El Prado home built by female aviation pioneer Wally Funk hits the market for $1.3 million

For American pilot and astronaut Wally Funk, reaching for the sky was a lifelong pursuit — one embodied by the Taos-area home she built and lived in for many years.

“She intentionally built the home at the highest point on top of a little mesa plateau in El Prado,” said Ryan Trujillo, the home’s listing agent and an associate broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Taos Real Estate.

Mary Wallace Funk, who grew up in Taos and goes by Wally Funk, is known as a trailblazer for women in aviation. Since earning her pilot’s license at age 17, Funk has flown more than 19,600 hours and taught more than 3,000 people how to fly as a flight instructor.

With help from friends in the Taos Pueblo community, she built her El Prado home at 1447 Mesa Vista in the late 1970s using handmade adobe bricks. The original iteration of the home included an oversized two-car garage that Funk referred to as “The Hanger.” It’s now a living, dining and bedroom space.

Today, the two-story home spans 3,350 square feet, sits on a little over two acres, and comes with three bedrooms and four bathrooms — but bits and pieces of the original architecture, including influences from Funk’s trips to Morocco, are preserved throughout the home.

The current owners — the home’s third set — listed the home for nearly $1.3 million just over a week ago. It’s already received an offer and is under contract to be sold, Trujillo said.

“We’ve had a tremendous time in this house, raising our girls and spending every holiday and summer,” said Jocelyn Miceli, a retired Realtor who owns the home with her husband, Lance Miceli. The pair purchased the home as a vacation getaway in 2014 and moved in full-time in 2021.

“But we’ve got many more years to go and future memories to make,” Miceli said, adding that the pair is moving to Utah.

The owners invested more than $200,000 into the space last year, upgrading the home’s kitchen, roof, septic system and stucco.

As impressive as the home’s extensive mountain views, coved and viga ceilings, handcrafted doors, skylights and three wood-burning fireplaces are, the home’s builder and original owner might be more impressive.

“She’s quite a character,” said Miceli, who met with Funk and interviewed her about the home and her life in 2015. “By many accounts, she has logged more flight hours than some of the most accomplished pilots and astronauts in the country.”

While not the first woman in space, Funk certainly got close.

Funk was among 13 female pilots who trained to become astronauts for America’s first human spaceflight program in the early 1960s. The training was a part of a privately funded initiative called First Lady Astronaut Trainees, or FLAT, also known as Mercury 13 — the subject of a 2018 Netflix documentary with the same name, which prominently featured Funk.

William R. Lovelace II, who founded the Lovelace clinic in Albuquerque, launched the program just a year after he helped NASA test and select America’s first group of male astronauts, known as Mercury Seven, in Albuquerque in 1959. Lovelace II believed that women were just as capable of space travel as men, if not more so, because of their smaller and lighter body compositions.

Funk was the youngest of the 13 licensed female pilots who trekked to Albuquerque to undergo the same rigorous testing that the Mercury Seven military pilots did.

Testing included X-rays, body physicals, experiencing electric shock to test reflexes, having ice water shot into their ears to induce vertigo, extensive stationary bicycle sessions and spending hours in a sensory deprivation tank.

Despite its success — yielding what Lovelace said were results better than some of the men’s tests — NASA discontinued the program.

“The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order,” the late Mercury Seven astronaut and senator John Glenn said at the time. Appeals from the women were heard at Congressional hearings held to explore the issue of gender discrimination in the selection of astronauts, but to no avail.

The first American woman wouldn’t make it into space for another 23 years, but NASA and Congress have since recognized the integral role the Mercury 13 women played in paving the way.

Funk, now 86 years old and the last living Mercury 13 member, eventually made it to space in 2021 when she joined Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as an honored guest aboard Blue Origin’s first crewed flight, making her the oldest woman to travel to space at 82 years old, according to the Guinness World Records.

“Things were canceled? So what? Wally’s going on,” Funk told the Guardian in 2019.

Funk sold her El Prado home in the early 2000s, relocating to Texas, where Miceli said she was still teaching and flying when the two met a decade ago. Miceli hasn’t heard from Funk since then but imagines she’ll take to the skies for as long as she’s able.

If Funk’s words to the Guardian are any indication, Miceli’s probably right: “I’ll be flying ‘til I die,” Funk told the outlet seven years ago.

Kylie Garcia covers retail and real estate for the Journal. You can reach her at kgarcia@abqjournal.com.