the status of being a doctor’s wife and “lady who lunches”
with a regular mention in the society column. She went away
to live a quite different life.
Ellouise studied as an organist and earned her Masters in
Sacred Music, then accepted a church choir director position
in Madison, Wisconsin, where she met and married her college professor husband. They had four daughters, and when
the girls were in their teens, the family hosted a high school
foreign exchange student. Upon hearing that Ellouise was a licensed pilot, he asked, “Are you going to take me up?”
It was 1976, after the upheaval of civil rights,
anti-war protests, and the Women’s Movement. Where before she had been a teen reluctantly pushed into the limelight
by her mother, Ellouise was now an accomplished, confident
woman of 49 working as a computer programmer. This was a
fresh chance to spread her wings.
My mother,
Ellouise Skinner Beatty,
is now 82. Seeing her at the
controls of an airplane when
I was an impressionable
teenager made me see her in
a new light, and opened my
eyes to new opportunities.
new regulations. Once she was checked out to fly on her own
again, Ellouise took the exchange student, her husband, and
each of her daughters up for a flight, as well as many friends,
several of whom were inspired to learn to fly themselves.
From my perspective, Ellouise has quite a bit in common
with her mother, Dora. They both were independent-minded
women, both always carried their pilot’s license in their wallet, and both were quite proud to propel their daughters into
the skies.
My mother, Ellouise Skinner Beatty, is now 82. Seeing her
at the controls of an airplane when I was an impressionable
teenager made me see her in a new light, and opened my eyes
to new opportunities.
I soloed on July 25, 1981, my grandmother Dora’s 97th
birthday. Today, a wooden propeller from an airplane called
Dawn is a reminder of who propelled me into the skies. ✈
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jenny T. Beatty (WAI #144) is a first officer with American Airlines based in the U.S. She has been a columnist for Aviation
for Women for 10 years.
