Wally Funk died Wednesday.
She was 87.
An assisted living facility in Grapevine Texas, that’s where it happened. Duff O’Dell was there, sitting right by her side. Funk’s caregiver for some time, O’Dell says she was one of those people who just kept smiling through it all. Optimistic, even at the very end. But her body failed. She’d fallen recently. Got a nasty infection in her leg. It took its toll. Simple as that.
The story itself is wild though. You have to understand the context. Funk was part of that group in the 60s, the Mercury 13. Thirteen female pilots who jumped through every hoop NASA put in front of them. The exact same tests as the men. All of them. But nobody let them up. They weren’t allowed in the corps. So she spent decades doing everything else. First female Federal Aviation Administration inspector. First female National Transportation Safety Board air safety investigator. She flew, she fixed, she investigated. Just not as an astronaut.
Then comes 2021. She is 82. Jeff Bezos picks her. An “honored guest.” It’s a shot, literally and figuratively. Blue Origin sends her on an up-and-down hop out of West Texas. She makes it. The oldest woman to launch. Oldest person overall for a bit anyway, before William Shatner and Ed Dwight broke that specific record at age 90. Still. The door finally opened.
We were humbled to be part of his journey.
Blue Origin called her a pioneer on X, now rebranded Twitter maybe, depends on your UI. Fair enough. O’Dell describes it better. Says Funk heard “no” from countless men over a lifetime. You can’t do this. You can’t do that. And she never got angry? Really? She just got more determined. It sounds like a movie line. But it fits.
Why does it matter now? It matters because she waited. That kind of patience isn’t passive. It’s active refusal to accept a ceiling that was cemented right in front of her face.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted a tribute Thursday. He talked about passion and perseverance and inspiring generations. Standard eulogy stuff, but accurate. Godspeed Wally, he wrote.
She wanted to go to space for over fifty years. She finally went. That’s a good story, mostly. We don’t really have a clean ending to put on this though. Just the quiet reality of a life fully lived in the shadows of male-dominated aviation, until the sun finally hit it late.
She’s gone now. The record books keep the data. The spirit is just… memory.
