Page 6 - Robeson Living

African American female flight instructor in the United
States. Her love for flight and children merged when she
founded the first Ida Van Smith Flight Club on Long Is-
land, New York. The flight training club was for minori-
ty children to encourage their involvement in aviation and
aerospace sciences. Training for the students was provided
in an aircraft simulator funded by the FAA and an opera-
tional Cessna 172. Soon there were more than twenty clubs
throughout the country, with members ages 13-19.

Her program was then expanded into public schools and she
started an introductory aviation course for adults at York
College. Volunteers from varying areas in aviation give her
classes tours of airplanes and airports. They also took her
students flying and gave lectures and demonstrations ap-
propriate to each age group. Children in the program along
with their parents flew in small airplanes, seaplanes, and
helicopters. They visited aerospace museums and Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) installations. Students in
the program learned the controls, functions of the instru-
ments, and what makes a plane fly by sitting in Smith’s own
Ida Van Smith after her first solo flight Cessna 172 cockpit.
school he tried hard to find someone to teacher her but as
he had said years before he could find no one to teach her.
In the beginning she used personal funds to establish her
flight clubs. Later the clubs found funding from corporate
Ida was valedictorian of her 1934 graduating class at Red and private donations and volunteer efforts. In 1978-79, the
Stone Academy. She earned an education degree with a FAA funded three high schools’ programs and later adopted
minor in mathematics from Shaw University. She taught the programs. Over the years more than 6,000 young people
in NC two years before marrying Edward Smith. They were involved in the flight clubs. Many became military,
soon moved to Queens, NY and she taught in New York commercial or private pilots, aeronautical engineers and air
City Public Schools in the fields of history and special ed- traffic controllers. During this same time, she produced and
ucation while raising four children. She earned a master’s hosted a cable television show on aviation in New York.
degree from Queens College in 1964.

Photographs and stories about Ida appeared in newspapers
After battling cancer in her late 40s Ida realized it was time across the country. The November 1979 Ebony magazine
to follow that dream instilled her as a young girl. She talk- called her the Pied Piper in the four-page feature about her
ed to her daughter Jackie Thompson and said it is time I flight clubs. She was a guest several times on a New York
am going to learn to fly. Jackie said “Momma, No.” But Ida cable show entitled “For You, Black Woman” in one episode
had heard no too many times trying to crush her dreams.
she appears alongside Maya Angelou and Cicely Tyson.

In 1967 while working on her doctorate at New York Uni- She has appeared in exhibits at The Pentagon and the In-
versity she drove to La Guardia Airport for her first flying ternational Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland,
lesson. She said “No one at my house knew where I was Ohio. She received numerous awards for her contributions
– no one in the world. The flight instructor and I flew over to aviation and youth education. The highest honor was a
the Hudson River and he showed me different maneuvers when in 1997 she became part of the exhibit “Women and
and – I was just talking about being in the air and then I Flight” at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Muse-
was in the air. I had wanted this so long”
um in Washington.
She completed her flight training in Fayetteville, NC. She She retired from teaching in 1977 and with her second hus-
soon realized that just like she had been that kids were in- band, Benjamin Dunn moved to her hometown of Lumber-
terested in flying. The kids would gather around her after ton. She remained active in her namesake clubs. She was
the flights on the way to her car wanting to know every- a member of the Tuskegee Airman’s Black Wings, Negro
thing about the plane and what it was like to be in the air. Airman International and the Ninety-Nines, an International
Her father lived long enough to see his daughter earn her Organization of Women Pilots co-founded by Amelia Ear-
pilots license dying in 1970.
hart. In 1984 she became the first African American woman
to be inducted into the International Forest of Friendship for
She had her private pilot’s license in hand but still dreamed her contributions to aviation. The forest is a living, growing
of more, so she was soon completing the requirements to
Page 5 become a flight instructor. It is said that she was the first memorial to the world history of aviation and aerospace.