Sky defined Las Vegas woman’s colorful life

So when Jodi Peterson died last week, few people noticed.

They should have.

Peterson, whose first name was really Frances but who went by her middle name her whole life, was 88 when lung cancer took her away.

“They used to call her ‘Jungle Jodi,’ ” said Stephen Hudson, 66, the son of famed World War II bombardier Charles “Combat” Hudson and probably Peterson’s best friend. “She had so many escapades with my dad. They could have filled a library.”

Peterson was born in Minnesota in 1924. She never knew her family and was raised by foster parents. As a teenager, she lived in a Catholic orphanage, her friend James Cole said.

The details of her life are sketchy. She never wrote them down, and she didn’t like to talk about herself.

But the outline of her life, as told by friends, is enough to know that Hudson wasn’t exaggerating.

She rode horses bareback. She lived with monkeys and snakes in the jungle. She flew airplanes around the world. And she fell in and out of love, sometimes with the same guy.

Jodi Peterson was that kind of girl.

“She had no mommy or daddy to do things for her. That’s how she grew up,” said Cole, who rented a room from her in the last nine years of her life. “She had to do it herself. That’s the way she was her whole life.”

The orphanage where Peterson lived as a teen was apparently near an airport. In an era when girls rarely did such things, she learned to fly and was a licensed pilot at age 16.

The sky would define her life.

No longer a ward of the state at age 21, she landed in Reno, where she worked as a cocktail waitress.

Though she later returned to Minnesota in hope of finding her past, she was rebuffed and gave up looking, Cole said. The best she could figure was that her single mother gave her up for financial reasons.

Arriving in Las Vegas in the 1950s, she worked as a cocktail waitress for a while. But word got around that she was a pilot, and she ended up somewhere in Central America.

Maybe it was Costa Rica. That part of the story is a little fuzzy.

But everyone agrees that Peterson started a business down there, exporting monkeys and snakes to the United States. She lived there, in the jungle, for years. That’s how she got her nickname, Jungle Jodi.

She owned a restaurant at the airport in Oxnard, Calif., for a time, and at one point worked at the airport in Tonopah.

Cole has a photo from 1968, when her last name was Gooding, that shows a billboard giving her top billing at the Nevada State Fair in Reno. “Jodi ‘Ace’ Gooding” was the star attraction, a stunt pilot flying a biplane.

Time passed. She married at least three times. She moved. She lived on an avocado farm in Southern California, in a ritzy area of San Francisco and eventually back in Las Vegas.

Billy Parker, 85, who splits his time between Tonopah and Riverside, Calif., met her when he was a dealer in a downtown casino and she was slinging drinks on the Strip.

They frequented the same bars, he said, though neither was a big drinker. They became fast friends.

“There was nothing superficial about her,” he said. “She was a great lady. A real class act.”

In her late 60s she bought the last place she would live in, a mobile home just off Las Vegas Boulevard south of what is now St. Rose Parkway.

She and her last husband split, and she was alone.

Cole happened along one day, a recent arrival from Kansas City. He saw an ad, answered it, and ended up renting a room.

Now 55, Cole said Peterson had a hard time the last four or five years of her life. She and her neighbors lost their shared water well in a swindle, he said.

Cole installed a tank in the backyard, and she had it filled by a water truck. Much of the greenery around her property died off, after her years of taking care of it.

Last year, Charles Hudson, the World War II vet and her best friend, died.

One of her two beloved dogs, a black Labrador retriever named Beauty, died six months ago. Then a good friend died, as did others.

She didn’t get sick until right near the end.

Lung cancer can be like that, showing few obvious signs until it has spread all over the place, and it’s too late.

Cole stayed with her until the end. She didn’t want to burden anyone else with the knowledge that she wasn’t well.

She spent two weeks in the hospital before she died, on Sept. 10.

She didn’t want a funeral, so there won’t be one.

Cole said she will be buried this morning. He and a buddy will be the only ones there to see her off.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.