Daredevil Tiny Broadwick

Georgia Ann Thompson, the first female parachutist, and inventor of the rip cord, became famous under the name Tiny Broadwick.

She weighed only three pounds at birth on April 8, 1893, in North Carolina and never grew past foot tall and 80 pounds. She married at 12 and bore a daughter, Verla, at 13. After her husband died in an accident, she had to work 14-hour days in a cotton mill.

At the North Carolina State Fair in 1907, Georgia saw “The Broadwicks and their Famous French Aeronauts.” The performers ascended to the sky in hot-air balloons, then thrilled spectators by jumping out with parachutes.

Inspired by this, Georgia asked show owner Charles Broadwick if she could travel with the group. He agreed to hire Georgia, and her mother let her go with a few stipulations — she had to leave Verla behind and send back money to help support her.

Broadwick trained Georgia in parachuting, and in 1908, he legally adopted her, and she became Tiny Broadwick.

While performing, Tiny was known as “The Doll Girl.” She dressed in ruffled bloomers with pink bows on her arms, ribbons in her long curly hair, and a bonnet on her head.

Tiny was just 15 years old when she jumped from a hot-air balloon at the 1908 North Carolina State Fair. She later said, “I tell you, honey, it was the most wonderful sensation in the world.”

It was a thrill she would experience some 1,100 times in her life.

Tiny and Charles Broadwick traveled the nation with their balloon act, but by 1912, their performances were losing popularity. Fortunately, a new opportunity presented itself to Tiny when she met famed pilot Glenn Martin.

He had seen her jump from a balloon and asked if she would parachute from his airplane instead. Tiny immediately agreed to work for Martin, whose aircraft company is still in business today, operating as Martin Marietta.

In preparation for the jump, Charles Broadwick developed a parachute for Tiny made of silk. He packed it into a knapsack attached to a canvas jacket with harness straps.

A string was fastened to the plane and woven through the canvas covering of the parachute. When Tiny jumped from the plane, the cover tore away, and her parachute filled with air.

On her first jump, Tiny was suspended from a trap seat behind the wing and outside the cockpit, with the parachute on a shelf above her. Martin took the plane up to two thousand feet, and then Tiny released a lever alongside the seat, allowing it to drop out from under her.

The jump was a success, and she landed in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, making her the first woman to parachute from an airplane. After that first jump from the plane, Tiny was in demand.

She also became the first woman to parachute into a body of water and the first person to jump from a seaplane.

In 1914, at the start of WWI, the Army Air Corps visited Tiny in San Diego and asked her to exhibit a jump from a military plane. At that time, many Air Corps pilots had already perished, and the Army wanted Tiny to demonstrate how to parachute safely.

Tiny made four jumps at North Island. The first three went smoothly, but on the fourth, the lines of her parachute got tangled with the plane.

Due to high winds, she could not get back into the plane. Instead of panicking, Tiny cut all but a short length of the line, which made her plummet towards the ground.

Still keeping a cool head, she pulled the line by hand, freeing the parachute to open by itself. It demonstrated what would be known as the rip cord and showed that someone who had to leave an airplane in flight did not need a line attached to the aircraft to open a parachute.

A pilot could safely bail out of a damaged craft. Following this, the parachute became known as the life preserver of the air.

Tiny Broadwick made her last jump in 1922 when she was just 29 years old. Chronic problems with her ankles forced her into retirement.

Tiny received many honors and awards in her lifetime, including the U.S. Government Pioneer Aviation Award and the John Glenn Medal. She was inducted into the Early Birds of Aviation and received the Gold Wings of the Adventurers Club in Los Angeles.

In 1964, Tiny was made an honorary member of the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg and told she could jump any time she chose. It is unknown if she ever took them up on their offer.

Tiny Broadwick, 85, died in 1978 and was buried in Henderson, North Carolina.