Evelyn Waldren

In 1978, Waldren was named the National OX-5 Pioneer Aviatrix of the Year. In 1984, she was elected to the OX-5 Pioneer Hall of Fame.

Waldren moved to Corvallis, Oregon, where her family lived, "to instruct students learning to fly under the GI Bill." After the program lost funding, she flew for US Forest Service and the California Division of Forestry as a fire spotter. In Enterprise, California, she operated the B & E flying service with another pilot, Helen Benna. After Benna left the business, Waldren became a flight instructor with Shasta Aviation at the Redding Sky Camp in Redding, California. After a heat wave in the summer of 1971, Waldren decided to return to the Pacific Northwest.

In 1971, Waldren began working for the Mill Plain Flying Service at Evergreen Field in Washington as a flight instructor. She remained there until she died in 1986. Six months before her death, Waldren was training nearly a dozen students. That same year, the Federal Aviation Administration named her Instructor of the Year for the Western Region. By the time she passed away, Waldren had flown 23,700 hours.

Evelyn married Robert Waldren, and together, they managed the Langmack Field airport in Sweet Home, Oregon. There, Evelyn Waldren received her private examiner's rating in 1951, allowing her to give out student pilot certificates. She was the first woman in Oregon with this rating. With their business partner, Homer Moxley, the Waldrens bought the Oregon City Skypark in 1953.

Waldren served as the public relations coordinator of the Oregon State Board of Aeronautics. She planned the Central Oregon Aviation Day held in June 1949, an educational event which provided free plane rides. Waldren arranged invitations and registration to the Salem Aviation Day held on August 28, 1949, where she demonstrated pattern flying and dead-stick landings. She also helped organize an airshow in Lebanon, Oregon, and escorted former Oregon resident Kathleen "Klondike Kate" Van Duren to the event.

In 1946, Waldren ferried planes from the Taylorcraft Aviation Corporation in Alliance, Ohio to the Northwest Aircraft Distributing Corporation at Evergreen Field in Washington. She was paid 250 dollars for every plane she transported, but had to arrange her own return trips without compensation. Waldren delivered three to four planes a month, flying 13 to 14 hours a day. In December 1946, Waldren left this job and joined the Piercy Flying Service in Medford, Oregon as a flight instructor.

Waldren married Robert Whitmaker in 1942. The couple had a son, Douglas Whitmaker, in 1943. They divorced in 1949. Evelyn charged her husband with "cruel and inhuman treatment" and petitioned for custody of Douglas.

In 1941, Oregon women reactivated their chapter of the Ninety-Nines, a professional organization for female pilots. Waldren was named vice governor of the chapter, which included Edith Foltz, Leah Hing, and Bessie Gale Halliday.

In 1941, Waldren planned a nonstop flight from Canada to Mexico. She wanted to fly to Mexico City, where she would deliver goodwill letters from the governor of Oregon and the mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia. Waldren took off from Vancouver at 2:30 PM on October 1 in her Taylorcraft airplane, Miss Liberty. The plane held 80 gallons of gasoline. She had delayed her flight by a day due to bad weather.

In February 1939, Waldren was appointed an air patrolman by the Albany chief of police, making her the second female air patrolman in Oregon. Her jurisdiction extended over the airport, where she had the responsibility of enforcing aviation law and responding to any emergencies. She was recommended for the post by the Aero Policewoman's Association of America.

In October 1939, Albany Municipal Airport was approved to run a training program for the Civil Aeronautics Authority. Waldren became a Civilian Aviation Authority Flight Examiner after passing her written exam with a score of 94. It was the highest score her examiner had ever given. With this achievement, Waldren became the second women to receive a pilot instructor's license in the United States. Through the program, she instructed an initial group of ten students and a second group of fifteen students. Waldren's second class included six women. The students, who came from Oregon State University, were required to have eight hours of flight instruction before flying on their own.

Waldren and Howard Burleson managed the Albany Municipal Airport in Oregon from 1937 to 1941. Waldren also wrote a column on aviation for the Albany Democrat-Herald, called Wings Over Willamette. In 1939, she was appointed to the women's committee and the junior activities committee of the National Aeronautic Association's Willamette Valley chapter.

After graduating flight school, Waldren moved to Rockford, Illinois, where she carried passengers and did exhibition flying. She hoped to get a transport pilot's license, but needed 200 hours of flying time to qualify. After the Great Depression began in August 1929, Waldren had difficulty finding jobs, let alone work that would allow her to fly. She worked as a clerk and a ticket salesman, saving whatever money she could spare towards her transport license. Decades later, she recalled renting a plane and flying it once around the airport for a dollar. She remarked that "I've got a lot of three-, four- and five-minute entries in my log book. It came very slowly." Waldren also hunted coyotes for a $2.50 government bounty, shooting them from a Rearwin Sportster plane. Ranchers' associations would sometimes give her free chicken dinners and free gas for her plane to thank her.

In 1929, Waldren married Howard Burleson, who had been one of her instructors at the Lincoln flying school. They moved to North Dakota, where she became the first woman in the state to get a transport pilot's license in 1933. With her husband, she ran a flying service out of the Jamestown Municipal Airport from 1931 to 1937, making charter trips. She also worked as an airways observer for the weather bureau and as a station agent and traffic representative for a local firm. She recalled her time there in a 1986 interview:

Despite Waldren's arguments, her mother and stepfather refused to let her fly. Finally, on March 1, 1928, Waldren's mother agreed to let her train at the Lincoln School of aviation and to pay for the first fifty hours of lessons. As she told the story in 1986, "My mother enrolled me, paid $50 and said, 'You're on your own now: probably just a whim anyhow.' Well, this whim has lasted 56 years."

For ten years, Waldren's father, Wilhelm Nicholas, had not known where she was. After he recognized her picture in the newspaper, he was reunited with his daughters in 1928.

In the summer of 1926, Waldren saw an airshow in the small southern Nebraskan town where her stepfather was working on a railroad. She wanted to go for a plane ride, but her parents were concerned about the risks. Aviation appealed to her because of the good pay, the opportunity for travel, and the chance to work outdoors. Hearing about the feats of pilots like Ruth Elder, Charles Lindbergh and Phoebe Omlie strengthened her resolve.

Evelyn Esther Nicholas Burleson Whitmaker Waldren (June 25, 1908 - October 25, 1986) was the first woman in Nebraska to become a pilot, the first woman in North Dakota with a transport pilot's license, and one of the first women in the United States with a flight instructor's license. In 1941, she set a new speed and distance record for female pilots in light planes.