Longevity itself can make a death notable, but the passing of two people in aviation this month is worth our attention not just how long they lived but for what they did with the years God gave to them.

Azreil (aka) Al Blackman, whose 80 year career as an airplane mechanic is a Guinness World Record, was 96 when he set down his wrench in 2022. He died a week ago, shortly after his 100th birthday. His  career in aviation started at the age of 16 when he landed an apprentice position at American Export Airlines in New York.

When the airline was acquired by American so was the teen, who was soon nicknamed Blackie by fellow mechanics.

Back in the forties, overseas flights were made in flying boats, Consolidated PBYs and Sikorsky VS44s. Those were the fancy and exciting machines Blackie was lucky enough to work on. Years passed and more sophisticated planes were placed in his care. But what I was taken with as I covered both his 70th anniversary with American and his 75th was not so much what he did but how he did it. He was lively and full of humor. The effect on his co workers was evident.

Alfredo Oyague Jr., a fellow mechanic and an artist and his friend, Elizer Pagan, painted an enormous tribute mural on the wall of the hangar in 2012. Blackman beams from the center, surrounded by airplanes he has worked on over the years.

“The evolution in aviation he witnessed no one will ever duplicate,” his co-worker at American’s JFK maintenance base, Gary Santos told me. As an amateur aviation historian, Santos would know. Announcing Blackman’s death the Transport Workers Union of America called him “a respected friend, colleague, mentor,” noting he was also a helicopter crew chief in the Army during the Korean War.

Whether the two ever met, I can’t say, but Blackman and Wally Funk were contemporaries and they had a lot in common beginning with their vivacity.

At the age of 82, Funk flew into space aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard spacecraft, the oldest woman to have done so at the time of this writing.

Funk’s interests and goals were not much different than Blackman’s. She fell in love with flight while still a child, got her pilot’s license in her teens and was soon a flight instructor for the Army.  But while Blackman found opportunity in aviation, Funk, due to her gender, encountered many hurdles. She got an airline transport rating but no airline would hire her.

In the sixties, she was one of a small group of female flyers who subjected themselves to a battery of rigorous examinations to determine if women could perform on par with male astronaut candidates. (To my younger readers, yep, you read that right.)  Turns out they tested just as well as men and sometimes better. None of the women who participated in the private astronaut assessment programs, however, were allowed to join the astronaut program. When NASA finally started including women in 1978, Funk was passed over.

Hindrances aplenty did not keep her from breaking through barriers. She was the first woman to become an air accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board and the first woman inspector for the FAA.

Seventeen years before Funk flew as a passenger in Blue Origin, reporter Preston Lerner profiled Funk for the Los Angeles Times. In the article, he wonders if the busy aviatrix will ever get her dream of going to space. But Funk’s friend, the late Bobbi Trout told him, that’s not really the point.

“Even if Wally doesn’t make it into space, she’ll be remembered for her love of aviation and her tenacity in pursuing her dream,” Baker told Lerner. “A lot of people go through their lives without discovering their passion.”

Over a lifetime in motion, much of it in the air and too much of it battling for the right to be judged for her skills rather than her sex, Funk did find success. In 2021, when she finally got to the launch pad, she’d earned the right to go into space.

But before their final departure, Al Blackman and Wally Funk fully occupied their space on earth.

Read more about Wally Funk in her Book

Wally Funk’s Race for Space

See Blackman fly in a DC-3

https://youtu.be/rY2Q13Wkyyg?si=gBaf358DexNoWq4m