SOLO

SOLO

Some of my posts have been part of Amy Johnson Crow's genealogy challenge: 52 weeks, 52 ancestors. I participate lightly. This week's challenge is "solo" and here's my family connection to that word.

My mother, Margaret "Peggy" (Kilgariff) McLaughlin took flying lessons after high school! She was living in Brooklyn, NY, at the time and the lessons were taken at Donovan-Hughes Airport in Staten Island, which no longer exists. Below is a map of where the airport was on Staten Island. It's about dead center on the map.

Map image from http://www.airfields-freeman.com/NY/Airfields_NY_NY_StatenI.htm

On September 28, 1948, she soloed! I don't know what newspaper this is from. 

Below is her pilot's license, front and back. 

Funny thing about my mom, she didn't like to fly (although she would). She said she was fine if she were the pilot, but not as a passenger.

As a pilot she also had to have a medical certification, like a clearance, to make sure she was medically fit to fly a plane:

These pictures aren't of her when she soloed, but within a couple of years of it.

When I was in high school I wore her pilot's jacket regularly. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It was taupe on the outside, and red on the inside. It zippered up the front, and had an elasticized waist. It came to the hips.

My parents met because of their love of flying. Dad (John McLaughlin) was working at the same airport to pay for lessons at the same time my mother was taking her lessons. I don't know when he soloed. When we were kids he took up flying again and got his license back. I flew with him at least once, over the New York area!

(All documents and photos are in my possession, except for the first image.)