Wally Funk died Wednesday evening at her apartment in Grapevine, Texas at the age of 87.
Her caregiver and Grapevine city councilwoman Duff O'Dell was by her side.
Funk had fallen several times recently and had a leg infection. "It took its toll," O'Dell said. No formal cause of death was given.
The life she lived between those two facts, 1939 and 2026, is one of the most quietly remarkable in American aviation history.
In 1961, at 22 years old, she was one of 13 women privately recruited to undergo the same rigorous physical and psychological testing as NASA's Mercury astronauts.
She outperformed most of the men. NASA told the women no, not because they failed, but because they were women.
The program was quietly cancelled. The men went to space. The Mercury 13 did not.
Funk never stopped flying. She logged more than 19,600 flight hours. She trained more than 3,000 pilots.
She became the first female inspector for the FAA, the first female air safety investigator for the NTSB and the first female flight instructor at a U.S. military base.
She kept asking about space. For 60 years the answer was no.
In July 2021, Jeff Bezos invited her to ride along on Blue Origin's first crewed New Shepard flight. She was 82 years old, the oldest woman ever to launch into space.
Emerging from the capsule in her royal blue flight suit and white hair, she told reporters: "I've been waiting a long time. I want to go again, fast."
She was the last surviving member of the Mercury 13 and the only one of the thirteen to ever reach space. Blue Origin wrote Thursday: "Fly Wally, Fly."