Independent Women's Forum

He was called “the greatest pilot of the Greatest Generation.”

Chuck Yeager was already famous as the first pilot to break the sound barrier in 1947 and before that as a World War II flying ace. Indeed, Yeager ascended to the dazzling status of “double ace” in a single day of combat.

So, it’s not surprising that Tom Wolfe lauded Yeager as “the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff” in his 1979 book “The Right Stuff,” about daring test pilots in the space program. Sam Shepard played Yeager in the movie.

“People think he wasn’t afraid. He was afraid. He was very afraid. He was very afraid of dying, but he didn’t let it get in the way. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid, but he didn’t let it get in the way,” Victoria Yeager tells IWF. Mrs. Yeager is the author of a new book, “Chuck Yeager: What a Ride,” by “Chuck Yeager’s favorite co-pilot.”

It tells the story of Victoria’s “amazing life” with the General after they met when Victoria encountered him hiking in the foothills of the High Sierra. She was 41; he was 77. He took her flying the next day. She was pinching herself that she was flying “not only with a beautiful, handsome, charming man, but this man was also Chuck Yeager!!!!!”

Today Victoria is one of the movers and shakers putting on the annual General Chuck Yeager Aviation Day (September 28), held in General Yeager’s native state of West Virginia. Yeager died in 2020, at the age of 97. Chuck Yeager Aviation Day is “dedicated to commemorating the life and legacy” of Yeager and “instilling a passion for flight and innovation among young people, fostering a new generation of dreamers and trailblazers in aerospace.”

Girls in Aviation, which is part of Women in Aviation International, will have a big presence at Chuck Yeager Day. Victoria says that General Yeager, who encouraged Jackie Cochran, a legendary woman pilot, was supportive of women in the field.

Nothin’ like being the flight instructor and learnin’ the husband who picks up your student after class is the guy who broke the sound barrier.

Yeager thought that top-tier women pilots were often better than their male counterparts. “Jackie Cochran held more records than anybody, male or female,” says Victoria, who is herself a member of Women in Aviation. Only seven percent of commercial pilots are women, Victoria says. Women in Aviation is dedicated to increasing the number of women in aviation. It offers scholarships and highlights the careers of outstanding female pilots. Why do women make good pilots?

“The reason is that women can multitask,” Victoria replies, “and multitasking is not that you can do exactly two things at once, it’s that your brain is going back and forth so quickly that you don’t even notice you’re multitasking. Women pilots, also, generally speaking, will ask the why of something. They will do what General Yeager did, which is ask questions because they want to know why something works the way it does.”

As supportive as he was of women pilots, General Yeager drew the line at women in wartime combat. “When she’s in the air, she’s a warrior,” he said, “but if she’s shot down, she’s a sex object.” Victoria is an advocate for women—and men—considering a career in flying. A good first step, she says, is joining Women in Aviation. “Pursuing a career in flying can be a little expensive,” she admits. But there are plucky ways to do it. “You can do barter deals. That’s what Cliff Robertson, the character actor, did. He went and washed airplanes to get lessons. Or you can go into the military as Chuck did; ‘If you’re willing to bleed a little bit, the military will let you fly whatever you want.’ And then there are all these scholarships and programs. There are a lot of scholarships right now because there’s a shortage of pilots.”

As supportive as he was of women pilots, General Yeager drew the line at women in wartime combat. “When she’s in the air, she’s a warrior,” he said, “but if she’s shot down, she’s a sex object.”

Victoria grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Her father was George D’Angelo, a partner in the Philadelphia law firm of D’Angelo & Eurell and a popular law professor—whose classes were always oversubscribed—at Temple University’s Law School. Her mother was Antonia Billett D’Angelo, a psychiatric social worker and president of the Delaware Valley Area Chapter of the National Council on Alcoholism, chair of the NCA’s Office on Women Women & Alcoholism for the U.S., and on the NCA board of directors. Mrs. D’Angelo was a friend of the late Betty Ford and is credited with encouraging the first lady to speak publicly about her battle with alcoholism. As a child, Victoria accompanied her mother to meetings in places like Copenhagen and Kenya. Victoria went to Shipley, the exclusive Main Line prep school, and then to the University of Virginia for a liberal arts degree and Columbia for an MBA.

She was always up for adventure. She is credited with blowing the whistle on a human trafficker who was posing as a CIA agent and whom she met in Cambodia. This escapade involved a high-speed taxi chase with the trafficker. She was a producer on a sports show and actress, who played the detective in the Harrison Ford movie “Witness.”

She and Yeager were married shortly after they met while hiking, and the adventure continued. “What a Ride” tells about going to France (she was already fluent in French) to meet the French Resistance members who had saved Yeager’s life when he was shot down in World War II and Yeager’s teaching her about hunting and (golden trout, salmon, halibut, red snapper) fishing (although he insisted it was huntin’ and fishin’). She also got serious about flying, though her husband worried about her safety.

“I had to go to a licensed civilian instructor to get the correct hours to get my license,” she says. “Bless his heart, Chuck was supportive. He came out to every single lesson. And he would correct the guy on our drive home, not in front of him. There was one time he corrected him in front of me, to his face, and that had to do with a short-field landing,” which can be tricky. Nothin’ like being the flight instructor and learnin’ the husband who picks up your student after class is the guy who broke the sound barrier.

Victoria wrote a previous book “101 Chuck Yeager-isms,” a collection of the General’s wit and wisdom. It included such gems as, “Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. Any landing where you can use the plane the next day is an excellent landing,” and “The French Underground hid me in the cathouses.” Yeager admitted that this wasn’t quite true but that it made a good story. He also observed, “If you want to test a person’s character, give them a little authority.”

Girls in Aviation, which is part of Women in Aviation International, will have a big presence at Chuck Yeager Day.

And perhaps most charmingly: “There wasn’t a pigeon in Hamlin [West Virginia] till they erected a statue of me.” Yeager went straight from Hamlin into the Air Force, where he was originally assigned to work as a mechanic but quickly became a fighter pilot. It’s often said that, though Yeager had the right stuff, and more so than anyone else at NASA, and was teaching astronauts, he didn’t become an astronaut because he lacked a college degree. Victoria disputes this. “He was self-educated, which is an on-the-job training, and he had an intellectual curiosity that never stopped,” she says. “He could have been an astronaut if he’d wanted to, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to fly the airplane, and he would have been absolutely bored out of his gourd sitting up there in space. He was not a guy that was good at sitting still.”

On Chuck Yeager Day, Victoria and (Ret) Brigadier General Chris “Mookie” Walker will honor Chuck Yeager and tell young people—especially young women—why they should consider careers in aviation. What advice does Mrs. Yeager have for young women? “I, from a young age, have always thought that everybody, but especially women, should know how to shoot a gun, drive a stick shift, drive a truck, and fly an airplane.” Sounds like the Right Stuff to us.