Betty Haas Pfister, 1921–2011

last updated 8 January 2015

In 1940, Betty Haas Pfister, then a student at Bennington College in Vermont, wanted desperately to take an airplane ride at a local air show. Her parents forbade it, but after they left, Haas Pfister sneaked back to the airfield, paid $1, and took her first flight. She was so smitten that she cut a deal with her father: She’d stay in college if he paid for flying lessons. Haas Pfister went on to complete hundreds of flights, many as part of the first contingent of female military pilots in World War II, and later as a leading competitive flier.

Haas Pfister grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y.; her father worked for Random House and her mother translated the original Babar children’s books from French, said the Aspen, Colo., Times. Inspired by her older brother, a Navy pilot who was killed in action during World War II, Haas Pfister joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, after college, flying aircraft from U.S. factories to domestic airfields and ports for the war effort.

After the WASPs were unceremoniously disbanded in 1944, Haas Pfister worked as an airplane mechanic and later as a stewardess with Pan American, said The New York Times. “She’d rather have been in the cockpit any day of the week,” her daughter later said. Haas Pfister satisfied her love of flying by racing planes, winning the All Women’s International Air Race in 1950 and 1952 in a P-39 fighter plane she dubbed “Galloping Gertie,” and flying helicopters and hydrogen balloons. In 2009, Haas Pfister, along with about 300 living WASPs, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. “Better late than never,” she said.