Georgia Ann \u201cTiny\u201d Broadwick
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 (1893\u20131978)
Tiny was born Georgia Ann Thompson on a farm in Granville County North Carolina to George and Emma Ross Thompson on April 8, 1893. The last of seven daughters, weighing only 3 pounds, she was given the nickname \u201cTiny\u201d due to her small size; Tiny reached only 4\u2032 1\u2033 and weighed in at 80 pounds as an adult. Tiny\u2019s early life was one of hardship; her parents raised pigs and chickens and Tiny worked the tobacco fields. At the age of six, due to a drop in farm prices, the Thompsons were forced to give up their farm, taking work at the Harriet Cotton Mill in nearby Henderson. Tiny married William Aulsie Jacobs when she was only twelve and a short time later was pregnant with her only child, Verla. Her husband soon abandoned her and Verla, forcing Tiny take a job working 12 to 14 hour shifts at the mill, earning forty cents per day. She would walk home twice a day to nurse her child and return to complete her shift.
Tiny\u2019s life of boredom and drudgery would soon come to an end though. In the spring of 1908, Tiny convinced a neighbor to take her to Raleigh to the Johnny J. Jones Exposition Shows to see \u201cThe Broadwicks and Their Famous French Aeronauts,\u201d which featured a stunt performer named Charles Broadwick (aka: John Murray) who dropped from a hot air balloon and descended using a parachute.\u00a0 Tiny convinced Broadwick that she could do a better job than him. \u201cWhen I seen this balloon go up, I knew that\u2019s all I wanted to do! I hung around until they came back to the lot where the balloon had left from and told them I wanted to join them. I was hell-bound and determined to get in that act!\u201d Talking up her small frame and assuring him that she could manage a light and easy descent to the ground without trouble. Tiny persuaded Broadwick to let her join his crew of aerial performers.
Charles Broadwick needed some convincing but knew a good thing when he saw it. Promising to send money back for Tiny\u2019s daughter Verla, he was able to get her parent\u2019s permission; her mother eventually agreeing to give the arrangement a trial. Charles Broadwick \u201cadopted\u201d the 15 year old girl since it was not considered proper for a young woman to travel with an unrelated older man. Miss Tiny Broadwick, the World\u2019s Most Daring Aviatrice-Parachutistl\u201d was born.\u00a0
The teenage parachutist and Charles Broadwick traveled all over the country with the Johnny J. Jones Carnival Co. Billed as the the Doll Girl because of her small size, she performed in ruffled bloomers, a silk dress with pink bows \u00a0in her hair; an outfit the rough and tumble Tiny hated. Tiny made her first parachute jump before the act left Raleigh; landing right in the middle of a big blackberry bush! Described this way, \u201cI tell you, honey, it was the most wonderful sensation in the world!\u201d \u00a0\u201cTiny Broadwick\u201d became an instant headliner. They traveled all over the United States with the popular balloon act, during which the fearless Tiny performed daring drops often under multiple parachutes, sometimes with flares or torches. She had several harrowing mishaps, including fires during her career; landing \u00a0on top \u00a0of a train, getting tangled in a windmill and high tension wires and many rough landings during which she broke several bones and dislocated her shoulder on several occasions, she never lost her enthusiasm for dropping. As far as payment and money for her daughter Tiny was quite often given a Coke and a candy bar, or sometimes pocket change. Charles Broadwick was not a good financial manager.
In 1912, on a field south of downtown Los Angeles, the third Dominguez Air Meet, the greatest aviation event in the United States was being held. The absolute cream of the flying world including designer Glenn Curtiss, famed stunt flyer and future manufacturer Glenn Martin, pilot Lincoln Beachey would be there; having moved west the year before, Charles Broadwick and Tiny would also be in attendance. She met Orville Wright who told her, \u201cI\u2019m glad you\u2019re interested in aviation,\u201d to which she replied, \u201cI\u2019m mostly interested in parachutes.\u201d One day at the Los Angeles air meet, Tiny met airplane manufacturer Glenn L. Martin, who had picked her up in one of his airplanes after an off-field landing, Tiny\u2019s first airplane ride, and it proved to be a turning point in her life. He proposed that she drop from one of his airplanes; \u201cjumping\u201d at the chance, she agreed without hesitation.
On June 21, 1913, Tiny hung from a trapeze type swing suspended under the right side of Martin\u2019s airplane just behind the wing. Her parachute, developed by Charles Broadwick, was on a shelf above her, and when the plane was at 2,000 feet over Los Angeles, Tiny released a lever that made the seat release from under her. The parachute, which was attached to the airplane by a thin(static) line, opened automatically, and she parachuted safely to earth, landing in Griffith Park making her the first woman to parachute from an airplane.
Two reporters were on hand and wrote stories about this eventful day. \u201d \u2026 Tiny Broadwick \u2026crossed the great divide between the clouds and the earth,\u201d wrote Grace Wilcox. \u201cWhen she was ready to drop, Martin touched my shoulder,\u201d Bonnie Glessner, wrote, \u201cI faced about and turned my eyes on the face of the child. She was clambering over the side of the machine as though it were stationary. Once over, she clung tenaciously, her eyes fixed on Martin, who was just then looking down over the side of the aeroplane. The signal came while he watched below. Just the slight movement of his hand but the girl understood and her lips formed a \u2018goodbye\u2019 which I sensed rather than heard. Smiling at me, she stepped off into space, not even a tremor of the machine showing she was gone.\u201d \u201c\u2026 as I watched with thickly beating heart, this nervy little girl stepped calmly over the edge of the aeroplane a thousand feet in the air, and with a brave little smile, plunged earthward.\u201d That same year, she became the first women jump from a hydroplane and also the first to parachute into water; she emerged from Lake Michigan soaking wet to present \u00a0a wreath to Governor Edward F. Dunn of Illinois.
In 1914, Tiny was asked to demonstrate how to parachute from a military airplane; she made four jumps at San Diego\u2019s North Island. During the sequence of jumps for the Army, the static line was whipping wildly in the slipstream and risked breaking the twine that was holding the parachute pack shut. This was highly dangerous and could likely have caused a premature deployment. So, Tiny, while preparing for her fourth drop, on the ground, cut the static line to a short length; Ashton Young quoted his great-grandmother directly, saying that \u201cshe held out her little hands to a distance between eighteen inches and two feet. She said she knew she could pull the line and break the strings with only one hand but if need be, she could use them both.”
This was the first planned free-fall descent, and the first deployment by use of a \u201crip cord\u201d. She had proven that a pilot could return to the ground safely by bailing out of an airplane. As a result, she also became the first person to ever free-fall from an aircraft. The day after the Broadwick demonstration, the San Diego Union carried the following: \u201c\u2026Brigadier General George P. Scriven, chief signal officer, USA, has recommended the purchase of a number of parachutes \u2026.\u201d In those days, fires in airplanes were common that, in fear of a fiery end, some pilots carried pistols to commit suicide; others chose to jump to a quick death. If a pilot had Broadwick\u2019s static-line parachute, however, he might have a chance at escaping a burning airplane.\u201d She made \u00a0jumps at the 1915 and 1916 San Diego World\u2019s Fairs.
Tiny married Harry Brown in 1916 and stopped parachuting for four years; that marriage ended in divorce as did her 1912 marriage to Andrew Olsen. She also severed her relationship with Charles Broadwick during that period. She continued to go by the name of Georgia Brown until her death; she considered Broadwick to be her \u201cstage\u2019 name. She returned to jumping again in 1920 for two more years.\u00a0 The novelty of parachuting had worn off, her ankles had begun to bother her but \u00a0she was very reluctant to give up parachuting because, she said, \u201cI breathe so much better up there, and it\u2019s so peaceful being that near to God.\u201d. She retired permanently, making her last jump in San Diego in 1922, with over 1,100 jumps when she was just 29 years old. Tiny\u2019s retirement from jumping did not come easily. She said: \u201cIt was terribly hard for me to settle down. I had so much pep and energy. I was lonesome for my work and occasionally made a few jumps.\u201d
\u00a0She remained a powerful influence in the aviation field throughout her life. Tiny received many honors and awards in her lifetime. Among them are the U.S. Government Pioneer Aviation award and the John Glenn Medal.\u00a0 She was the only woman in the 80 member Early Birds of Aviation. She also received the Gold Wings of the Adventurer\u2019s Club in Los Angeles, and was made an honorary member of the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg. With that honor, she was told she could jump any time she chose.\u00a0 At the May 5, 1964 Tiny Broadwick Night dinner during which Tiny donated her parachute, National Air Museum Director Philip S. Hopkins said, \u201cMeasured in feet and inches, her nickname \u2018Tiny\u2019 is obviously appropriate. Measured by her courage and by her accomplishments, she stands tall among her many colleagues \u2014 the pioneers of flight.\u201d On Nov 16, 1972, the Adventurers Club of Los Angeles held a \u201cTiny Broadwick Night\u201d. Norm Heaton of USPA presented her with her Gold Wings for her 1000+ jumps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Georgia Ann \u201cTiny\u201d Broadwick\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 (1893\u20131978)Tiny was born Georgia Ann Thompson on a farm in Granville County North Carolina to George and Emma Ross Thompson on April 8, 1893. The last of seven daughters, weighing only 3 pounds, she was given the nickname \u201cTiny\u201d due to her small size; Tiny reached […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2193","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/tinybroadwick.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/tinybroadwick.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/tinybroadwick.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/tinybroadwick.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/tinybroadwick.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/tinybroadwick.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194,"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/tinybroadwick.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2193\/revisions\/2194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/tinybroadwick.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}