Sky-high courage

Amigo Airsho photo gallery

May 22, 1981

Woman wingwalker conquers fear with air ‘feet’

Tamara Chapman
El Paso Times

Courage is jampacked into Sandi Pierce Melvin’s petite frame the way customers are crowded into a fast-food restaurant at lunch time.

Make that courage fueled by twin engines of pure energy.

As executive director of Amigo Airsho ’81. Ms. Melvin has had her hands more than full booking and coordinating acts. But she has an enthusiasm for air shows born of experience – experience as a participant as well as an organizer.

She started flying in 1966, and since 1968 she’s performed in air shows from Oshkosh to Milwaukee to Dallas.

In 1969, she first presented one of her most daring acts – wingwalking.

Though she had performed as an aerobatic pilot the previous year, wingwalking was a new experience for Ms. Melvin. Supported by a back brace and protective clothing, she rode atop the wing of a 450 Stearman aircraft, a large biplane. Not content just to ride in a normal fashion, Ms. Melvin also rode aboard the plane as it turned upside down and sideways.

“It’s not like you expect,” she says of her experiences. “It’s not fun. It’s very very windy. If you can imagine riding on the hood of a car at 160 miles per hour. …You feel very alone.”

She shrugs off comments about her daring. “It was a job, and you did it,” she says with a slight Texas twang.

“Anyone can ride the wing. It takes no ability.” Rather, Ms. Melvin describes wingriding as nothing more than the ability to conquer fear.

However, wingriding is not a fitting sport for the queasy or nervous. At landing, wingriders are especially vulnerable because there’s a chance the plane might tip or overturn.

Of this danger, Ms. Melvin says she just never worried.

At the time she initially attempted the feat, Ms. Melvin was the only woman wingrider and one of only five women air-show pilots, she says. She now holds the unofficial wingriding record for accumulated hours.

Though she was a woman in what was then a traditionally male field, Ms. Melvin says that discrimination was the exception. Aviators, she says, welcome kindred spirits into their fold.

Ms. Melvin’s aeronautical interests first took wing when she worked as a flight school secretary. After a year of lessons she became a regular on the air-show circuit.

“It’s a way of life,” she says, bouncing in her seat. “You go from show to show.

During her air-show years, Ms. Melvin appeared on various television shows, including the “Mike Douglas Show” and “What’s My Line.”

Since that fateful first year at the flight school, Ms. Melvin has clocked more than 5,000 flight hours in 65 types of planes. She also has accumulated enough Federal Aviation Administration licenses to fill a DC-10.

In addition, she has a mechanic’s license because she believes air-show performers should know the business inside and out.

These days, she’s still a kinetic bundle of energy, but her feet spend more time firmly on the ground. She works in investment real estate for Macatee-Smith Inc. and contents herself with occasional flights. But mention of the aeronautical worked still stirs her blood and causes her spirits to soar.

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Comments

[Phyllis McCarthy]

I came to El Paso in 1952 and I remember working at Popular Dry Goods downtown. This was between 1963 and 1965 I believe. While working I heard a loud bang which we thought was a truck hitting the wall of the alley between the buildings. Later we heard it was an airforce plane hitting the mountain on the west side of town. There was also a airforce plane that went down after hitting a water tower or power line by the old El Paso airport. Do you have anything on either of these?