Award-winning aviation writer Mary Grady remembered

The aviation publication remembered Grady as “one of AVweb’s longest-serving, most dedicated and respected contributing editors.”

She was a founding member of the publication and embarked on a 20-year career until health concerns forced Grady from her keyboard several weeks ago.

“Mary was a pioneer in digital aviation journalism. A quiet but unstoppable force in telling great aviation stories and reporting the news of general aviation,” said Tom Haines, AOPA senior vice president of Media, Communications, and Outreach. “She will be missed.”

Tim Cole, AVweb’s editorial director, complimented the aviation specialist’s “quiet strength” and “professional skills,” especially “when deadlines loomed or big, late-breaking stories came knocking.” Cole praised the writer’s “calm, reliable, get-it-done pro in the eye of the storm” work ethic.

Grady wrote about blimps, biplanes, helicopters, and more for Wired, the Robb Report, Rhode Island Monthly, and other media outlets.

She was awarded the AOPA Max Karant journalism award for “Their Dreams Took Wing,” a Providence Journal newspaper article that documented female aviators.

Not all of Grady’s assignments were plums, but she made the best of them. She recalled a cover story for the Rhode Island publication that didn’t initially excite her, but she dove into it with her typical gusto. “This wasn’t a topic I had much interest in, but it was assigned to me and it turned to be fun talking to a variety of doctors about their work and their motivations and to see how they relate to their patients," she noted in her blog.

She also worked with researchers aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's research ship Ron Brown. The pilot was equally at home in a cockpit or on New England’s Narragansett Bay helping sail the HMS Rose or Black Pearl tall ships.

Grady “was reliable, persistent, and all too often fighting battles invisible to the rest of us,” colleague Scott Simmons commented on a news story about Grady's death. “It made her a tremendous advocate for the causes she championed and a role model to all those who believed in the same causes. Working alongside her at AVweb was a pleasure and, as I'm only now beginning to appreciate, a privilege.”