Willow Glen Resident

Cover Story

Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Pull Ups: Mayetta Behringer pulls her 1967 Cessna 182, which she has co-owned since 1971, out of the hangar at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. She been flying for 60 years.

Power Puff

Behringer is honored for more than 50 years of safe flying

ByJoanne Griffith Domingue

Just two days after earning her pilot's license, Mayetta Behringer received a telegram on Feb. 5, 1946, from the U.S. War Department. Her husband's plane was missing in the Philippines. A doctor, John Wiedeman had been making humanitarian flights for the U.S. Army.

"I didn't believe it, that John was gone. I was convinced he was coming back," Behringer says.

A month later the military declared him dead, but it took Behringer two years to accept it.

"So I flew furiously and got all my ratings and began instructing," she says. "It was the flying that saved me."

Sixty years later, this Willow Glen resident, 88 years old and 4 feet 10 inches tall, is still flying. Recently she received the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award presented by the National Transportation Safety Board of the Federal Aviation Administration for more than 50 years of safe flying.

To be eligible for this award, Behringer had be an FAA pilot with at least 50 consecutive years of experience. She had to have completed a flight review in the previous 24 months verifying she is a current pilot, maintained 50-plus years of safe flight operations and been a U.S. citizen more than 50 years.

Of the 600,000 pilots in the United States, about 650 have received the Master Pilot Award during the five years it has been given. According to a Nov. 5, 2005, list on the FAA website, 47 of these individuals were from California, five from the Bay Area and one was a woman, but none were from Silicon Valley.

That changed when Behringer and five others from this area were named Master Pilots in 2006.

This is a prestigious award, says Tony Chavez, manager at the Sundance Flying Club in Palo Alto. "It means you've been flying a long time with a clean record, but it's not just about the 50 years. You must also be healthy and still flying."

Janet Hitt calls it a "safety award, a recognition of safe flying." Hitt, who retired in 2003 after 29 years with the FAA as an operations inspector--13 of those years in San Jose--received the Master Pilot Award herself last year for her 57 years of safe flying. She is the only other woman in California who has been honored.

Behringer, with her exemplary record, showcases all that the award stands for.

"I will trust her with my life," says the Rev. Nancy Peters, associate minister at the First Congregational Church of San Jose, who will be flying with Behringer in a few weeks.

Peters has nightmares about planes crashing. She describes herself as a "pray-as-you-go passenger."

"I'm going up because I care about Mayetta," Peters says, "and she wants to take me."

But Peters wouldn't fly with anyone else.

Peters, 49, considers Behringer a pioneer of women in flying.

"I need women role models like that," she says.

Leslie Ingham agrees role models matter. She is one of Behringer's two partners who own a plane together. Ingham, 60, a San Jose CPA and a pilot herself for 40 years, wrote one of the letters of recommendation for Behringer's award.

Behringer's record is awesome, Ingham says.

"She's still active, safety conscious, never had accidents or issues," Ingham says.

Ninety-Nines

Behringer's love of flying goes back to high school.

"I had never been up in an airplane, but I knew I wanted to fly," she says.

Her father took her to the airport in Milwaukee, Wisc., where she grew up, and bought her a plane ride.

The plane had an open cockpit. The owners gave her a helmet, and off she went.

"It was wonderful," she says. "I never came down."

Her father offered to pay for flying lessons so Behringer could earn her pilot's license or put her through four years of college.

Behringer opted for higher education.

"Women had a very questionable future in flying, so I took the college degree," she says.

Behringer graduated in 1941 from the University of Wisconsin and married her college sweetheart, Wiedeman. She taught school for a year and worked while her husband earned his medical degree, and began flying lessons.

Then his plane went down. It was never found.

"I assumed it went down in the water in the lousy weather," Behringer says.

Even after her husband's crash, she never considered giving up her own passion for flying.

"Accidents will happen anywhere, planes or cars," she says, "and cars are more dangerous."

So Behringer "flew like mad," she says and began instructing.

In 1947 Behringer bought her first plane, a Cessna 120, a two-seater. She was working for the Veterans Administration in Wisconsin and invited her office-mates to hold a name-that-plane contest. The winner would get a ride. "Power Puff" won the contest.

That same year Behringer joined the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots.

The organization earned its name in 1929 through the women who flew. They decided they needed their own organization. Male pilots at that time never accepted woman, Behringer says. All the women pilots were invited to an organizational meeting. There were 99 who came, and they became charter members.

"The Ninety-Nines have always been a source of inspiration and of deep and lasting friendships," Behringer says.

Two years later she moved to California. She left her car with her family and piled all her "stuff" in the plane, dropped off a friend in Texas and headed west. She landed in Palo Alto, literally, because a pilot friend lived there.

"I loved California. I came to stay," she says.

Power puff girl

Soon after she met Bill Behringer, a career Navy pilot. In December 1949 they were married.

The Behringer children, Linda, Susan, Kim and Scott, soon followed. When Bill was off on cruises with the Navy, Mayetta loaded the children in the plane and made the rounds flying, visiting her parents in Florida, his mother in Michigan and aunts in Minnesota.

Some families buy a bigger car as the family increases. Behringer bought a bigger plane.

Newspapers noticed and wrote about this mother who traveled around with her charges in her plane. Headlines called her "Flying Housewife," "Powder Puff Pilot," "Pilot in petticoats."

"I always flew in skirts and heels," Behringer said.

From 1963 to 1966, Bill served a tour of duty in Chile. The Behringers, both pilots, flew the family to Chile. They traded off in the pilot's seat for each leg of the trip. During their years in South America, Mayetta did a lot of flying.

"Each time we stopped, the customs people would go up to Bill. I didn't exist," she says.

Behringer would soon earn her wings in another language, becoming fluent in Spanish, and would be the first woman pilot to land at most South American airports.

In 1970, Bill retired from the Navy and the family settled in Willow Glen, in the house where Mayetta still lives. Bill died in 1996.

Behringer worked part-time as a flight instructor while the children were growing up. In the 1970s and 1980s she was a full-time instructor at San Jose International Airport.

Two of her children, Scott Behringer and Linda Lanzer, have their pilots' licenses. Scott Behringer also owns his own plane and is part of Angel Flight, a group of volunteer pilots with their own airplanes who transport patients free for their medical treatments.

Master pilot

Behringer has logged 6,900 hours as a pilot and flown a jet out of Moffet Field and broken the sound barrier. She is an honorary member of the Blue Angels, the top-notch aerial flight team. The Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the Ninety-Nines named her Pilot of the Year in 1981, 1987 and 2005.

Today she flies about once a week, "unless I'm going somewhere." She flies down to San Luis Obispo to pick up two of her grandchildren, ages 8 and 10, and flies them back to San Jose for a visit.

Sometimes she goes up alone, just to fly the airplane.

"Getting in and out of San Jose International Airport is complicated. I need to keep up," she says.

She has her own hangar at the airport and pushes her plane out herself, says the Rev. Nathan Miller, who has flown with Behringer.

After a flight, she hooks up the winch and winches the plane back into the hangar.

"She's very confident and competent," Miller, 55, a pilot himself and the senior minister at the First Congregational Church of San Jose, says. "She's very thorough."

For Behringer, her passion for sailing up into the skies is simple.

"It's the closest you can be to heaven," she says.

Nothing But Sky: Mayetta Behringer of Willow Glen was recognized in 2006 by the National Transportation Safety Board of the Federal Aviation Administration for more than 50 years of safe flying. She was named a master pilot, a prestigious award.

Pull Ups: Mayetta Behringer pulls her 1967 Cessna 182, which she has co-owned since 1971, out of the hangar at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. She been flying for 60 years.

Safety Check: Mayetta Behringer checks the plane's oil level. She would regularly load her four children in the family plane and make the rounds flying, visiting her parents in Florida, her husband's mother in Michigan and aunts in Minnesota.