North Texas aviator and astronaut Wally Funk was inducted to the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame this week, the latest milestone in a decades-long flight career.
Funk, an 85-year-old Grapevine resident, earned her pilot's license at 17 and became an accomplished flight instructor.
She became the first female flight inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration in 1971 and one of the first female air safety investigators on the National Transportation and Safety Board in 1974.
Sixty years before traveling to space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin spacecraft, Funk volunteered for the First Lady Astronaut Trainees program, known as "Mercury 13." She was never selected as an astronaut despite applying four times, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
But in 2021 Funk got her chance to see space.
She joined Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos and Oliver Daemen on the Blue Origin New Shephard space capsule. At the time of that journey, Funk was the oldest person to fly in space at the age of 82.
Funk was inducted into the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame, located at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Houston, on Sunday alongside Colleen C. Barrett, R. Walter Cunningham, and Heather Wilson.
Funk's hall of fame plaque ends with a quote from her: "I never let anything stop me."
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