Pilots

Colonel Kelly Hamilton always knew that she wanted a career requiring travel. An Air Force brat with a dad who'd flown in both World War II and Korea, she was well-traveled by the ripe age of 14, when she'd ask her parents to drop her off at the airport for a day of watching airplanes come and go.

It was 1967, however, and Kelly's sights were firmly set in what she knew — she'd never heard of, much less seen, a woman pilot, so she decided to become bilingual and apply with an international airline for a flight attendant job. "I was petite, but not exactly Twiggy. I went to the interview at United Airlines and sat in the lobby with all these Barbizon models. When the interviewer asked, 'If you could be anyone at this airline, who would you be?' I answered, 'The president.' He smiled and suggested I go back to college," says Hamilton, smiling at herself in retrospect. "I went home so disappointed, convinced it was my looks that lost me the job. Then my dad looked at me and said matter-of-fact like, 'Why don't you become a pilot?'"

That's all Hamilton needed to hear. She began flying lessons the next day in a Cherokee 140 and later bought one for herself.

She went back to school, too, and finished her degree in French and then added secretarial skills to her roster ("to fall back on," she says). The secretarial skills did just that, too, feeding and clothing her, and buying avgas, as well.

The turning point in her career came when she went to work for Michael Cantino at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. It was reputed that every secretary he hired went on to something very different. In just one year, during a series of government cutbacks, his magic worked on Hamilton, too.

"There at lunch one day was an Air Force recruiter. I told him I wanted to fly, and he told me that wasn't an option," says Hamilton. It was 1972 and he was right — for the moment. "I told him that if I couldn't be a test pilot, then I'd like to be an engineer. He noted that my degree was in French," she laughs. "I pointed out that I flew airplanes and I worked on my own car — that proved something."

Persistence paid off. She was inducted into an experimental program to train nontechnical people in technical jobs and found herself as an avionics test and evaluation technician at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Her first flight in a military airplane was in the back seat of an F-4.

"I liked the work, but I still wanted to fly," says Hamilton. Then one day her dad called her to let her know that women could fly in the Air Force. That was the ticket. There was only one problem: Air Force pilots had to be 5 feet 4 inches or taller and Hamilton, on a good day, was just that. "The guys I worked with put up a chin-up bar in the office and made me hang from it and stretch. Then we scheduled my medical for early morning, when I was supposedly tallest," she recalls. It worked. Hamilton trained in the second class of women pilots ever and went on to fly T-37s, T-38s, and the venerable KC-135 airborne refueler.

Her three-year stint as a flight instructor at the Air Force Academy, however, is one of her most enjoyable memories from the service. "I love watching people realize that they can manage the machine in the sky," she says.

Before retiring, Hamilton helped to form the Women Military Aviators organization. "I always felt that it was important that other women in the military had mentors. There were so few of us that it wasn't until 1982 that we finally had enough women in a squadron to make up an entire KC-135 crew. Women Military Aviators provided me with a way to be around other women who were like me and to advise those striving to reach my rank," she says. Hamilton served two terms as president of the organization and is remembered for pushing to include as members the enlisted personnel, along with officers.

Twenty-four years of military duty was enough for Hamilton. She retired as a full-bird colonel, the first flying female colonel the Air Force had. While taking her "transition assistance" tests, Hamilton discovered that she enjoys helping others to achieve success. When she was approached by Dowling College to become the executive director of recruitment for its Aviation and Transportation Center, everything seemed — once more — to fall into place. She's now on Long Island, flying and working directly with students, helping them to carve out exciting futures.

"Dowling's colocation with the National Aviation and Transportation Center provides a tremendous opportunity for students interested in transportation simulation, new technologies, and research," she says. For its flight students the college also has inaugurated a fifth-year program that includes a regional jet transition and regional carrier right-seat internship.

She hasn't given up flying for a desk job, by any stretch of the imagination. Her recruiting responsibilities keep her on the road, and Dowling provides her with light singles and twins to get her to her recruiting appointments. "When I retired, I never intended to stop flying. The general aviation airplanes I get to fly make my job fun. In fact, a friend encouraged me to go after a [Boeing] 747 scholarship, and I won it, so I'm keeping open that option, too," says Hamilton.

For now, however, she's thrilled to be doing what the tests say she's good at: helping aspiring aviators and engineers to achieve real success, something she knows a lot about.