Born: 19 February 1927, United States
Died: 8 March1994
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Gertrude Bernice Olson
Best known as the wife of astronaut Gordon Cooper, she was also a licensed pilot herself. Originally from Seattle, she met Cooper at the University of Hawaii, where she was an instructor in their flight club and flew a Piper Cub. She later started her own aviation company, piloting charter flights. Married in 1947, they had two daughters, Camala Keoki Cooper (later Thorpe, born 1948) and Janita Lee Cooper (later Stone, born 1950). He joined the US Air Force in 1949 and, family in tow, was posted to Landstuhl Air Base, West Germany, from 1950 to 1954 before returning to the United States. At the time Gordon was being considered as one of the United States’ first astronauts in 1959, the pair had been separated for months, according to rumor due to his infidelity. She had moved away to San Diego with the children, but Trudy agreed to pretend they were happily married as any domestic discord could have cost Gordon the opportunity. She eventually divorced him in 1971 after his retirement from NASA and the Air Force in 1970 due to his “continued infidelity”, and never remarried. In July 1971, she was one of nearly 300 competitors in the annual “Powder Puff Derby,” a race of female pilots across the United States that started in 1947, organised by the Ninety-Nines, a group of early American women pilots. That year, they flew 2,442.44 statute miles from Canada to Louisiana, competing for $25,000 in prizes.