At the Santa Monica Airport 97 years ago, 20 female pilots — including Amelia Earhart and Louise Thaden — took off on a nine-day air race known as the Powder Puff Air Derby.
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In June, more than 100 women met in East Alton, Illinois, to compete in the Air Race Classic, a modern rendition of the derby that spans four days and 2,400 miles across the United States.
Among the women was 68-year-old Donna Harris, a San Juan Capistrano hobby pilot who has made adventure and trying new things part of her life’s itinerary. Now the air race’s president, she was not flying this year, but fulfilling the equally important role of “sky mom” to the younger competitors.
Whether giving strategy advice or helping connect students to commercial pilots, Harris serves as a mentor for the many college-aged racers.
“My nickname this year became sky mom,” Harris said. “I tend to adopt the younger girls, because they’re just getting started in their careers. I never had children, so for a week or two every June they become mine.”
Every year, around 50 teams — with pilots ranging in age from 16 to 94 — fly to nine stops around the country, conducting high-speed, low-altitude flybys at each spot.
Having earned her private pilot’s license in 2002, Harris first competed in 2016. While her team reached increasing success — finishing seventh in 2019 and fifth in 2022 — that first race hit a little turbulence.
During one of the high-speed, low-altitude flybys, as she was trying to reach between 200 and 400 feet off the ground at 150 to 185 mph, Harris had to dig deep to complete the maneuver.
“I was having trouble pushing the yolk to get the airplane down, so the lady in the back is saying, ‘Push, Donna push,’ but the lady sitting next to me is realizing I’m holding my breath, so she’s going, ‘Breathe, Donna breathe’,” Harris recalled.
“I just started laughing,” Harris said. “I’m thinking, ‘Am I having a baby?’”
“We didn’t do too well on that leg, so the next two races, I ended up flying in the right seat as copilot,” she said.
But being copilot served Harris’s organizational spirit well, the same spirit that first got her involved in the Air Race Classic.
Before ever competing in the race, Harris hosted the beginning of the 2012 race in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where she was living at the time. She was in charge of organizing food, transportation, hotels and airport logistics for the start of the four-day adventure.
“At the end of the start events, one of the directors came up and asked me if I would be willing to be an assistant director, so I guess I did a decent job,” Harris said.
Aside from the four races that Harris has competed in, she has also held a variety of roles in the organization, from director of governance and finance to both vice president and president. She is now serving her last year as president of the race, making sure everything runs smoothly from the race start to the finish line.
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“It’s the ultimate girls trip. It’s fly camp, and it’s just camaraderie,” Harris said. “There’s always some competitiveness, but it’s not as cutthroat as some of them.”
While the Air Race Classic has taken Harris around the country by plane, she and her husband, Scott Harris, have also traveled the world by boat. The couple sailed around the Caribbean for an entire year after getting married.
“I’ve wanted to travel since I was a little girl, and my husband is the same free spirit. Between flying and sailing, our feet aren’t on the ground much,” Harris said.
Her dream of travel took flight early when Harris was a freshman in high school and her neighbor at the time was studying to become a commercial pilot.
“He would bring over his test booklets and have me read the questions to test him on the material,” Harris said. “Going through that book fascinated me, and when I was 18, I took what’s called a discovery flight out of Carlsbad.”
While nothing came of that first discovery flight, Harris’s interest in flying was reignited with encouragement from her husband, who happened to be a pilot. She became a licensed private pilot in 2002 and completed instrument training later in 2004.
The couple’s adventurous spirit has led them to take three tours with Road Scholar, a nonprofit organization that organizes trips centered around experiential learning for older adults. Each trip can range from one week to an entire month spent doing specialized tours, language courses, and experiencing local culture.
“They give an in-depth look at the culture, the country, the people. It’s fun to experience it from that viewpoint,” Harris said. “That’s what I love about traveling, is meeting the locals.”
It was through these trips with Road Scholar that Harris discovered a contest to celebrate June 8, a day the organization designated as “Age Adventurously Day“. Harris submitted an essay discussing how she was preparing for the Air Race Classic and later found out that she had won.
“I actually got the phone call during the race,” Harris said. “It was the morning that the race was starting, so I’m trying to get 45 planes off the ground and moving onto the first leg, and my phone rings. I was very flattered that I was picked.”
Harris received a $500 travel voucher for winning the contest, but she also received something else: A reminder to always keep her adventurous spirit, she said.
As she continues traveling the world — the couple is taking another tour with Road Scholar to Australia next year — Harris said she hopes others will follow her advice to not let age stop you from trying new things.
“There’s a whole world out there to go discover,” Harris said. “Sometimes it’s in your backyard in the same state, but sometimes it’s across the world sailing a sailboat from Rhode Island down to Saint Martin.”
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