Why We Fly

Breaking all barriers, she takes to the skies

According to Jacie Ann Crowell, growing up in the 1960s and being a girl on an Indian reservation, flying seemed like a dream. Born and raised on the Shoshone Bannock Indian Reservation outside Pocatello, Idaho, she knew no one who flew. Her first exposure to airplanes was as an 8-year-old, when her older brother was shipping out to the Vietnam War. As the airplane turned to taxi on the open ramp, she got a good dose of jet blast and thought, Wow, that was really cool.

Like many of us, Crowell's flying dreams took a backseat to life for a while. That all changed when she experienced an aborted takeoff one day as a passenger on a Boeing 777. It scared her, but instead of using the experience as a motivator to take Greyhound, she decided the best way to beat her fear was to learn to fly. With the help of CFI Garry Gorst, she got her private pilot certificate at Bandon State Airport on Oregon's Pacific Coast in 2000.

After she got her certificate, Crowell bought a 1963 Cessna 182-infusing it with her own personality and naming it "Good Grief" in tribute to "Peanuts" comic-strip character Charlie Brown. She had it painted her favorite nail polish color (bright red), and fitted with an interior done in Pendleton wool from eastern Oregon. Life was good as she started on her instrument rating.

That was when her engine quit-she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy in the middle of her instrument training. So weak she could barely manipulate the controls, she wondered if she would ever fly again. But with lots of encouragement from her CFI and friends, she resumed flying just eight weeks later. She has faced several challenges since her surgery and is still working on her instrument rating today. "It's given me every reason to quit flying but I will finish one day," she says, having logged a few hundred hours since her surgery. In the meantime, she is working toward becoming a tour coordinator for a B-17 based at Twin Oaks Airpark in Portland, Oregon, that is set to tour the West Coast and Oshkosh in 2009.

Discrimination as a woman in aviation is not uncommon, but when people find out she is both a woman and a Native American, "They're surprised," she says. "I only know two Native Americans who fly-not two Native American women, just two Native Americans, period." However, Crowell says that in her experience, it is not always a prejudicial thing. "There's just not enough interest in flying on the reservation." She wants to change all that by bringing aviation to the reservation and more specifically, to the children of the reservation.

She has funded aviation scholarships for Native Americans in the past, and hopes to be able to do so again in the future. Her focus now is on bringing aviation curricula to the high school students on her reservation. She is working with Rich Grinnell, a CFI, corporate pilot, and firefighter, along with teachers on the reservation to incorporate some of the private pilot ground work into the science curriculum. "We bring the 'we did it, so can you' attitude to the classroom," she says, and believes, "It will work for all kids, not just Native American kids."

While Crowell wants to make it easier for kids to get into aviation, she is living proof that even if you come from a place where aviation is just a dream, you can make it a reality.

Marc Henegar of Bend, Oregon, is a commercial pilot.