Fay Gillis Wells

Who was Fay Gillis Wells?

Fay Gillis Wells was an American pioneer aviator, globe-trotting journalist and a broadcaster.

In 1929 she was the first woman pilot to bail out of an airplane to save her life and helped found the Ninety-Nines, the international organization of licensed women pilots. As a journalist she corresponded from the Soviet Union in the 1930s, covered wars and pioneered overseas radio broadcasting with her husband, the reporter Linton Wells, and was a White House correspondent from 1963 to 1977. During the 1930s and 40s she and her husband carried out sensitive government missions in Africa. For many years she actively promoted world friendship through flying.