For more than 30 years, the sky was the limit for aviatrix Elizabeth "Betty" Engstrom.
Her intense passion for air travel was sparked, her family said, by her first flight — at age 2 — on a small plane that took her over Niagara Falls.
Hours spent with her father building model airplanes and visiting Chicago Midway Airport with him to watch planes take off and land fueled her interest in flying.
Betty Engstrom's zeal for her family, as well as aviation, education and her Australian shepherds, was remembered Thursday by family, friends and fellow pilots during a memorial service at New Spirit Lutheran Church on East Old Spanish Trail on Tucson's Southeast Side. Engstrom died on Christmas Eve, after a brief illness. She was 79.
Early on it didn't seem that Engstrom's dream of being a pilot would be realized. Her father had promised his daughter flying lessons once she graduated from high school, but that was near the end of World War II, when many commodities, including gasoline, were rationed, said her son, Eric Engstrom, "and they wouldn't waste resources letting a woman fly around."
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Instead of pursuing aviation, Betty Engstrom went to college, initially, to prepare for a career as a concert pianist. She later changed her major to education.
In 1952, a few years after graduation, Engstrom was working as a teacher when she married her high school sweetheart, Thor Engstrom. Daughter Laura was born two years later, followed by a son, Eric, in 1958. But Engstrom's enthusiasm for flying never waned and in 1972 she and her husband took their first flying lessons. Eventually, she became an advocate for and adviser to women interested in aviation.
Retired United Airlines pilot Sharon Crawford met her friend Betty when they both were working as teachers in California.
"We were both private pilots at the same time," Crawford said. "After school, before we had to go home and make dinner, we'd take out her plane or my plane.
"Betty was always excited to try new things," such as landing approaches and maneuvers, Crawford said. "She was always ready to go flying. Betty would go flying at the drop of a hat."
Betty met Kaye Craig when she joined the local chapter of the Ninety-Nines, after the Engstroms moved to Tucson in 1987. The organization was founded in New York in 1929 by 99 licensed female pilots. Aviatrix Amelia Earhart was the first president.
"Flying changes you and it makes the world larger and smaller at the same time," Craig said. "When you're flying, you are totally focused and all of your troubles go away."
Engstrom, she said, was adventurous and very enthusiastic about flying. "She was addicted to it," Craig said.
That's why it was all the more difficult for Engstrom to give up flying almost 18 months ago, when she started "slowing down," said her daughter, Laura Balstad. Engstrom moved into an assisted-living center in the months preceding her death.
"I think it was very difficult, because it (flying) was such a big part of her life," Balstad said. "I think in the last few months it was too painful even to talk about it."
To lift her mother's spirits, Balstad took some of Eng-strom's flying trophies and paraphernalia to the assisted-living center, but "she asked me to take them away."
Engstrom passed her passion for flying on to her son, who is a professional pilot.
"For her, flying was more a love of being in the airplane and doing the maneuvers," Eric Engstrom said. "Sightseeing wasn't as important to her. She'd be just as happy flying five miles from Tucson and practicing maneuvers."
Life Stories
Life Stories
This new feature chronicles the lives of Tucsonans. Some were well-known across the community. Others had an impact on a smaller sphere of friends, family and acquaintances. Many of these people led interesting — and sometimes extraordinary — lives with little or no fanfare. Now you'll hear their stories.
