The most exciting thing during my high school years was learning to fly. The summer before I turned seventeen, something inside me kept telling me to bicycle out to the Spencer, Iowa airport and find out about taking flying lessons. I couldn’t shake the urge. It was that nudge inside that keeps telling you to do it — just do it. Get this started. I just knew I would love it.
My instructor, “Air Andy,” had been teaching in Northwest Iowa for years. He had the kind of calm, patient demeanor that made you feel at ease. On my very first flight, he demonstrated a spin and asked me to count how many times we rotated. My eyes got as big as saucers and my stomach did a few rotations along with the aircraft. I remember thinking in that moment, “If that’s the most dramatic maneuver I’ll have to get comfortable with, I think I can do this.” It was naive, maybe, but it was also the exact confidence I needed to keep going.
I took my first solo flight in a Cessna 152 at the Spencer, Iowa airport in July of 1990.
That July evening, Air Andy didn’t say much about soloing. We did a couple takeoffs and landings and the next thing I heard “you’re ready!” The feeling was pure electricity, mixed with nervous energy. Air Andy climbed out of the right seat, closed the door, stepped back, and walked off toward the FBO.
This is it. This is really happening.
The takeoff felt different without his presence in the seat next to me. As I climbed out over the Iowa cornfields — farmland stretching in every direction, the Spencer airport shrinking beneath me — I felt something shift inside. This was real. This was me.
I flew the pattern around the airport in what felt like both an instant and an eternity. The landing felt good, and so did the next ones. When I rolled to a stop, I sat there for a moment, just thrilled, understanding that I had just done something that would define my future.
I was bicycling to the airport whenever I had a lesson scheduled — my parents didn’t even know at first that I’d started flying. I’d leave the house on my bike like I was going anywhere, and instead I’d pedal to the airport and think about my next lesson. I knew this was something I wanted to pursue. To pay for my lessons, I worked three jobs while in high school, determined to keep scheduling more lessons. Within a few months from my first lesson, my parents found out. By then, I was beyond hooked.
I was an Iowa girl, born and raised just a few miles from Spencer airport. The late 1980s were a boom time there — Great Lakes Aviation was running a commuter airline operation, and the whole place was alive with the sound of aircraft engines, passengers, the constant presence of pilots and mechanics and students like me. Flying wasn’t exotic in Spencer; it was just what people did for jobs and career advancements and weekend pilot conversations. But for me, it was everything.
My first solo had ignited something that couldn’t be extinguished.
During college, I worked at the Boone Airport while attending Iowa State University. I became a flight instructor and worked the line. This is where I started flying helicopters. Talk about fascinated. There’s something different about helicopters — they draw you in. The physics and the touch are incredible. But the feeling they deliver is unmatched. The different perspective, the vibration through your body, the way they operate with small inputs and finesse.
I applied for a scholarship from the Whirly Girls, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting women in aviation. With that scholarship, I was able to pursue helicopter training at Iowa Western Community College. And then came my second first solo moment — in a Hughes 269A.
In a helicopter, you don’t just take off. You lift. For a moment you’re suspended between earth and sky with nothing but you’re training and fascination working together. When my instructor stepped out and I was solo in the cockpit, hovering a few feet above the ground with a cushion of air, my thought— another extraordinary moment! Both solos changed me, but in different ways.
Soloing, whether in a Cessna 152 or a Hughes 269A, is the moment you realize you’re truly alone in command. It’s the moment the training wheels come off, and you understand that you’re capable of something you weren’t sure you could do. It’s that butterfly moment.
For me, it happened twice. Two different aircraft. Two different moments. Two different versions of myself — the sixteen-year-old girl bicycling to an Iowa airport with a dream, and the college girl who discovered the passion for helicopters.
Thirty-seven years later, I’ve logged over twenty-seven hundred flight hours. I’ve had the privilege to instruct, demo, deliver amazing aircraft, and developed many lifelong friendships.
I still remember Air Andy’s calm voice through my headset the day I soloed. I still remember the weight of the yoke in my hands as I pulled back. I still remember that moment just hovering on my own. Feeling suspended between earth and sky, knowing with absolute certainty that those moments could never leave me.
That’s what soloing gave me. Not just a license to learn more. Not just a career. But memories of a lifetime.
I’m still flying. And I’m still that Iowa girl who biked to the airport with a dream.
Share your story about your “First Solo” by emailing midwestflyer.com@gmail.com. This series was started January 1, 2026, you can view more articles like this by clicking here.
