Katherine Stinson was a pioneering American aviator. She set flying records for aerobatic maneuvers, distance, and endurance. Stinson taught at her family's aviation school.
Biography
She was born on February 14, 1891, in Fort Payne, Alabama. She was the fourth woman in the United States to obtain a pilot's certificate, which she earned on 24 July 1912, at the age of 21, while residing in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Initially, she planned to get her certificate and use money she earned from exhibition flying to pay for her music lessons. However, she found she liked flying so much that she gave up her piano career and decided to become an aviator. In January 1911, Stinson went to St. Louis to take flight lessons from Tony Jannus who only allowed her to fly as a passenger. She more than likely received some ground schooling and words of encouragement from Wilbur Wright himself as she is seen in his company about to refuel an aircraft in early 1912 but Wilbur died in May 1912 and before her flight training was begun or complete. She then took flying lessons from the well-known aviator Max Lillie, a pilot for the Wright Brothers, who initially refused to teach her because she was female. But she persuaded him to give her a trial lesson. She was so good that she flew alone after only four hours of instruction. A year after receiving her certificate, she began exhibition flying. On the exhibition circuit, she was known as the "Flying Schoolgirl." Katherine Stinson tried to tell newspaper reporters she was actually 21, not 16, but they refused to believe her. After she received her certificate, Stinson and her family moved to San Antonio, Texas, an area with an ideal climate for flying. There she and her sister, Marjorie, began giving flying instruction at her family's aviation school in Texas. In March 1915 the famous Lincoln Beachey died in a crash at San Francisco and Stinson later acquired the rotary engine from his wrecked plane. On July 18, 1915, Stinson became the first woman to perform a loop, at Cicero Field in Chicago, Illinois, and went on to perform this feat some 500 times without a single accident. She also was one of the first women authorized to carry airmail for the United States. During World War I, Stinson flew a Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny" and a Curtiss Stinson-Special for fundraising tours for the American Red Cross. During exhibition flights in Canada, Stinson set Canadian distance and endurance records, and, in 1918, made the second air mail flight in Canada between Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta. On December 11, 1917, Katherine Stinson flew 606 miles from San Diego to San Francisco, setting a new American non-stop distance record. The Stinson School closed in 1917, and Katherine became an ambulancedriver for the Red Cross in Paris. In 1918, she flew non-stop from Chicago to Binghamton, New York. In Europe during World War I, she contracted influenza, which damaged her lungs, making her susceptible to tuberculosis. In 1920, she retired from aviation. In 1927, Stinson married airman Miguel Antonio Otero, Jr., son of the former territorial governor of New Mexico, and worked as an architect and home designer for many years in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After a long period as an invalid, she died in 1977 at the age of 86. Katherine Stinson's biography is featured in CBS TV series The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation, episode 54 in the series.
Legacy
Stinson's flying inspired her brothers to form the Stinson Aircraft Company. All of her stunt flying was done in aircraft using the Wright control system, which uses two side-mounted levers for pitch and roll, with top mounted controls for throttle and yaw.
