Neta Snook
Pilot
Pioneering aviatrix who opened her own flight school and counted among her first students a young Amelia Earhart.
She was initially rejected by the Curtiss Flying School, but when her second-choice school closed halfway through her studies, she re-applied to Curtiss and was accepted.
She was the first female Iowan to take to the skies; the first woman to train at the Curtiss Flying School; and the first woman to establish a commercial airfield.
She grew up in Mount Carroll, Illinois, where her childhood love of mechanics was nurtured by her father.
She was invited to fly a replica of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis in 1977.