Georgia Ann Thompson was a very slight girl born in Oxford, NC on April 8, 1893. At birth, she weighed only three pounds and the nickname “Tiny” would stick to her for life. She was a different kind of young girl; she was the youngest of her siblings, married at the age of 12, gave birth to her daughter at the age of 13, and her husband abandoned her a short time later.
She went to work in the mills working for less than a dollar a day to make her own way through the world and take care of her baby girl. One day, at the age of 15, she took some time off and went to a fair that was travelling through North Carolina. While there, she witnessed Charles Broadwick parachute from a hot air balloon—an event which would change her life forever.
The idea of parachuting completely consumed Tiny. Travelling with Broadwick’s World Famous Aeronauts, Tiny became Broadwick’s adopted daughter. She also became an authority on parachutes and skydiving.
Today, in 1913, Tiny Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from an airplane. The craft, piloted by famed aviator Glenn Martin, flew over Griffith Park in Los Angeles at 1000 feet above the ground when Tiny jumped. In addition to being the first woman to jump from a plane, she was also the first to parachute to a water landing.
Although Tiny was only four feet tall, she was a tigress when it came to jumping out of airplanes. She seemed to have no fear. In fact, there were several accidents, bruises, and broken bones through her career. Still, she remained undaunted when it came to her chosen profession.
In 1914, she demonstrated a parachute to the US Army. When the static line tangled with the tail of the aircraft, Tiny made her next jump after she cut the static line off her parachute and manually deployed the canopy. As a result, she also became the first person to ever free-fall from an aircraft.
Tiny retired from jumping in 1922 and by accounts, had more than 1100 jumps to her credit. She remained a powerful influence in the aviation field throughout her life.
Once, during the war when she was talking with the paratroopers at the jump school at Fort Benning, one of the paratroopers asked if she had a reserve parachute. Her response? A comment about keeping an extra parachute somewhere in the garage back home.
As she aged, she never grew any taller than four feet one. She had a grandmotherly persona about her that helped stump the panelists on the television show, I’ve Got a Secret.
She spent her latter years attending aviation conventions and visiting family until her death in 1978 in California.
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© 2011 J. Clark
