Addie
Addie M. Tate (1869–1955). The postmistress in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, she loaned Wilbur Wright her sewing machine so he could shorten the cloth wings of the Wright brothers’ first glider.
Champ
William Hickman Pickens (1877–1934). Born in Mountain Home, Alabama, he raced bicycles, sold jukeboxes known as “iron entertainers,” and promoted automobile racing before he became the promoter and publicity agent for many aerial performers including Glenn Curtiss, Linc Beachey, Betty Scott, Tiny Broadwick, and Ormer Locklear.
Linc
Lincoln J. Beachey (1887–1915). San Francisco’s “Boy Aeronaut” steered a dirigible and worked as a mechanic for Glenn Curtiss before he became an exhibition pilot famous for his daring, “The Man Who Owns the Sky.”
Betty
Blanche Stuart Scott (1884–1970). Born in Rochester, New York, she drove a car across the country (the second woman to do this) before becoming the first woman in the U.S. to fly. After a six-year career as a stunt pilot, she became an actress and writer working in film, radio, and television.
Harriet
Harriet Quimby (1875–1912). Born on a farm in Michigan, this New York journalist and drama critic was the first woman in the United States to earn a pilot’s license and the first woman pilot to fly the English Channel.
Tiny
Georgia Ann Thompson Broadwick (1893–1978). Born in North Carolina, she left work in a cotton mill to join a traveling circus and jump from a hot air balloon with a parachute. She was the first woman to make a parachute jump from an airplane.
Ormer Leslie Locklear (1891–1920). A Greenville, Texas carpenter and mechanic, he became an army flight instructor, invented the wing walk, became an exhibition pilot, and then, with his partners, performed in Hollywood silent films.
Pang
Clyde Edward Pangborn (ca. 1893–1958). Born in Bridgeport, Washington, he grew up in lumber camps in Idaho. After jobs in logging and mining, and extension classes in engineering at the University of Idaho, he became an army flight instructor, barnstormer, and co-owner of the Gates Flying Circus. Nicknamed “Upside Down Pang,” he specialized in flying upside down. He was the second pilot to wing walk after Locklear, and the first pilot (with copilot Hugh Herndon) to fly nonstop across the Pacific. Later he organized U.S. and Canadian support for the RAF in Britain in World War II, worked as a test pilot, and ferried aircraft all over the world.
Ruth
Ruth Bancroft Law (1887–1970). Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, she had the resources to purchase her own airplanes and hire instructors. She set distance and height records, traveled widely to perform, and established the Ruth Law Flying Circus.
Bessie
Elizabeth Coleman (1892–1926). One of thirteen children of an African American mother and an African American and Native American father, she grew up in Waxahachie, Texas, where she picked cotton and worked as a laundress. She migrated to Chicago where she worked as a manicurist and ran a chili parlor. With support from Robert S. Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, she learned French and earned her license in France at a school run by the Caudron brothers, becoming the first African American pilot.