US aviation museum hosts exhibition on Achill pilot

PIONEERING PILOT?Achill born Nancy Corrigan in one of her planes in the USA.

Life of Achill ‘model pilot’ to be exhibited in US International aviation museum


Anton McNulty

The life of Nancy Corrigan, a pioneering female pilot in the USA, will be examined in an exhibition highlighting her achievements in the International Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland.
Achill born Nancy Corrigan moved as a young girl with her family to Cleveland in the 1920s and started work as a housemaid before becoming a a successful model for ten years with the John Robert Powers modelling agency in New York.
Nancy used the money from Powers to take private lessons and very quickly became a local celebrity in Cleveland appearing in newspapers when she astonished instructors by, at age 19, making her first solo flight after only five hours of training.
She gained every accreditation in aviation at the time, and was the second woman ever to gain a commercial pilot’s licence, and later went on to train pilots for the US military during World War II.
The exhibition entitled, ‘Nancy Corrigan: The Model Pilot’ examines her life as a female pilot, highlighting the air races she attended and participated in. Through photographs, a brief video of one of the races Nancy was in and research done by the Corrigan family, the public are given a glimpse into the life of a Cleveland aviatrix.  
The International Women’s Air and Space Museum honours famous women in aviation and space and this is the first time Nancy’s achievements have been exhibited at the Cleveland museum.
Nancy’s life is also the subject of a new documentary by television producer Gillian Marsh and the event will be filmed as part of the documentary which will be broadcast on TG4 at Christmas.
She logged more than 600,000 miles on commercial jets before becoming a pilot for the Erie Resistor Corporation in 1953 flying executives around the US and Canada. She retired in the early 1960s and moved to Florida where she died suddenly in 1983 at the age of 69.
The exhibition will run from August 22 until the end of the year and the museum is located in the terminal of Burke Lakefront Airport, only seconds from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and the Great Lakes Science Centre in Cleveland.

For additional information on the exhibition, visit the website, www.iwasm.org.