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THE SPORTSMAN PILOT
America's first flying sportswoman
Gerald B. Burtnett
Bessica Raiche, practicing physician
How Bessica Raiche came home from France with a husband and an irresistible urge to fly
"PRECEDING these . . . women (Mme. Deniz Moore, Susan Bernard March, Julia Clark) . . . in learning to fly was Mrs. Frank Raiche, whose exploits in the air were so successful that on October 13, 1920, the Aeronautical Society held a dinner in New York at which Hudson Maxim, the inventor, who was president of the society, presented her with a gold medal studded with diamonds. The records do not reveal what became of Mrs. Raiche." - New York World, October 15, 1927
BESSICA RAICHE had returned from school in France with a dashing young Frenchman for a husband. Beloit, Wisconsin, was all atwitter. Bessica was one of the "new" women of that period twenty years ago, when girls who "ran" automobiles and wore bloomers for sports provided gossip for the weekly Thanatopsis Club meetings. 
She was known to her friends as a clever musician, linquist and painter. But another side of her nature found expression in her mastery of swimming, shooting, horseback riding and fast driving behind the wheel of an automobile. Wisconsin palled a bit. So Bessica sought an outlet for her vitality in Paris. Ostensibly, she was to finish her studies in painting. Actually, she wanted to see a bit of Continental life and look into this new thriller, aviation.
Home again with a husband and a driving ambition to become an aviatrix, Mrs. Raiche attended every meet, exhibition and aviation show then taking place in America. She and Francois became so interested in this new art that they settled at Mineola, Long Island, where this country's pioneers of the air were striving to get their creations off the ground. 
Like the Irish family that kept the pig in the parlor, the Raiches built their first "aeroplane" in the living room of their home. The grand piano served as a carpenter's horse to support one end of the biplane. There were no plans to be procured, no instructors to supervise. It was every man for himself in the race to be the first in the air with an improved type of plane. The Raiches struggled and won. 
Imagine the crude flying field at Mineola at dawn on September 16, 1910. Dawn because that is the time of least wind. No aviator in his right mind would think of leaving the ground with a breeze blowing.
The flag on a hangar hangs limply against its pole. In the east the sun is just rising. Vapors of early morning shroud a weird contraption being pushed onto the field. A woman disengages herself from a little knot of onlookers and walks over to the frail structure of bamboo and silk. Mechanics twirl the pusher propeller and grip the wings as the engine bursts into a roar.
Bessica Raiche settles into a crude seat on the lower wing and grasps a wheel in front of her. Her knowledge of aviation is confined to her experience in helping build this biplane. Without benefit of instruction, knowledge of flight or ministrations of clergy, she is about to become America's first lady bird. 
"If you want to go up, you pull this. If you want to come down, pull it back." Those are her flying instructions. A wave of her hand - the mechanics let go of the wings. She's off. Up, up - skimming the grass tops - she's flying.
DOWN came the first lady bird, a bit roughly but safely. She had flown and lived to tell the tale. Four more attempts followed with equal success. But the fifth brought disaster. The front control hit a bump and was crushed. Ten days later she was back on the field again with a revolutionary idea.
Skirts that dragged the ground, Mrs. Raiche had decided, were hardly convenient costume for the girl aviator. So she appeared in riding breeches for her next emulation of Icarus. As a writer of the period said. "From that time on she flew
Mrs. Raiche declines to be classed a "grass cutter" and resolves to take her aerial lawn mower aloft