Pancho Barnes: Edwards' friend Published Oct. 1, 2007 EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Florence "Pancho" Barnes was never officially a part of the Edwards community but even so, she is a solid part of our heritage. She was a woman full of contradictions who spent her life living happily on the extremes. She was born rich, even by the standards of her wealthy San Marino neighbors, and she died alone and nearly penniless in a tiny run down house in Boron. Her grandfather started the California Institute of Technology, but she herself never had time for college. At one time she was a refined debutante, carefully tutored in the genteel feminine arts of her day, but she had a lifelong love of raffish friends, rank cigars and raucous parties. She was the dutiful young wife of an Episcopal priest who became tired of her "perfect" marriage and took to buzzing his respectable church in the middle of his sermons. By now, nearly everyone in the aviation community knows Pancho's story -- how she rebelled against her prim and orderly life by disguising herself as a man and stowing away on a small freighter. The ship turned out to be running guns to revolutionaries down in Mexico, which suited the runaway girl just fine. By the time the battered steamer touched shore, she had befriended the captain and set out with him to explore the hinterlands on the back of a donkey. It was there that she picked up her lifelong nickname, after Don Quixote's faithful companion, Sancho Panza. She returned to San Marino a changed woman, and promptly traded her silks and satins for oily flying togs, and her staid husband for a succession of other men -- some of whom she married and some not. She took up air racing and was always proud of having beaten Amelia Earhart in one competition. Between races, she flew for the movies and started the film pilot industry. When greedy relatives took most of whatever money the Great Depression had left her, she traded everything for a quarter-section ranch in the Antelope Valley, a hay farmstead that -- she was delighted to find -- housed the remains of an active moonshine still. Pancho's friendship with Chuck Yeager has always had a whiff of Hollywood phoniness, but it was genuine enough. The way to earn Chuck Yeager's respect is to fly well, and this Pancho did. He loved hunting and horseback riding just as she did. She, in turn, most admired people who lived their lives to the utmost -- movie stars, rumrunners, warfighters and, of course, pilots of all kinds. The bond between Pancho and the Air Force base that sprang up near her ranch was probably inevitable. People either loved or disliked the woman, and she returned the favor. If she liked you, you knew it right off. If not, you soon heard the door of her place closing behind you. Happily, most people took to her, and the parties and camaraderie that rocked her place became legendary. Ultimately, of course, the carousel turned and the dauntless '40s gave way to the stuffy '50s. The increasing size of the air base and some harsh personality conflicts further threatened the scene; a mysterious fire, acrimonious lawsuits and several bouts with cancer finally ended the party for good. All that remains now are the lonely ruins out by the firing range, a dry swimming pool and an annual party to remind us of the times that used to be.