Wally Funk, last of Mercury 13 and oldest woman in space, dies at 87

Born Mary Wallace Funk on February 1, 1939, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, Funk took up an early interest in aviation. She graduated from Stephens College in Missouri with an Associate of Arts degree and her pilot’s license. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Secondary Education from Oklahoma State University, while also racking up certificates and ratings, including her commercial, single-engine land, multi-engine land, single-engine sea, instrument, flight instructor, and all ground instructor ratings.

Beyond joining the FLATs, Funk became a professional aviator, instructing US Army officers on how to fly. She was the first female flight instructor to serve at a US military base. In 1971, she achieved the rating of flight inspector from the FAA, becoming the first woman to do so, and three years later, was hired by the National Transportation Safety Board as its first female air safety investigator.

Funk raced planes and became a renowned pilot trainer and speaker on aviation safety. She was chief pilot for five aviation schools across the country, qualifying thousands of students on multiple airflight ratings.

As a member of the Mercury 13, Funk attended the launch of the first woman to pilot a space shuttle into space, Eileen Collins, in 1995, and in 2020, published a memoir, Higher, Faster, Longer: My Life in Aviation and My Quest for Space Flight with co-author Loretta Hall.

For her contributions to aviation and spaceflight history, Funk was inducted into the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame in 2024 and will be posthumously inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame at the New Mexico Museum of Space History later this year. She received a Guinness World Record as the oldest woman in space and, in 2022, was awarded the National Air and Space Museum’s Michael Collins Trophy for Lifetime Achievement.

Funk was unmarried and did not have children. She was preceded in death by her fellow Mercury 13 members Myrtle Cagle, Jerrie Cobb, Janet Dietrich, Marion Dietrich, Sarah Gorelick (later Ratley), Jane “Janey” Briggs Hart, Jean Hixson, Rhea Woltman, Gene Nora Stumbough (later Jessen), Irene Leverton, Jerri Sloan (later Truhill), and Bernice Steadman. She also outlived the Mercury 7 astronauts.