Jeff Bezos has a really flat butt.
That’s one of the pieces of information Wally Funk, the oldest woman to go to space, conveyed to a crowd Wednesday at Stephens College.
A Stephens College alumna, 16-year-old Funk came to Columbia in 1956 from her home in Taos, N.M. Here she earned her pilot’s license and an associate’s degree, continuing her education at the University of Oklahoma, from which she graduated at age 20.
On July 20, at age 82, she traveled to the edge of space with Bezos and a few others on his Blue Origin New Shepard spacecraft.
In the months before the flight, Bezos visited Funk at her home.
“He said ‘Wally, I’m going up to space and I’m going to take you with me,'” Funk said. “I gave him a big hug.”
And she felt his butt, which she said was the flattest one she had seen on any man.
Space flight was the dream of a lifetime, after having been rejected for decades by NASA. She said it wasn’t because she was a woman, but because she lacked an engineering degree.
She urged girls in the audience to pursue degrees in engineering and science.
“That’s where we’re going,” Funk said.
Bezos didn’t ask her any questions about her health or require any tests before the flight, she said.
The flight was so smooth, she could’ve fallen asleep, she said.
She doesn’t remember anything she said at the post-flight news conference.
“I was so happy to go up,” she said.
Who is Wally Funk?
At 14, she said she had a proper rifle and two proper pistols, with which she won firearms awards — receiving a letter of congratulations from President Dwight Eisenhower.
Funk was the first female flight instructor at a military base and has taught more than 3,000 students how to fly. She spent years investigating aircraft accidents with the National Transportation Safety Board.
She urged young people to put down their cell phones.
“Ride a horse,” she said. “Go out and play. Work on a car.”
Her mother sometimes didn’t know where she was, because she sometimes slept in a treehouse, in a barn or on the ground. She said her mom never got too worried.
“I knew exactly what Wally was going to do,” she said.
Her favorite plane? A Steerman, with four wings.
“I loved that airplane,” she said. Hers is being refurbished.
She drinks hot water. Sometimes cranberry juice with no sugar. She never drank alcohol.
She mentioned her book “Higher, Faster, Longer: My Life in Aviation and My Quest for Spaceflight” once during her talk. It’s for sale on Amazon, which she said she hadn’t heard of until she met Bezos, its CEO.
She has more than 200,000 flying hours.
Wally Funk on another trip back into space, thoughts coming back to Earth
Before her talk, she answered questions for reporters on Tuesday.
She was asked what the value is of a flight that barely touches space, something Alan Shepard achieved with NASA in 1961 and the Soviets had achieved earlier.
“You did it,” she said. “Fantastic.”
Her thoughts as the rocket descended?
“I don’t want to come back to Earth,” she said. “I want to keep going.”
Any thoughts of another space flight?
“Honey, it’s millions of dollars,” to fly in space, she said. “I have a quarter in my pocket.”
She doesn’t have many memories of Columbia from her time here, she said.
“All I knew was Stephens,” she said. “We didn’t have cars. I had a great time here at Stephens.”
Life on other planets or aliens on ours?
“I’m not a person who thinks about things in space,” she said. “I just want to go out there.”
City Councilwoman Andrea Waner presented Funk with a proclamation declaring Dec. 8 Wally Funk Day in Columbia.
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