. She used to go to the airport with her aunt just to watch the planes take off, and sitting in her aunt’s Volkswagen Beetle, Bass watched with excitement as the giant planes took to the sky.

Flying remained an obsession as she grew up, but Bass didn’t take to the sky herself until she was a Freshman in college. She took her first flying lesson with a local pilot, and finally, Beverley Bass was in the cockpit. “I came home after my first flying lesson and told my parents that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” Bass says.

Throughout the rest of her college career, Bass was logging hours in the sky. She arranged her classes to be free by the afternoon and spent every day at the airport. She was “1,000 percent dedicated to becoming a pilot.” However, in the early 1970s there simply weren’t any female pilots on commercial airlines. Bass was told there couldn’t be a female pilot flying executives around because “what would the wives think.”

Beverley Bass didn’t take “no” for an answer. In 1976, at the age of 24, she was hired as American Airline’s third female pilot. 10 years later, she rose to become American’s first female Captain, and later that year she made headlines around the world as she led the first all-female crew in aviation history on a flight from Washington D.C. to Dallas.

On September 11, 2001, Bass was flying from Paris to Dallas. She was one of the 38 planes, and 1 of 7,000 people grounded in the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland for four days. The outpouring of generosity and kindness that flooded Gander in those days inspired the hit Broadway musical, Come From Away, and Bass is a central character in the show. Her character has the only solo in the musical, a powerful song that summarizes Bass’s entire career in just 4 minutes and 19 seconds (listen here). The real Beverley Bass has seen the musical over 100 times and has become close friends with actress Jenn Colella, who plays Bass in the show.

In 2019, Bass published a children’s book about her inspiring life story, called Me and the Sky. It’s a sweet and inspirational book- well worth a read for girls of any age.

Read about last week’s Strong Girl, Sophia Spencer a.k.a. The Bug Girl, and check back every Saturday for more #StrongGirlSaturday inspiration.