Helen Richey, First Woman to Fly the Mail

Helen Richey was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and in nineteen thirty-four she became the first woman to pilot a commercial airliner in the United States, flying for Central Airlines on a route out of Washington. The achievement was historic, but the airline industry was not ready to accept her. The all-male pilots union barred her from flying in bad weather, which grounded her for months at a time. She resigned within a year.

Richey refused to disappear. She became the first woman licensed as an instructor by the Civil Aeronautics Authority and during the Second World War ferried aircraft with the British Air Transport Auxiliary. She also served with the Women's Airforce Service Pilots, the WASPs. Her career was a testament to skill overcoming institutional resistance, and a reminder that barriers fall one by one, not all at once.