When she was just 7 years old, Margaret Ringenberg took her first airplane ride, and her love of flying began. She, her two sisters, her mother and father were driving along a country road in Indiana when a biplane and its barnstormer pilot landed in a field nearby. Ringenberg’s father walked over and asked the pilot for a ride, and the whole family was taken aloft.

A resident of Allan County, Indiana, her entire life, Ringenberg was born in Fort Wayne, grew up 10 miles south of there, and today lives 10 miles north. An accomplished, commercial pilot and flight instructor, she’s flown in coast-to-coast air races, traveled extensively and served her country during World War II as a member of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots. Between 1943 and 1994, Ringenberg amassed 40,000 flying hours.

She came to Wright-Patterson to speak at Aeronautical Systems Center’s Program Management Directorate awards luncheon Oct. 8, and shared her vivid memories of her flying experiences.

“In high school when they ask you, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said I wanted to be a pilot, but girls couldn’t be pilots,” Ringenberg said. “I thought, then I’d be a stewardess because I wanted to fly.”

In the late 1930s, a stewardess had to have nursing credentials, so one of the steps was to study nursing. Ringenberg decided that whether girls could be pilots or not, she’d take flying lessons instead. She earned a private pilot license and filled out a form to take a test for the WASP.

The mission of the WASP was to fly aircraft from factories to the military fields where they were needed.

In 1943, she recalled, “(My parents) didn’t have a phone, but a neighbor took a call that said the government needed my services. The first interview was in Chicago. That was also my first train ride. I returned to Fort Wayne to the military base there for a physical. There were four of us. One backed out. Two of us passed the physical, and we went to Sweetwater, Texas.”

Ringenberg underwent six months of training and graduated in the first complete class at Sweetwater. From there, she was assigned to the 2nd Ferrying Division, Wilmington, Del. Members of WASP were qualified to fly both single-engine and multi-engine aircraft. But despite the critical need for airplanes during the war, Ringenberg said, “We didn’t necessarily get checked out on each airplane we flew. In fact, usually we just went down a checklist.” She said she did “get a ‘ticket’ on the C-47 (Skytrain), and somebody rode around the field with me in the C-45 (Expediter).”

She added she never worried about flying unfamiliar aircraft because “I was 21, and I knew it all. We did our own testing. I think that equipment was made better then than it is now. I never worried about it.” She flew bombers and transport aircraft.

In March 1945, Ringenberg became a flight instructor, a vocation she still enjoys (In fact, less than three months ago, she passed her instructor’s physical.). She also became involved in air races after 1957, and each of her grandchildren has accompanied her in at least one race.

The races, often round-robin style, were events in which the pilot had to predict how much time was required to fly from point to point and how much fuel was needed. Ringenberg noted that winners often were within “a half percent of fuel, and five to 10 seconds.”

Some of her races included the Powder Puff Derby, the Classic Air Race, the Grand Prix, the Great Southern, the Denver Mile High, the Illi-nines Air Race, the Kentucky Air Derby, the Indiana Fair, and the Michigan Small Race. She came in second in the coast-to-coast Air Race Classic last summer.

“My parents loved to travel, but we didn’t have much money when I was a child,” Ringenberg said. “We went to Niagara Falls once, and we slept in the car. When I was in high school, (my parents) had a place in Florida, and we’d go there.

“I inherited their love of travel, and I’ve been around the world twice. However, I like four seasons, and I’m happy in Indiana. There’s no place like home.”

A member of the 99s, an organization of female pilots, Ringenberg devotes two dozen dates each year speaking about opportunities in motivational speeches to schools. She addressed 1,000 Air Force Academy cadets in 1998, and in 2002, spoke to astronauts at the National Aviation and Space Administration, Houston, Texas.

Saying that she was honored to speak at a reunion of a World War II bomber group, Ringenberg recalled the part in history played by the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots and the disdain that its members felt from male pilots in the 1940s. She said she began her speech by saying, “Sixty years ago, you couldn’t stand the ground we walked on.”

Ringenberg is the subject of one chapter in Tom Brokaw’s bestseller, The Greatest Generation, and she’s written an autobiography, from which half the profits go to children’s charities. She’s also involved in the Women’s Air and Space Museum, now in Cleveland. In March, she appeared on NBC’s The Today Show in a feature called Ladies In Their 80s.

Although she enjoys her current fame and opportunities, Ringenberg keeps her perspective. “If I had gotten the attention then (for pioneering and racing efforts), what kind of mother would I have been?” she asked.

Looking back at her aviation pioneering, her travels, and the people she’s met, Ringenberg said, “I’ve had the most fantastic life.”

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