Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Newsletter - August 2010

The Greater St. Louis Ninety-Nines
Newsletter
August, 2010


August meeting: Chapter Birthday Party
Sunday, 15 August 2010 at noon
Creve Coeur Airport
Business meeting will follow lunch at 1 pm

Note that lunch at Creve Coeur is now $6 – but the food is always excellent and well worth the modest cost. If you haven’t driven to Creve Coeur airport lately, the easiest way to get there is to take I-270 and exit at the Page Ave Extension (MO-364) west. Exit MO-364 at Maryland Hts Expressway. Go north (right) on Maryland Hts Expressway approximately 1 mile to Creve Coeur Mill Rd. Turn left at Creve Coeur Mill Rd and follow it into the airport parking lot. We hope many of you will come by and wish our Chapter a Happy Birthday.

July Event:
There was no business meeting in July, therefore there will be no minutes. However, 23 members and guests attended Patrice Mullins presentation on her career as St. Louis County police officer and Chief helicopter pilot. In addition to Patrice, chapter members in attendance were Sarah Arnac, Teresa Camp, Delia Greer, Mary Kinnaw, Sue Mathias, Patrice Mullins, Jean Murry, Martha Norman, Jan Pocock, Susan Van Matre, and Libby Yunger. We had several guests from the Women with Wings chapter of WAI and from St. Charles Zonta, of which Patrice is a past president. Patrice’s presentation took the form of an interview moderated by Nanette Malher, followed by questions from the audience. Patrice related highlights of her life from 5-year-old B-B gun marksman through several changes in her college major to a post-college desk job to the police academy. She told of many of her more harrowing or interesting experiences as a police officer and later in the police helicopter unit and as a sniper on the SWAT team. Her goal was always to be the best police officer that she could be. Moderator Nanette Malher is a Ninety Nine from Nashville TN where she owns Aviatrix Enterprises (www.aviatrixenterprises.com). She was in town to garner support for a documentary she is producing on the life and times of Bobbi Trout, entitled “If I Reach” – The Bobbi Trout Story. Bobbi was a charter member of the Ninety Nines whom Nanette met when they both attended Amelia Earhart’s 90th birthday gathering in Atchison KS in 1987. Fifteen years later, when Bobbi was in her 90s, she asked Nanette to help her create a web site (www.bobbitrout.com) so that her memorabilia from the early years of women in aviation would not be lost. Nanette was also involved in the production of the recent documentary on the 1929 Women’s Air Derby entitled Breaking through the Clouds: The First Women’s National Air Derby. This air race was the first time the women pilots had worked together to do something on a national scale, and it became the impetus for the formation of the Ninety Nines (www.breakingthroughtheclouds.com).

Chapter News:
Please mark your calendars for our September meeting and tour of the St. Louis University and the new Parks College campus in midtown St. Louis on Saturday, 11 September. Susan Bloomfield of SLU will conduct the tour. Times are as follows: 10:30-11:30 am – campus tour of SLU, 11;30 am – 12:30 pm, tour of the Parks campus. SLU will provide a golf cart with seating for up to 6 people for anyone not wanting to walk the entire campus. Lunch at The Fountain on Locust will follow the tour. The Fountain has really great soups, salads, and sandwiches and, best of all, ice cream desserts. We hope many of our members will be able to attend.

There is now a web-based St. Louis Aviation calendar listing events scheduled in the Greater St. Louis area. This site also has links to the websites of the GSL Ninety Nines and other local aviation organizations. The site URL is http://stlaviationcalendar.com/default.aspx .


Member News:
We were very happy that member Sarah Arnac could attend our July meeting. Sarah is an aeronautical engineering student at Purdue University in Indiana and is now dividing her time between classes in Indiana and her internship with NASA in California, with only occasional stops in the St. Louis area to visit family. She is planning to change her Ninety Nines affiliation to a chapter in California but she knows she is always welcome to visit the Greater St. Louis chapter when she is in the area.

One of Susan Van Matre’s guests at the July talk was Jennie Fosdick, flight instructor at Air Associates, the new flight school at Spirit of St. Louis Airport. Susan recently flew with Jennie – and, Susan, we hope that’s just a first step to flying PIC again. Another interesting note: Susan and Patrice got to talking at the luncheon and discovered that not only did they both grow up in the same North St. Louis County neighborhood but they were in first grade together. Now that’s a small world!

Corresponding Secretary, Mary Kinnaw, is now sending Chapter thank you notes on note cards created by Vivian Waters from a photo she took at the Compass Rose project in Greenville IL. Thank you, Vivian!

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