How the Coast Guard’s 1st Black woman pilot helped give the next one her wings

by ELEANOR VASSILI via https://www.npr.org/

Jeanine Menze fell in love with airplanes as a little girl in Jamaica, watching them take off and land at the local airport.

At 18, she set out to register for her first flight lesson at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

But she got discouraged when she saw that the people lining up for aeronautical science classes were mostly white and male.

“I panicked,” she said in a StoryCorps conversation last month. “I don’t see anyone that looks like me, and I felt like I didn’t belong.”

She tried her hand at coding — there were a few women in that line. But, a year later, she knew she wasn’t where she was meant to be, and registered for an introductory flight lesson at an airport down the street. Seeing a woman flight instructor there…

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