Katherine Stinson, American Aviatrix

Katherine Stinson in Partridge plane. Katherine Stinson (February 14, 1891 - July 8, 1977) was a pioneering American aviatrix who set flying records for distance, endurance, and aerobatic maneuvers. In 1912, at the age of 21, she became the fourth woman in the United States to obtain a pilot's certificate. A year after receiving her certificate, she began exhibition flying. On the exhibition circuit, she was known as the Flying Schoolgirl. Stinson and her family moved to San Antonio, Texas, where she and her sister, Marjorie, began giving flying instruction at her family's aviation school. In 1915, Stinson became the first woman to perform a loop, at Cicero Field in Chicago, and went on to perform this feat some 500 times without a single accident. Stinson flew a Curtiss JN-4D and a Curtiss Stinson-Special for fundraising tours for the American Red Cross. In Europe during WWI, she contracted influenza, which damaged her lungs, making her susceptible to tuberculosis. In 1920, she retired from aviation. In 1927, she married airman Miguel Antonio Otero, Jr. and worked as an architect for many years in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She died in 1977 at the age of 86. Bain News Service, 1912

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