Quantity with Quality

Are You Following Your Passion?

This pioneering female aviator will inspire you to chase your dream

This is my next story in a series of articles responding to Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s challenge to produce a short quality article with three take home points each day for thirty days.

I have chosen to use Wikipedia’s main page as inspiration, choosing one topic from their “Did You Know” section as topical encouragement.

Mari Pepa Colomer was the first female flight instructor in Spain and one of the pioneers of Spanish aviation. Born in 1913, Mari gained her pilots’ license at the age of 17 an accomplishment noted in Catalonia’s newspaper and by the Provincial government of Barcelona.

Mari knew at a young age that she wanted to be a pilot as evidenced by her breaking both legs at age 7 when she leapt from a second story using an umbrella in order to “fly”.

Mari’s mother and father didn’t entirely agree on her education and career choice, as her mother believed her to be attending finishing school at the Institute for Culture and Popular Library of Women while her father was secretly funding her flying lessons.

Mari also struck a deal to test-fly airplanes after their repair by mechanics, a routine that helped fund her education and also rapidly added to her flight-time hours and allowing her to obtain her pilots’ license in a short time.

Mari’s mother did not find out that Mari had been attending flight school in lieu of finishing school until Mari was featured on the cover of La Vanguardia, the Spanish daily newspaper.

During the Spanish Civil war, Mari enlisted to the Military Pilots’ School where she became an aviation officer in the Spanish Republican Air Force and took on various roles of instructing pilots, flying supplies, air ambulance, propaganda drops, civilian evacuation and testing aerial bombs.

While Mari never saw actual aerial combat personally, she trained 70 combat pilots and flew soldiers to the front during the war.

What We Can Learn from Mari Pepa Colomer

Mari is a fantastic example of motivation and self-reliance. She even is said to have bicycled herself to the hospital when she went into labor with her twins during an air raid.

Mari knew that she wanted to be a pilot from an early age and stuck with her dream in spite of mixed support from family and friends.

Mari was also exceptionally selfless, using her talents to support her country during conflict and starting up two aviation schools during peacetime.

Take home points:

• Follow your dreams. Even with less-than-enthusiastic family support, Mari chased her goal to become a pilot.
• Sometimes you make your own luck. Securing a job test-flying planes after repair significantly aided Mari’s quest to become a pilot; providing both income for lessons and hours of flight experience.
• Use your gifts for the good of others. Being selfless can often reap significant personal rewards.

Don’t let a “Mary Poppins moment” (Mari’s first flight with the umbrella didn’t go as planned) keep you from pursuing your dreams.

What innovative ways can you find to leverage your advantage in getting where you want to be?

What artificial roadblocks (lack of family support, lack of clear funding, shortage of peers doing the same) are keeping you from where you want to go? Make a list and start finding ways to eliminate them one by one.

Even the sky is not a limit.

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.