![\"nellie](\"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/files\/2013\/02\/nellie-life-of-pie.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI probably shouldn\u2019t even mention\u00a0last week\u2019s blog about the Oscars since it didn\u2019t bring very many comments. One of them was from my old pal, Jack, who simply wrote \u201cYawn.\u201d<\/p>\n
I first got to know Jack way back in the 70\u2019s when he was a jet pilot with the South Dakota Air National Guard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/a>That’s Jack on the lower left with his fellow F-100 Air Guard pilots in 1973<\/p><\/div>\n
He was among lots of pilots and broadcasters who gathered regularly at the \u201cCaptain\u2019s Galley\u201d lounge for, cocktails, fun conversation, girl watching and live music. \u00a0Jack eventually became a commercial airline pilot and left town only to return a few years ago to spend retirement from high atop a luxury Sioux Falls apartment building. There\u2019s only one way I know of to get Jack back into my blog corner and that\u2019s to write something about his first love; flying.<\/p>\n
So here goes.<\/p>\n
I forget the exact year but it was sometime during the mid 80\u2019s when it was suggested that I do a story on Nellie Willhite; a little old lady in Sioux Falls who just happened to be the first licensed woman pilot in South Dakota.<\/p>\n
She was pushing 90..I was told..but sharp as a tack.\u00a0Now,\u00a0\u00a0I’ve heard that sort of thing a lot in my reporting days; you gotta do a story on my uncle Torvald or my grandma Esther who\u2019s turning 100. The photographer and I go to the party and find grandma Esther propped up in a chair with hair looking like a dandelion gone to seed ..barely able to see or hear much less do an interview. They\u2019d mostly just shade their eyes from the bright lights and say \u201cWhat?\u201d a lot. Now,\u00a0don’t get me wrong, I’m not making fun of the elderly..especially since I am one, but most really advanced age\u00a0 folks aren’t quite as coherent as their kids think they are.<\/p>\n
\u00a0So, to be honest, I\u00a0thought that\u2019s what I was getting into with Nellie\u2026especially when just as we were about to go\u00a0 meet her I was told that she\u2019s deaf and had been since childhood following a bout with measles at her home near Box Elder.<\/p>\n
Well, you\u2019d never have known it\u00a0to talk with her. She apparently retained enough hearing to get by just fine plus\u00a0she had developed a lip reading ability to perfection.<\/p>\n
Her interest in aviation began after seeing Charles Lindberg land his \u201cSpirit of St. Louis\u201d airplane at the Renner airport shortly after Lucky Lindy\u2019s historic non-stop trans-Atlantic flight in 1927. \u00a0Nellie took flying lessons and the very next year, at the age of 35, \u00a0became the first woman pilot in the state. Her father coughed up 27 hundred dollars to buy her first aircraft; a Eaglerock bi-plane in which she became proficient enough to earn a living \u00a0by barnstorming and doing aerobatics in air shows.<\/p>\n