As the editor, publisher, and chief writer for Winged Victory: Women in Aviation (www.winged-victory.com), I am always - and I mean always - on the lookout for stories about female pilots - from the pioneers in the 1700s and 1800s (okay, those would actually have been aeronauts - hot air balloon enthusiasts) to the heavier-than-air pilots of the 1920s when women had to fight just to be given permission to take lessons, let alone actually learning to fly, to the 50s and 60s when no commercial airlines would even think of hiring them, to the barriers broken in the 1970s, to today... when the percentage of women pilots - 6% - is supposedly the same as its been ... since, like, forever!

Anyway, one of my strategies to find women pilots to write about was to acquire a Women in Aviation Day By Day calendar, (www.powepuffpilot.com). Each day, a different milestone was listed, and my plan was to take the pilot mentioned on each day, do research and write a complete article about them.

And it's interesting, when you pluck a name out of the air - or in this case the calendar page - and begin to do research, how the "vibrations" from that pluck (I'm trying to do a musical reference here!) build together to create sweet music, like a miniature symphony of information.

For example, on January 13, 1928, Nellie Zabel Willhite soloed. That is, she flew a plane up into the air all by herself, with no instructor in the cockpit. According to my Women in Aviation calendar, she was "South Dakota's first licensed aviatrix."

So, she was my research subject for the day. As usual, the first place I looked was Wikipedia. Nellie wasn't mentioned there. Well, that was no surprise. (Wkipedia and its annoying editorial practices have often vexed me.)

However, when I did a simple search on the web, her name popped up in dozens of locations. Pace Wikipedia, it turned out she was actually quite well-known in aviation circles (at least those concerned with the pioneers), as the first deaf woman to earn a pilot's license.

How could a deaf person fly a plane? What happened if something went wrong with the plane - how would she know before it was too late? Here's how Willhite explained it:

She once said: "Even though I could barely hear the engine roar, I could tell right away if anything was wrong - just from the vibrations."

Just as the blind develop their other senses to a heightened degree, so do the deaf - to whom vibrations can tell a great deal.

Nellie Willhite did more than just earn her license, however. For some years, she also made a living as a pilot - as a barnstormer, in her Alexander Eagle Rock biplane, called "Pard" after her father.

Here's where those vibrations come in again. I confess I'd never heard of the Alexander Eagle Rock before, or if so, had just dismissed it as 'some kind of plane.' Turns out, the Alexander Air Craft company, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was, for one brief shining moment (1928-1929) the largest aircraft company in the world! At least - for that one year they turned out more airplanes than any other manufacturer. And yet, in the 1930s, they encountered financial difficulties and went out of business. Whether it was the result of poor business practices or as a result of the Depression - I will have to see when I do further research!

Anyway, Nellie knew Amelia Earhart, and worked with her to put on the first Powder Puff Derby - a transcontinental air race for women only, which took place in 1929 - and she was also the founder of the South Dakota chapter of the Ninety-Nines - the women's pilot organization which was founded by Amelia Earhart, Ila Loetscher, Phyllis Fleet, Candis Hall, Louise Thaden, Ruth Nichols, and Mildred Stinaff.

I wrote up my article on Nellie Zabel Willhite, and added it to the Women Aviators Wiki.

I have plans for a more detailed work on Willhite. Her papers are in storage in the Women's Collection at the Center for Western Studies, in South Dakota, and I hope to visit there later in 2009 to get in some research.

But one can do lots of superficial research on the web, which is how I discovered that today, there are many deaf pilots, and they have their own organization, which you can view here: www.DeafPilots.com.

As a woman, and as a deaf individual, Nellie Zabel Willhite was quite the pioneer, and I'm delighted to have found out more about her.