Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick was born in 1893 in Oxford, North Carolina, not too far from Kitty Hawk. When she was 15 she saw Charles Broadwick’s World Famous Aeronauts parachute from a hot air balloon. The glorious sight determined the path of her life. She joined the troop, and was eventually adopted by Broadwick.
A born daredevil, Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from an airplane when she leapt out over Los Angeles in 1913. A year later she became the first woman to “free-fall” parachute, when she demonstrated deploying her chute manually while training U.S. Army aviators. She weighed just 85 pounds and stood less than five feet tall. “I was never afraid,” she said. “I’d go up any time, any place. The only thing I hated was getting back to earth so quickly.” Broadwick lived to be 85.
