Eight year old girl knew who Bessie Coleman was. Do you?

8-year-old applauded for asking to report on aviation pioneer Bessie Coleman instead of Amelia Earhart

ABC News
By MARQUIS HUGHES
Jul 10, 2019

For all of Noa’s hard work and willingness to report on Coleman, the National Aviation Hall of Fame Museum decided to fly Noa and her family to the museum in Dayton, Ohio. There she got the privilege to meet a relative of her hero.

Bessie Coleman’s great-niece, Gigi Coleman, greeted her when she arrived and awarded Noa a medallion for her outstanding project.

When 8-year-old Noa Lewis was assigned a school project on Amelia Earhart, she flipped the script and asked instead to report on Bessie Coleman, who was the first female African American and Native American pilot.

Noa Lewis giving her best of Bessie Coleman.

Noa and her second-grade class were given the assignment to create and be a part of a “wax museum,” with each student embodying their assigned historical figure. Noa had originally been assigned Amelia Earhart, the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

“Noa knew about Amelia Earhart but she told her teacher she wanted another figure but couldn’t remember the name,” Moniqua Lewis, Noa’s mother, told “Good Morning America.”

Lewis was picking up her daughter from school when Noa told her mom about the project and about how she wanted to report on a person who was once featured in her favorite Disney show, “Doc McStuffins.” Lewis was naming names, trying to help her daughter remember who it was.

It turns out it was Bessie Coleman, or “Queen Bessie,” as Noa refers to her. Coleman was the first female African American and Native American to hold a pilot’s license.

Lewis saw how passionate Noa was about Bessie Coleman, so as Noa’s teacher was exiting the school, she asked her if her daughter could instead report on Coleman.
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Georgia Air National Guard, first black female pilot

Georgia Air National Guard prepares to deploy its first black female pilot

Air Force Times
By: Kyle Rempfer
54 minutes ago

The Georgia Air National Guard is about to deploy its first black female pilot, Guard officials announced this week.

1st Lt. Andrea Lewis, an E-8C Joint STARS copilot with the 116th Air Control Wing, is already the first black female pilot in the history of the Georgia ANG.

1st Lt. Andrea Lewis, an E-8C Joint STARS pilot, already serves as the first black female pilot in the history of the Georgia Air National Guard. (Georgia ANG)

Soon, she’ll also be the first to deploy, said 2nd. Lt. Dustin Cole, a Guard spokesman, in a statement provided to Air Force Times.

Joint STARS use side-looking radar to locate and track moving objects behind enemy lines.

It is the Air Force’s only operational airborne platform that can maintain real-time surveillance over a corps-sized area of the battlefield, according to the service. And the 116th Air Control Wing, Lewis’ unit, is the only one that operates the E-8C and the Joint STARS mission.

Cole said he wasn’t able to release where Lewis’ deployment is taking her, due to operational security concerns.
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Historical flights and the woman who inspired them

The Navy's first all-female flyover will honor a woman who helped make it possible

CNN
Lauren M. Johnson
January 31, 2019

"She not only kicked doors open, she put a doorstop in the door and told others behind her to go through. Her mentorship was legendary," said Katherine Sharp Landdeck, a history professor at Texas Women's University who studied under Mariner at the University of Tennessee.

Rosemary Mariner in the 1990s, when she was commanding officer of a Naval squadron in California.

(CNN)The first woman to fly a tactical fighter jet in the US Navy opened the door for more than just women in combat. She also helped them with the transition to civilian life.

Now, at her funeral, retired Navy Captain Rosemary Mariner will receive the first-ever all-female flyover.

The special tribute, officially (and datedly) named the "Missing Man Flyover," honors aviators who have died serving their country. It features four jets flying above a funeral service in formation before one of the aircraft peels away and climbs into the sky.

Mariner died January 24 after a long battle with ovarian cancer. She was 65. Mariner was the Navy's first female jet pilot and the "first female military aviator to achieve command of an operational air squadron," according to a Navy statement.
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3 Fabulous stories of women changing the rules

Service women national treasures!

MJ Hegar Sued the Pentagon and Won. Now She's Running for Congress

MJ Hegar served in the Air Force for 12 years, first as an aircraft maintenance mechanic and later as a pilot. She deployed three times to Afghanistan, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross on her final tour. Courtesy MJ Hegar’s campaign

Carla Provost Becomes the First Woman to Lead the Border Patrol

Ms. Provost, who was appointed acting chief of the Border Patrol last year, will become the first woman to lead the Border Patrol in its 94-year history.

Carla Provost, who has been serving as acting chief of the Border Patrol, is being promoted to lead the agency. Credit:Lexey Swall for The New York Times

This all-female flight crew just made history

"While we are very proud to have made history yesterday by being the first all-female flight crew, we are more proud of the mission we are doing and the safety we are providing for people," said Waddington, who has been a pilot with the NOAA Corps for eight years.

Pilots Rebecca Waddington and Kristie Twining made history on their flight to Hurricane Hector.

Add those women to these!

Air Force Major Helping Healing of Combat PTSD

Before you cringe reading Wounded Warrior, keep reading because this is about Wounded Warrior Program and to them healing is not a project. It is a mission.

If you think that women are only hit by PTSD from experiencing sexual assaults, this should be an eyeopener. Too many forget they are still in the same combat zones and trying to get through it the best they can. After all, the lives of others depend on them too.

There are heroes in combat and then there are heroes because of it. Maj. Lisa McCranie is one of them.

Wracked by PTSD for years after combat, an Air Force pilot finally got help
San Antonio Express-News
By Sig Christenson
January 28, 2017

That’s how it is in the pilot community, she said, explaining that no pilot she’s known has ever admitted to suffering from PTSD and the Air Force had no formal support program to help them.

Photo: Bob Owen, STAFF / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
Members of one of the basketball teams playing an exhibition game huddle before the start of a game at the Air Force Wounded Warrior Program Warrior Care Event at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph on Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. The CARE event provides seriously wounded, ill and injured military members, veterans and their caregivers focused and personalized service through caregiver support, training, adaptive and rehabilitative sports events.

A veteran of Afghanistan, Maj. Lisa McCranie is a pilot to the core, so steeped in the culture of never showing weakness that she hid every symptom of post traumatic stress disorder even as the weight of war began to crush her spirit.

Years in uniform and the bulk of 2,800 hours in the cockpit went by — 1,100 of them in combat — before she even realized she had PTSD.

McCranie found herself in yet another war, to get help.

“I told my commanders, ‘I’m not OK right now,’ and then part of my story is how I’ve been treated in the military, which hasn’t been good. I had an ops group commander who basically threatened to take my wings from me if I didn’t go through a re-qualification and fly,” she recalled.

McCranie recently earned a medical retirement from the Air Force and will soon leave the service and head to a culinary school in Denver. A feeling of isolation followed her through much of her military career, but after spending time at a recent Air Force Wounded Warrior program Warrior CARE event in San Antonio, which drew more than 120 wounded, ill and injured airmen, she was relieved to find that she wasn’t alone.

McCranie flew four different aircraft after entering the Air Force in 2004 — the C-17 Globemaster III, T-6A Texan II, MC-12W, a reconnaissance plane, and the UV-18A Twin Otter.
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Air Force Couple Flying High

Face of Defense: Married Air Force Pilots Serve, Fly Together
Department of Defense
By Air Force Senior Airman Christopher Thornbury
22nd Air Refueling Wing
September 29, 2016

“It makes it easier to talk about what’s going on at work, because we understand very intimately what’s going on in terms of the struggles to make the mission happen,” Chrystina said. “We understand each other’s challenges better than most.”

The couple that flies together
Capt. Chrystina Jones, left, 350th Air Refueling Squadron pilot, and Maj. Matt Jones, 349th ARS pilot, pose with their son, Dec. 2015, at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan. They both “refuel the fight” as KC-135 Stratotanker pilots, an aircraft that first took flight for the first time 60 years ago. (Courtesy photo)

MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Kan.
For Air Force Maj. Matthew Jones and Air Force Capt. Chrystina Jones, love found them as C-130 Hercules pilots, and, over the years, gave them a different set of wings as KC-135 Stratotanker pilots and even added two more to their aircrew: their son and daughter.

The couple is relatively new to the KC-135, qualifying 14 months ago. Although a different mission brought them together, Matt relates his past and present with his wife with the tanker as it approaches its 60-year anniversary of its first flight.

“Chrystina and I share history together,” Matthew said. “The KC-135 has its own great history; it is just incredible for us to be a part of it.”

Before marriage, the couple served in the same squadron as C-130 pilots where they trained together. While they never operated a mission together, they did deploy with each other for five months to Iraq. As tanker pilots, they are assigned to different squadrons: Matt is a “Bandit” of the 349th Air Refueling Squadron; and Chrystina is a “Raven” of the 350th ARS.
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Female Pilot Flying Again After Losing Leg

Female Air Force pilot amputee returns to the skies
Air Force Times
Oriana Pawlyk
July 23, 2016

Capt. Christy Wise frantically waved her headlamp flashlight to alert a boat jetting toward her to turn away. But Wise, a HC-130J rescue squadron pilot, quickly realizing it was too late, dove as far down to save herself. When she surfaced, she knew the boat’s propeller had severed her right leg.

Capt. Christy Wise, 71st Rescue Squadron. (Photo: Courtesy photo)

Almost a year later, Wise — who thought it would be the end of her pilot career — is back in the cockpit, and flew her first mission Friday at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, where she is stationed. She is the first female Air Force amputee to return to flight, the service said.

“I have been blown away with the amount of support I’ve had to ... achieve my goals,” Wise told Air Force Times on July 21.

On April 11, 2015, she and her boyfriend were paddleboarding in a cove near Shalimar, Florida. “When I surfaced I immediately thought, ‘Dang it, I should have had a brighter flashlight’,” Wise said. But she later learned it was a hit-and-run accident as the boat did not stop or slow down.
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