Alison Healy on a woman who became one of the world's first and most fearless aviators

Irish Times

16-06-2025

The two middle-aged women sitting opposite me on the train were chatting animatedly. I was shamelessly eavesdropping, as is mandatory in such situations. One of them was talking about her adventure-seeking daughter and noted that she was 'mad for road.'
It's an apt description for someone who can't stay in one place for long and has a constant yearning to travel. Years ago, it was used in a somewhat critical way, especially if a woman was involved.
It seemed to suggest that she would be better employed scrubbing dried scrambled eggs from a saucepan rather than travelling the country's highways and byways.
But to me, being mad for road is something to be admired. I was unabashedly mad for road from a very young age. One day, when I was small, I noticed my mother was changing into her good clothes and I asked where she was going. She said she was off to America.
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Did I want to come? Well, I didn't need to be asked twice. I changed into my Sunday clothes as speedily as possible in case she left without me. You can imagine the crushing disappointment when she emerged with her tartan shopping bag and said she was off to the town on her bicycle to get the messages. No airplane required.
Now well recovered from that small setback, I am still mad for road and plan to remain so until forced to make that very final one-way journey. But I still have a long way to go before catching up with Clara Adams. Born in Ohio in 1884, she is largely forgotten today despite being one of the original influencers. S
he called herself a persistent first flighter, one of those people who flew on maiden flights when air travel was taking off. She gave lectures about her trips and helped to popularise air travel with the masses.
She could do this because of her wealth. Her marriage to George Adams, president of the American Leather Tanning company, meant she had no money worries. He was more than 30 years her senior and she was just 44 when he died, leaving her truly free to indulge her longing for the skies.
Details of her epic odysseys could fill this entire page, but let's highlight a few. In 1928 she bought the first transatlantic air ticket ever sold to a woman and flew on the Graf Zeppelin airship from New York to Europe.
In 1931 she was the first woman to buy a ticket to fly on the largest aircraft ever built at that time - the Dornier DO-X flying boat. She boarded in Rio de Janeiro and flew to New York. 'You could hardly tell you were flying,' she told the New York Times afterwards.
When the Hindenburg made its maiden flight from Germany in 1936, she was at the top of the queue. And immediately after the Hindenburg disaster the following year, she put down a $100 deposit for another airship flight, to demonstrate her confidence in the safety of air travel. She was also aboard many Pan Am Clippers for their inaugural flights, including the first passenger flight across the Pacific, and the first flight from New York to Bermuda.
But her most famous trip came in June 1939 when she set a world record for an around-the-world flight made on passenger airlines. It took her 16 days and 19 hours and took her from New York to Marseilles and on to places such as Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Bangkok, Guam and Honolulu.
One would imagine that she was exhausted after all that, but, fresh off the plane in New York, she hot-footed it to the World Fair in Queens to talk about her aerial adventures. The New York Times reported that she was wearing a Chinese silk suit bought in Hong Kong, and a Panama hat from Rangoon.
She described the trip as 'beautiful beyond description and sublime beyond the most vivid imagination of the human mind.' Similar to something you might say after disembarking from a Ryanair plane in Leeds.
The maiden of maiden voyages wasn't done yet. The following September, she flew from San Francisco to New Zealand on Pan Am's first passenger flight.
The small matter of the second World War put a halt to her travels and then there were no more maiden flights to take. She offered to go to the moon in 1966 but that was one inaugural flight she couldn't buy a ticket for.
Fittingly, her travelling did not end with her death in 1971. At her request, her ashes were scattered over the Atlantic Ocean from an airplane.
Now there's a woman who was mad for road. And sky.