Dorothy Swain Lewis Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Lewis later moved to California, where she taught at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts. She lived in Fern Valley near Idyllwild, where she died in 2013.

In 2010, Lewis was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal at a special ceremony commemorating the ground-breaking achievements of WASPs in World War II. She has also been designated one of Women in Aviation International’s Pioneers of Aviation.

After the war, Lewis worked as chief flight instructor at the airport in Daytona Beach, Florida. She also took part in air shows like the 1st All Women’s Airshow in Tampa, Florida (1947).

Lewis got her airplane pilot’s license in 1941 and then spent some months working for Piper Aircraft in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. In 1942, she was one of 10 women chosen for a special flight instructor training program established by aviation pioneer Phoebe Omlie. After receiving her commercial pilot and ground instructor ratings, she went on to train four classes of naval aviators. She then joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program, where she both taught trainee pilots and herself flew fighters and bombers on maintenance and training missions. Aircraft she flew included the Bell P-63 Kingcobra, Martin B-26 Marauder, and Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. She remained in the Air Force reserve until her discharge in 1957.

In the late 1940s, she married Albert Z. Lewis, with whom she had a son, Albert Z. Lewis, Jr.

Swain got her bachelor’s degree from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (1936) and went on to study art at the New York Art Students League. In the 1950s, she got her master’s degree in art from Scripps College.

Dorothy Swain Lewis (September 30, 1915 – September 9, 2013) was an American aviator who trained Navy pilots and flew with the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program during World War II. She was also an artist who created a series of cast-bronze sculptures of WASP pilots for various World War II memorial sites.