Zhāng Ruìfēn 张瑞芬
Daughter of Nie Qinglan 聶清蘭 and Zhang Shunbing張舜炳
She grew up in Guangdong and passed her exams to complete high school, and moved to the United States at age 17. She married her father's business partner, George Young, and kept her own name, Americanizing it to Katherine Cheung. After her two daughters, Doris and Dorothy were born, she took up flying in 1931, earning her private pilots license on 30 Mar 1932.
She joined the Ninety-Nines association of women pilots, the group founded by Amelia Earhart.
Nation's first female Asian flier dies at 98
Cheung started flying in 1932
Thousand Oaks (AP) - Katherine Cheung, whose chance visit to a Southern California airfield inspired her to become the nation's first licensed Asian-American female pilot, has died of cancer. She was 98.
The aviation pioneer, whose contemporaries included Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindberg, died at home Tuesday of natural causes.
The native of Canton, China, immigrated to the United States in 1921, where she studied music at several schools, including the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, earning a degree from the later.
It was during a visit to Dycer airfield in Los Angeles, however, where her father had taken her to practice her driving, that Cheung decided what she really wanted to do. Watching the planes take off and land, she decided to become a pilot.
She did not act on her dream until some time later, however, after a cousin who was a pilot took her up in his plane and she impulsively signed up for flying lessons afterward.
She earned her license in 1932, a time when only 1 percent of all licensed U.S. pilots were women. Among Asian-American women, she was the first, according to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
'I don't see any reason why a Chinese woman can't be as good a pilot as anyone else,' she once said. 'We drive automobiles. Why not fly planes?'
She also became an accomplished racer and stunt flier, and the Beijing Air Force Aviation Museum proclaimed her China's Amelia Earhart.
She counted Earhart and other aviation pioneers among her friends, and was said to be devastated when the famous aviator disappeared during a round-the-world flight in 1937.
After the cousin who had introduced her to flying was killed in a crash, she promised her father on his death bed that she would never fly again.
It was a promise she subsequently broke after his death. But then in 1942, at age 38, she retired from flying for good.
Cheung is survived by daughters Doris Wong of Thousand Oaks and Dorothy Leschenko of Los Angeles, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren."
published in Ventura County Star on Mon, 9 Sept 2003, pg B7
Daughter of Nie Qinglan 聶清蘭 and Zhang Shunbing張舜炳
She grew up in Guangdong and passed her exams to complete high school, and moved to the United States at age 17. She married her father's business partner, George Young, and kept her own name, Americanizing it to Katherine Cheung. After her two daughters, Doris and Dorothy were born, she took up flying in 1931, earning her private pilots license on 30 Mar 1932.
She joined the Ninety-Nines association of women pilots, the group founded by Amelia Earhart.
Nation's first female Asian flier dies at 98
Cheung started flying in 1932
Thousand Oaks (AP) - Katherine Cheung, whose chance visit to a Southern California airfield inspired her to become the nation's first licensed Asian-American female pilot, has died of cancer. She was 98.
The aviation pioneer, whose contemporaries included Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindberg, died at home Tuesday of natural causes.
The native of Canton, China, immigrated to the United States in 1921, where she studied music at several schools, including the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, earning a degree from the later.
It was during a visit to Dycer airfield in Los Angeles, however, where her father had taken her to practice her driving, that Cheung decided what she really wanted to do. Watching the planes take off and land, she decided to become a pilot.
She did not act on her dream until some time later, however, after a cousin who was a pilot took her up in his plane and she impulsively signed up for flying lessons afterward.
She earned her license in 1932, a time when only 1 percent of all licensed U.S. pilots were women. Among Asian-American women, she was the first, according to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
'I don't see any reason why a Chinese woman can't be as good a pilot as anyone else,' she once said. 'We drive automobiles. Why not fly planes?'
She also became an accomplished racer and stunt flier, and the Beijing Air Force Aviation Museum proclaimed her China's Amelia Earhart.
She counted Earhart and other aviation pioneers among her friends, and was said to be devastated when the famous aviator disappeared during a round-the-world flight in 1937.
After the cousin who had introduced her to flying was killed in a crash, she promised her father on his death bed that she would never fly again.
It was a promise she subsequently broke after his death. But then in 1942, at age 38, she retired from flying for good.
Cheung is survived by daughters Doris Wong of Thousand Oaks and Dorothy Leschenko of Los Angeles, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren."
published in Ventura County Star on Mon, 9 Sept 2003, pg B7
Zhāng Ruìfēn 张瑞芬
Daughter of Nie Qinglan 聶清蘭 and Zhang Shunbing張舜炳
She grew up in Guangdong and passed her exams to complete high school, and moved to the United States at age 17. She married her father's business partner, George Young, and kept her own name, Americanizing it to Katherine Cheung. After her two daughters, Doris and Dorothy were born, she took up flying in 1931, earning her private pilots license on 30 Mar 1932.
She joined the Ninety-Nines association of women pilots, the group founded by Amelia Earhart.
Nation's first female Asian flier dies at 98
Cheung started flying in 1932
Thousand Oaks (AP) - Katherine Cheung, whose chance visit to a Southern California airfield inspired her to become the nation's first licensed Asian-American female pilot, has died of cancer. She was 98.
The aviation pioneer, whose contemporaries included Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindberg, died at home Tuesday of natural causes.
The native of Canton, China, immigrated to the United States in 1921, where she studied music at several schools, including the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, earning a degree from the later.
It was during a visit to Dycer airfield in Los Angeles, however, where her father had taken her to practice her driving, that Cheung decided what she really wanted to do. Watching the planes take off and land, she decided to become a pilot.
She did not act on her dream until some time later, however, after a cousin who was a pilot took her up in his plane and she impulsively signed up for flying lessons afterward.
She earned her license in 1932, a time when only 1 percent of all licensed U.S. pilots were women. Among Asian-American women, she was the first, according to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
'I don't see any reason why a Chinese woman can't be as good a pilot as anyone else,' she once said. 'We drive automobiles. Why not fly planes?'
She also became an accomplished racer and stunt flier, and the Beijing Air Force Aviation Museum proclaimed her China's Amelia Earhart.
She counted Earhart and other aviation pioneers among her friends, and was said to be devastated when the famous aviator disappeared during a round-the-world flight in 1937.
After the cousin who had introduced her to flying was killed in a crash, she promised her father on his death bed that she would never fly again.
It was a promise she subsequently broke after his death. But then in 1942, at age 38, she retired from flying for good.
Cheung is survived by daughters Doris Wong of Thousand Oaks and Dorothy Leschenko of Los Angeles, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren."
published in Ventura County Star on Mon, 9 Sept 2003, pg B7
Daughter of Nie Qinglan 聶清蘭 and Zhang Shunbing張舜炳
She grew up in Guangdong and passed her exams to complete high school, and moved to the United States at age 17. She married her father's business partner, George Young, and kept her own name, Americanizing it to Katherine Cheung. After her two daughters, Doris and Dorothy were born, she took up flying in 1931, earning her private pilots license on 30 Mar 1932.
She joined the Ninety-Nines association of women pilots, the group founded by Amelia Earhart.
Nation's first female Asian flier dies at 98
Cheung started flying in 1932
Thousand Oaks (AP) - Katherine Cheung, whose chance visit to a Southern California airfield inspired her to become the nation's first licensed Asian-American female pilot, has died of cancer. She was 98.
The aviation pioneer, whose contemporaries included Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindberg, died at home Tuesday of natural causes.
The native of Canton, China, immigrated to the United States in 1921, where she studied music at several schools, including the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, earning a degree from the later.
It was during a visit to Dycer airfield in Los Angeles, however, where her father had taken her to practice her driving, that Cheung decided what she really wanted to do. Watching the planes take off and land, she decided to become a pilot.
She did not act on her dream until some time later, however, after a cousin who was a pilot took her up in his plane and she impulsively signed up for flying lessons afterward.
She earned her license in 1932, a time when only 1 percent of all licensed U.S. pilots were women. Among Asian-American women, she was the first, according to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
'I don't see any reason why a Chinese woman can't be as good a pilot as anyone else,' she once said. 'We drive automobiles. Why not fly planes?'
She also became an accomplished racer and stunt flier, and the Beijing Air Force Aviation Museum proclaimed her China's Amelia Earhart.
She counted Earhart and other aviation pioneers among her friends, and was said to be devastated when the famous aviator disappeared during a round-the-world flight in 1937.
After the cousin who had introduced her to flying was killed in a crash, she promised her father on his death bed that she would never fly again.
It was a promise she subsequently broke after his death. But then in 1942, at age 38, she retired from flying for good.
Cheung is survived by daughters Doris Wong of Thousand Oaks and Dorothy Leschenko of Los Angeles, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren."
published in Ventura County Star on Mon, 9 Sept 2003, pg B7
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