She’s not only a record-breaking pilot, she writes about them too!
Meet Belle of Steel # 26 Dr. Penny Hamilton
Penny Hamilton was born February 18, 1948 in the state of Pennsylvania. She earned an associate of arts degree in dental hygiene education from Temple University in 1968. Then, she completed her bachelor’s in education from Columbia College in 1976. When Dr. Penny Hamilton was a young woman, she met and fell in love with a military man. She first met her husband, a career military officer in the U.S. Army, when she was managing a preventative dental clinic in Rhode Island. It was love at first sight. They dated, got engaged, and Penny left her job to serve as a military wife, at least for a while.
Her husband, William Alexander Hamilton III “Bill” loved aviation and talked about it with Penny plenty. Penny and Bill lived on or near various military bases in the U.S. and abroad including Germany. Upon his retirement from the military, in 1979, they settled in Nebraska. Both of them attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Penny obtained her master’s degree in adult and continuing education. She then obtained a PhD in communications and became “Dr. Penny.” Her thesis was about history, The Dental Hygienist: the First Half-Century, 1913-1963.
She took an interest in aviation after hearing the stories from her husband. Penny served as a navigation and radio controller when flying with him. Dr. Penny received her pilot’s license in 1988. On October 22, 1991, together they flew from Lincoln, Nebraska to New Orleans, Louisiana at a recorded speed of 179.92 miles-per-hour, making the trip in four hours and thirty-nine minutes. They set a World Aviation Speed Record for their weight class, which still stands today. That record was verified by the National Aeronautic Association. Penny was required to stop flying in 2007 due to a diagnosis of breast cancer. The treatment was brutal.
Today, the United States has more licensed pilots than at any point in its history. As of December 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recorded 887,519 active, licensed pilots; but only roughly seven to eight percent of licensed pilots are women. The FAA reported 100,704 active women pilots in 2025 (Ryon, 2026; Teljeur, 2026). After retiring from active pilot status herself, Penny decided to promote the idea of flying to more women. She thought maybe she could motivate young girls about a career in aviation? Her first project was giving talks in schools and library groups to children. She would show up dressed in vintage attire as “Penny the Pilot.” The character portrayed and resembled Amelia Earhart (D’Argonne, 2018).
During 2008, Dr. Penny Hamilton solicited a grant from the Wolf Aviation Fund to launch the Teaching Women to Fly Research Project. Within that two year study, she queried women students of flight training and male flight instructors to identify what prevented women from pursuing flight training. (Medoff, 2014). She found ten barriers to women entering the field: lack of money, a perceived indifference by male instructors to women students on the part of flight training schools, a lack of continuity as flight instructors frequently leave jobs to start new ones take the instruction over, basic communication difficulties between women and male flight instructors, a lack of female pilot role models, women’s unfamiliarity with mechanical systems in general, women’s lack of experience in reading maps, a lack of female mentorship, and a lack of emotional support from friendships and family. Dr. Hamilton proposed 101 strategies to overcome those barriers, including creation of a low-interest loan program for women in colleges and universities, web-based support of communities for female pilots, and the development of female friendly flight training to emphasize various learning styles and strengths. (Medoff, 2014; Mills et al., 2015). That project led to Hamilton being asked to write a chapter in a textbook, Absent Aviators: Gender Issues in Aviation (Mills et al., 2014).
In 2009, Dr. Penny received the 7 Everyday Hero Award from a Denver TV News Station for her pilot education initiative in the schools (Stevens, 2009). Dr. Hamilton was inducted into the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011. Then, Penny was recognized with the Federal Aviation Administration’s Central Region Aviation Education Champion Award and inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 2014 (Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame, 2026). Hamilton co-founded The Emily Warner Field Aviation Museum in 2015 located in the Grand County Airport in the former Rocky Mountain Airways terminal. As part of the Grand County Historical Association, she volunteered from 2018-2024 as the team leader of the museum. Penny served as volunteer director for the Colorado Airport History Preservation Project. In 2021, Penny was inducted into the Colorado Author’s Hall of Fame.
Penny was a member of and volunteered with the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s Airport Support Network from 1997-2022. She is a member the Military Writer’s Society of America (MWSA). Dr. Penny has published in numerous aviation magazines and written two instruction manuals for women pilots. Penny wrote America’s Amazing Airports, a national aviation career and history book. In 2019, Penny was designated as a Distinguished Alumni by Columbia College.
Another book Inspiring Words for Sky and Space Women: Advice from Historic and Contemporary Trailblazers was published in 2020. Penny’s book 101 Trailblazing Women of Air and Space: Aviators and Astronauts came out in 2021. She wrote and took the photograghs for the book Granby, Then & Now for Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series in 2023.
Some of Penny’s Books
Believe it or not, in 1994, the FAA named a new “holding” intersection at 15,000 feet and west of Corona Pass in Colorado in the U.S. aeronautical system after Dr. Penny Hamilton. Penny received a lifetime achievement award from the Greater Granby Area Chamber of Commerce in 2011. A year later, Penny received the National Aviation Journalist Award from the National Association of State Aviation Officials. The list of honors goes on and on. Penny appears in a segment of a documentary film produced for a Rocky Mountain PBS television series called “Great Colorado Women.”
Penny has been President of the Officers Wives Club and Chair of the Red Cross or Army Community Service. She has organized cookie brigade volunteers for troopers patrolling the East-West German border at night during cold winters. Penny organized American Community Theater session productions such as Oklahoma and other musicals.
Penny believes that her academic degrees gave her research skills to develop a successful writing career. She new she would be some kind of teacher and story teller because she reveals “I love being center stage.” By guiding adult students and sharing inspiring stories, she feels a redeeming value to society. Penny describes her husband, William, as the “wind beneath her wings” and mentor. His military career earned him a Silver Star, Bronze Star, twenty-three Air Medals, a Purple Heart, selection to the Oklahoma Military and Journalism Hall of Fame, the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Colorado Aviation and Authors Hall of Fame. Her “BFF” (best friend forever) was the late Emily Howell Warner, the first female airline Captain in United States airline history.
Penny’s mantra has always been “If you don’t ask, you don’t get it” by Mahatma Gandhi. She also adores Erma Bombeck’s advice, “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waived off the dessert cart?” What a sense of dry wit, Dr. Penny has.
A life-long learner, she aggressively reaches out to talented men and women who have achieved success in their field for advice and guidance. Her philosophy? “Bloom where you are planted.” Penny states that it was sometimes hard to move constantly for the military. Jobs were cut short when her husband was transferred, thus why she developed her freelance writing skills and conference speaking to be more mobile. Penny’s personal strengths are persistence, positivity, passion, and pragmatism. Penny has prolific ideals.
Will Penny ever retire? Or quit writing? Probably not. Her latest writing projects are researching and publishing the ninety-nine stories of the charter members of the International 99s, women pilots of WWII. She is also preparing the book manuscript for Pioneering Women Pilots: European Sky Stars Who Dared. In 2015, Dr. Penny Hamilton was diagnosed with recurring breast cancer for the second time, but she “won’t give in,” she states. She and her husband now married 54 plus years, live in the Meridian-Boise area of Idaho. After “retirement,” they founded a Public Relations firm to offer corporate training programs.
Wowsa! No wonder AgeView Press is proud to have Dr. Penny Hamilton as Belle of Steel number 26!
References
Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. (2026) Penny Hamilton, PhD. https://www.cogreatwomen.org/project/penny-hamilton-phd/
D’Argonne, S. (2018). A living legend: Penny Hamilton to be featured in Great Colorado Women series on PBS. Ski-Hi News.
Hamilton, P. (2026) Penny Rafferty Hamilton. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Rafferty_Hamilton
Medoff, T. (2014) Penny Rafferty Hamilton. Temple University Magazine.