Bay Area pilot Janet Christine Dietrich dies

Cory Lopez, SF Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

At the dawn of the space race in the early 1960s, Bay Area pilot Janet Christine Dietrich was one of 13 women who underwent secret astronaut testing, passing the same rigorous physical and psychological assessments as the men who became immortalized as America's first astronauts.

[Not sure how secret this testing was, since I saw it written
about in a 1960 issue in Life Magazine.]

It was a venture financed by noted aviator Jacqueline Cochran, and though the women never did reach the stars, the group later known as the Mercury 13 helped lay the groundwork for a future generation of female space travelers. "She would've dearly loved to have been in space," said Miss Dietrich's niece, Linda McKenzie. "That was the ultimate."

Miss Dietrich died June 5 of natural causes in a San Francisco convalescent hospital, her family said. She was 81.

Full article here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/17/BA4211A0VO.DTL