On August 5, 1936, Vernon Omlie and seven passengers were killed when a commercial flight they were aboard crashed in St. Louis, Missouri while attempting to land in foggy conditions. Phoebe Omlie immediately resigned her position in Washington, D.C. and returned to Memphis. Following her husband's death, Omlie did not return to Washington, D.C. until 1941, when she accepted a job as "Senior Private Flying Specialist of the Civil Aeronautics Authority". In this position, and to meet the severe need for pilots for service in WWII, Omlie established 66 flight schools in 46 states, including a school in Tuskegee, Alabama that would later train the famous Tuskegee Airmen. With the Tennessee Bureau of Aeronautics, she established an "experimental" program to train women as instructors. The first class, ten women from various states, trained between September and February 1943, and was meant to establish her strong and, to some, controversial belief that " . . . if women can teach men to walk, they can teach them to fly." These women went on to instruct both men and women pilots both in military and civilian flight training programs, including the Navy V-5 and the USAAF Women Airforce Service Pilots.
