2013 Pioneer Hall of Fame

Lt. Col. Karen Fuller Brannen

Lt. Col. Karen Fuller Brannen made history on October 17, 1997, when she became the U.S. Marine Corps first female strike fighter pilot to earn "wings of gold."

Others might have been surprised, but not Brannen. She says that if you'd asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up she would have replied with, "fighter pilot." The disbelief of others spurred her on.

In the spring of her fi nal year of college, Congress passed laws that resulted in women being eligible to fly in the Marine Corps. She applied for the Corps, passed the flight physical and went to training camp.

She attended Officer Candidate School in the summer of 1994, completing her studies as an honor graduate and receiving a physical training award. She was commissioned as a second lieutenant that year. In May 1996, after primary fl ight training, she was the first female Marine to receive a jet training slot. She completed intermediate jet training at Naval Air Station Meridian, in Meridian, Mississippi, fl ying the T-2C, and then went on to fl y the TA-4J with Training Squadron 7. She was the top graduate in her class, and was then selected to fl y the F/A-18 Hornet with a West Coast squadron. From there, with the call sign Stump, she was assigned to Fleet Replacement Squadron UMFAT-101 at El Toro, California, then subsequently Miramar, California.

In 2001 then Capt. Tribbett deployed with RMFA- 242 to Iwakuni, Japan. She earned her Air Combat Tactics Instructor certifi cation at the end of that year. After a stint in Quantico, Virginia in 2002 attending Expeditionary Warfare School she was assigned as an active duty officer to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 321 at Andrews Air Force Base. From there Maj. Tribbett was assigned to VR-1, where she flew C-37Bs, transporting the Secretary of the Navy, the Commandant of the Marine Corps and various Congressmen.

Maj. Tribbett left active duty for a job as a large cabin demonstration pilot for Gulfstream Aerospace in 2007. She remained a Marine Corps Reserve Lieutenant Colonel serving as the Officer in Charge of the Peacetime Wartime Support Team in Savannah, Georgia.

In 2010 she married Maj. Matt Brannen, a judge advocate in the Marine Corps.

Mary Frances Silitch

"Flying was just a wonderful thing to do. It was aliberating thing," Silitch says, smiling, when asked. Her first taste was in a crop duster in 1939 when she was four years old, but it wasn’t until she had graduated from Rhodes College in Tennessee and headed to New York that she finally began piloting her career

Silitch began her publishing career at Mademoiselle magazine as an assistant fiction editor. In 1963 she became a copy editor at McGraw-Hill Book Company. She thought she might take a flying lesson at the nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. It was expensive, but she took a few lessons and re-discovered that she loved it.

When a colleague from McGraw-Hill told Silitch that he was going to learn how to fly as part of his new job at Flying magazine, she was intrigued. She wrote to the editor and said, 'I think you need (to hire) me, too' and they did.

Silitch spent a year earning her pilot’s certificate, training at Republic Airport on Long Island. Her career in aviation and journalism began to climb. But some thought there were limits. The publisher of Flying actually came to her apartment and told her she couldn’t have the job of managing editor because she was female. She left to become managing editor of Air Progress.

At Air Progress she was promoted to executive editor. Having her seaplane rating helped her move into her next position as editor at Water Flying, where she was responsible for magazine content and advertising sales, as well as speaking at fly-ins.

In 1987, Silitch had ascended to the highest point of her career: the fi rst female editor-in-chief of Private Pilot, followed up by a stint at Professional Pilot, which dealt with private business aircraft.

By the end of her flying days, Silitch had flown 250 different types of aircraft to such cities as Dubai, Paris, London and Singapore and logged 5,000 flight hours. She was inducted in October 2010 into the Arkansas Aviation Historical Society’s Hall of Fame. She has also been awarded Pilot of the Year for Orange County (California) and the National Business Aviation Association Platinum Wing Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism Excellence in 2006

She has also been awarded Pilot of the Year for Orange County (California) and the National Business Aviation Association Platinum Wing Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism Excellence in 2006.

She does contribute occasional articles to two aviation magazines and resides with her husband in a 210-year-old house in Granville, New York.

WAI Founding Board of Directors

There is no question that Dr. Peggy Baty Chabrian and her husband, Bruce Baty (now deceased), were inspired to create Women in Aviation, International after realizing how few of the general public knew that women participated in every aspect of aviation. That was back in 1990. There was a conference in Prescott, Arizona, and 150 people attended. A good start. But the Batys needed help to make their concept fly for a mentoring and networking organization for women involved in aviation.

Peggy and Bruce put their heads together and recruited a few of their friends, and a few personalities from the aviation industry, and asked them if they would be willing to come onboard to help with the conference. Sandy Anderson, Trish Beckman, Cassandra Bosco, Amy Carmien, Gary Eiff, Mary Ann Eiff, Janice Elrod, Dick Koenig, Amy Laboda, Nelda Lee, Karen McArdle, Bill Monroe, Bobbi Roe, Nancy Rosen, Shelly Simi, and Carolyn Williamson said yes, and a board of directors was formed—the core of the organization you know today as Women in Aviation, International.

If it had not been for the dedication of that first board, we would not have been incorporated as a nonprofit organization, we would not have chapters, an endowment, nor a robust scholarship program that continues to expand. We would not have the vibrant exhibit hall and virtual and real-time job fairs that take months of careful preparation to bring to fruition. Without the grounding efforts of this founding board we would not be able to consistently provide you with more than 50 different and topical educational sessions at each Conference, nor reach out to inform you all year long with our colorful and entertaining Aviation for Women magazine, our dynamic web site, apps, and more. We owe them a debt of gratitude.