TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Glennis Yeager, the wife of famed test pilot Chuck Yeager, has died after a six-year battle with cancer. She was 66.
Mrs. Yeager died Dec. 22. Her death was reported Thursday.
The name Glennis became known worldwide as part of the legend painted on her husband's World War II P-51 fighter and on the X-1 in which Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier: 'Glamorous Glennis.'
The two met before World War II when Yeager walked into the USO office in Oroville, Calif., where Glennis was working.
Years later, in her husband's autobiography, 'Press On!,' she wrote:
'If you've ever seen the movie 'The Right Stuff' and you remember those scenes of Sam Shepard, playing Chuck, and Barbara Hershey, as me, exchanging steamy looks -- well our exact words may have been different in real life, but the basic message about us is absolutely true.'
'We felt very strongly about each other because each of us had just what the other had been looking for, and I mean not just from the time we'd reached marriageable age, but all our lives.'
Yeager retired as a brigadier general, and the couple settled in the Grass Valley area of California, where Mrs. Yeager was a third- generation native.
In a 1988 interview, Yeager said of his wife's fight with cancer: 'Man, if you can't do anything about it, forget it and press on. ... And she's got the same attitude.'
Besides her husband, Mrs. Yeager is survived by her sons, Mike, of Oregon, and Don, of Colorado; her daughters, Susan of Nevada City, Calif., and Sharon Flick of Reno, Nev., and 13 grandchildren.
No public memorial service was scheduled.
