Bernice Steadman’s autobiography was titled “Tethered Mercury: A Pilot’s Memoir: The Right Stuff — But the Wrong Sex”. It describes her participation in the “Mercury 13” program which trained potential female astronauts but never sent them into space. In her life Steadman was a pilot, a taxi driver, a sportswoman, a clothing store owner and the co-founder of a museum but never achieved her dream of becoming an astronaut. She died last week at the age of 89.

Born in Rudyard, Michigan in 1925 and was the youngest of seven children until a house fire claimed her father and five of her siblings a year later. After high school, Steadman worked as an inspector at a spark plug plant while she saved money for flight school finally getting her pilots license before her drivers license.

She was the first woman to get a Airline Transport Rating (ATR) and eventually started her own flight school. There she trained 200 airline pilots but could never fly passenger planes herself because of her gender.

She also opened a women’s clothing store in 1973, a taxi company in 1996 and co-founed Cleveland’s Women’s Space Museum.

“She was really strong, really smart. Everything she tried to do, she excelled in. Marvelous hand and eye coordination. She could fly a plane better than anyone else. She won many of the races she was in,” her husband of 56, Robert Steadman, told the Detroit Free Press.

In 1959, Bernice Steadman was one of 13 women selected to undergo the same screening that male astronauts received. William Randolph Lovelace II, who developed the screening program for NASA, wanted to see how women would fare under the process.

The program was officially dubbed the First Lady Astronaut Trainee (FLAT) program. It was later re-deubbed Mercury 13 after the Mercury 7 male program.

According to Mercury 13.com, a website devoted to the short-lived experiment, all 13 of the women fared better in the screening process than their male counterparts.

Three women went as far as phase II testing before the program was scrapped. President Lyndon B. Johnson reportedly wrote “Stop This Now” across one of the documents relating to the program.

The program was not, as has been reported elsewhere, an official part of NASA. It was a privately funded experiment, led by Lovelace, however it did require the use of NASA facilities which were eventually not made available.

The U.S. did not put the first female astronaut in space until Sally Ride on June 18th, 1983, 20 years after Russia’s first female cosmonaut.

“Even though these 13 remarkable women were not allowed to complete their space mission, they proved to the country that women were equally as qualified as their male counterparts,” says the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in its description of Steadman.

In addition to her business pursuits and advocacy work, Steadman was an avid hunter and golfer.

After a battle with Alzheimer’s disease, Bernice Steadman died Wednesday, March 18 at her home in Traverse City, Michigan.

A memorial service for Steadman will be held in a few months, at 11 a.m. on May 23 at Grace Episcopal Church in Traverse City.